Hawking: We must colonize Space...or Die.

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by Lancer
Can you give me the readers digest version?

...

OK, so there's this guy named Elliot, right? He's best friends with this other guy named Tedd. Tedd has a transformation gun. One day, Tedd accidentally zaps Elliot with said gun, turning him into a girl. The gun then promptly malfunctions, so Elliot is stuck as a girl.

Elliot is not pleased.

Fortunately, Tedd's father works for The Government, in about the same department that also handles affairs such as Area 51 and Roswell. And because of that, Tedd knows of a lightly guarded government warehouse that holds a magical diamond that may cure Elliot's 'curse'.

They find the warehouse, Elliot touches the diamond.

And it works! Huzzah, Elliot is male again. Unfortunately, this happened by kind of ripping the female out of him. So now there's a guy Elliot and a seperate girl Elliot.

Stuff happens.

In the end, Elliot and girl Elliot (who adopts the name 'Ellen') decide to return home. There, Elliot has to explain to his parents what just happened. Elliot's parents, fitting right in with all the strangeness around them, speculate on what Ellen exactly is. True, she can be considered Elliot's twin, but they feel that it would more appropriate to say that Ellen is Elliot's 'daughter' with Tedd being the 'father'. Elliot freaks out a bit about this discussion and leaves. Only to be promptly glomped by Ellen screaming MOMMY!!!

Elliot freaks out completely and screams the immortal phrase:

[Lancer]

THANKS Wotan!

I got about half way through your post and decided I have got to read the book!

VJ, yeah sure whatever

[RGBVideo]

VJ, yeah sure whatever

Were the words too big for you to understand?

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by Lancer
THANKS Wotan!

I got about half way through your post and decided I have got to read the book!

It's not a book, it's a webcomic.

Find it here:

http://www.elgoonishshive.com/

[Lancer]

Thanks again

VJ, only some of them.

[Barnabas]

We are better than trilobites

[RGBVideo]

We are better than trilobites

How so? They lived for at least 200 million years, we haven't broken even 1 million yet.

[OzzyKP]

Wotan

It makes perfect sense now.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Sava
Priority one should be survival. Not making money, not fighting over land or ideology or religion... but survival.

Uhh... what do you think making money & fighting over land, ideology & religion is about? It's about survival. When the survival and prosperity of some may hurt the survival and prosperity of others, that's when war happens.

Once we have unlimited land, food, resources, wealth, material goods, etc, then maybe we'll be done with war. Till then, survival sadly & paradoxically necessitates war.

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Wotan

It makes perfect sense now.

It does, doesn't it? I guess that's simply the amazing power of context.

[Jon Miller]

There will (unless peoples form changes) be some who want to control others. That is something that is independent of material resources.

People like to coerce others, they like to control others. We see that today, although we have a 'democracy' and slavery is illegal.

But still people make others slaves, either through ecnonomy or drugs or other reasons (often emotional).

Jon Miller

[asleepathewheel]

Stephen Hawking: Genius AND Master of the Obvious.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Cripies, we're not even to Type I yet

So, what are we? Type 0?

Type 0.7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Yes, if a disaster caused problems for humans on the surface of earth humanity could split to those who are spacefarers and those who go under the earth (if the earth is messed up for a long enough time).

Jon Miller

I once wrote a sci-fi story called "The Man from Mars" about a human who returns from a technologically advanced Mars to an Earth which, aside from the vast Equadorian Empire, has reverted back to barbarism.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Sava
Hawking is correct. While you ***** sit here and squabble about how humanity might die, you are ignoring the big picture.





The Earth is not a permanent home. The longer we sit around on our asses not finding a way to go out into space, the more likely it is something bad could happen.

Priority one should be survival. Not making money, not fighting over land or ideology or religion... but survival. Once humanity realizes this, we will finally get our sh1t together and work together. But until then, most of humanity is just a bunch of highly evolved, intelligent (and I use that term loosely) apes.

Another reason is that human intelligence virtually insures we will find ourselves jacking with the environment in ways that other species can't adapt to fast enough. Eventually, moving the entire human population completely off of the earth would finally allow the ecosystem to function independant of the effects of ever changing fickle human activity.

The current mass extinction will probably never end until humanity has moved offworld.

Obviously this assumes that first world human fertility patterns will eventually become the norm. I'm not sure it would ever be practical to move a growing human population completely off of the earth.