Climax of Humanity

BY GEORGE MUSSER from Scientific American :

The 21st century feels like a letdown.
We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks.
Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions;
children were supposed to learn about disease from history books;
portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot.
Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization
that leave our era in the dust.

As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet. Already we pump out carbon dioxide three times as fast as the oceans and land can absorb it; midcentury is when climatologists think global warming will really begin to bite. At the rate things are going, the world’s forests and fisheries will be exhausted even sooner.

The trends are evident in everyday life. Many of us have had the experience of getting lost in our hometowns becausethey have grown so much. But growth is slowing as families shrink. Ever more children grow up not just without siblingsbut also without aunts, uncles or cousins. (Some people find that sad, but the only other way to have a stable populationis for death rates to rise)

Continue: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-climax-of-humanity

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Inspirational thoughts

"The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours!"

--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the OTHER people!" (Professor Randy Pausch)

"When life kicks you, let it kick you forward" (Kay Yow).

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever" (Gandhi)

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character." (Horace Greeley)

"We never know how high we are

Till we are asked to rise

And then if we are true to plan

Our statures touch the skies?"

- Emily Dickinson -

"Our doubts are traitors

and make us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt."

- William Shakespeare -

"For when the One Great Scorer comes

To write against your name,

He marks -- not that you won or lost,

but how you played the game."

- Grantland Rice -

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in moments of challenge and controversy".  (Martin Luther King).

"The most intelligent people disguise the fact that they are intelligent. Wise men do not wear nametags. The more people talk about their own skills, the more desperate they are—their work should speak for itself."

~M (Death Note)

"Truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." 

~ Albus Dumbledore

"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me, and when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

~ Bene Gesserit