crazy_dave: Never said it wasn't ... I was speaking in generalities.

GameRager: I know...I was just making a pseudo sadface joke. :)

crazy_dave: Ah :)

GameRager: Oh btw when do you sciency types think you'll get a working teleporter available that we can use? *One that doesn't summon demons from hell, that is*

GameRager: Oh btw when do you sciency types think you'll get a working teleporter available that we can use? *One that doesn't summon demons from hell, that is*

Darling_Jimmy: That's not a bug. That's a feature.

crazy_dave: Eh ... I dunno ... you'll have to ask the physicists, I'm merely a lowly biologist. :) But I'd hazard not soon, especially not the kind people think of from Star Trek. This is the more likely version.

Darling_Jimmy: That's not a bug. That's a feature.

GameRager: Tell that to all the poor mand...err volunteer test subjects we sent through the bloody thing. :\

swaimiac: Well, that is a bit of a myth perpetuated by some street interviews, particularly in big cites. The same has been done in European cities and Asia with similar geographic knowledge results.

The idea that most Americans don't have passports is probably true, but in reality they never needed them until recently. Up until a dozen years ago or so travel to the Mexico, Canada and many Caribbean nations did not require a passport. The reason most Europeans have passports is geography and history. Smaller countries, clustered together, each with unique cultures, languages and physical geography. I am not sure if this has changed since the formation of the E.U., but for sometime passports were required for travel between European countries. Especially between the big wars. During the big wars you only needed a gun and special government sanctioned travel arrangements. Also, locations in Africa, the middle east and Russia though relatively close, still required passports for travel.

The USA has an very diverse geography, both cultural and physical. Each state has it's own history and cultural identity-- the nation is not as homogenous as it might appear in some media. Each state, especially those separated by other states, can be strikingly different culturally, even in laguage. Also, the USA is made up of people from all over the world and every walk of life, each bringing their own view point and culture. People here are being challenged to think differently everyday through many multi-cultural interactions and a vast majority of those do not end up in fights.

Not to mention the Internet gives us all the ability to communicate freely across the world, giving us the ability to challenge each others preconceptions, regardless of your surroundings.

You can not let a couple of teenage yahoos on facebook define the country as a whole, that would be a grievous fallacy of composition. It is very difficult to have a narrow point of view here and get away with it. True, there are teenagers who can think for themselves, in fact those two in the facebook posts are doing just that (how ever ridiculous they might be), but you do not need a passport, be a world traveler or "not-an-American" to be able to think for your self or have your point of view challeged.

orcishgamer: I'm pretty sure that they've been able to teleport and time travel individual particles already. Quantum entanglement may lead directly to the communications thing sooner than most people think.

My grandma is 99, she's not quite born before the Wright Brothers flew but it's pretty close. Think of the shit she's seen come and go. She was 50 already when Sputnik launched. She saw not only the rise of the personal computer, but the mainframe before that, and the crazy vacuum tube monsters (like EDSAC) before that.

She was a school teacher, so more educated than most of her generation, yet I doubt she could have understood the implications of the stuff that went on right in front of her eyes. Don't knock theoretical stuff, it's far more valuable than some genius becoming yet another douchebag quant for Walstreet or whatever.

Regardless, most of the world population will probably be dead before 2050 anyway, so it might not matter all that much. We'll see.

GameRager: And what about 2050? 0.o

Darling_Jimmy: The vast majority of baby boomers will be dead by then.

GameRager: Why worry about one generation dying off so much?

Darling_Jimmy: Do I sound worried? I am having a party in 2050.

HoneyBakedHam: No!

No you can not cleanse the gene pool.

Somebody has to scrub toilets, flip burgers, and manage hedge funds. I'm sure as hell not gonna do it.