Sisyphus

In a world that obeys classical physics - even one in which light has a finite velocity - there's no upper limit to velocity. If you can throw your fuel out the back of your rocket at 0.99C, and your mass is mostly fuel, then you end up moving faster than C.

That's true. As soon as humans spread to an area, a relationship to humans becomes a major survival factor for pretty much every species, so dramatic has our presence been and continues to be. Of course, you could take that further. Mammoths went extinct in large part because they couldn't survive for very long in an environment that included humans as predator. However, perhaps "interesting/iconic/useful/endearing to humans" could be a beneficial trait even post-extinction, in an environment in which humans have the power to resurrect extinct species. And that is a curious environment indeed. Life on Earth has taken an interesting turn.

We have an awful lot of duties, then. Driving other species extinct is homo sapiens' favorite pastime.

Well, not necessarily. It could just be relatively recent, or go hand in hand with some disadvantage, or for some reason be nearly useless in the modern world but outright useless as a hunter gatherer. Otherwise, yeah, I agree.

Aliens could totally be just noises.

Skin under sunlight is not the only source of vitamin D. You can easily get all you need from diet, as well. You only really see vitamin D deficiency in places with malnutrition. You'd be pale, but that's the only effect it would have. And you'd get just as tan again as soon as you're exposed to UV light again. It's got nothing to do with evolution.

Wow.

I don't know, but it seems like oxidation would be a big problem for any very fine ironwork. What do you need it for?

That would only happen if global warming and depleted ozone levels somehow made fairer-skinned people significantly less fit, either by killing them off or making them have fewer children. I don't see that happening.

Chicken wire comes in various sizes around that range, but isn't it generally a hexagonal grid?

Just to be clear, though. That isn't "creating" energy. It's extracting energy from an electromagnetic field, which always takes more energy to produce than you can extract.

So the idea of becoming a ghost is strange, but the idea of ghosts generally isn't?

There's not even remotely enough material on Earth to make anything like a Dyson swarm, let alone to get everything in place. However, just talking about space-based solar power stations, you would probably be beaming power to Earth with lasers of some sort or another. Tesla's power transmission doesn't work (or, it does, but it's necessarily extremely inefficient, which is why we have power lines). The primary obstacle to be overcome for building space elevators is finding a material to make it out of. It needs to have an extremely high tensile strength to weight ratio that is currently beyond anything we have. Carbon nanotubes are indeed the most promising avenue of research currently. The counterweight doesn't have to be huge. In fact, it really can't be, as the tether has to hold it in place. It just needs enough mass far enough past geostationary orbit so that the tension caused by the Earth's rotation dragging it is enough to support the weight of the tether and any cargo on it. Most likely it will just be the equipment used to build the elevator in the first place. Alternatively, if you make the tether long enough, you don't even need a counterweight, as the extra length serves the same purpose.

Per Edtharan, I defer to Niven's Law #5: "Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless." And I don't see how the distinction between "widely believed, even by the powerful" and "legitimately proven" would matter as regards motivation for assassination. (Except in that real psychic powers would be an outstanding defense against it.) Yet rich frauds live still.

I wouldn't recommend eating pure sodium either...

Well, can you "manipulate" a spatial dimension? No. You can move an object through one, but what does that actually mean? It means the object's position in a spatial dimension changes with respect to its position in the time dimension. Any motion, i.e. "manipulation," involves both space and time already. So how can time "stop" or "reverse?" Both of those verbs take place within time. To "stop" just means a border between the time when something is happening and a time when it isn't.

Ok. My impression of Michael Jackson is that he was deluding himself into trying to recapture a lost childhood, and thus semi-worshipped them as sources of youth and innocence, while trying as an adult to befriend them in the way that children befriend one another, or at least how they do in his imagination. In other words, unhealthy, delusional, pathetic, but not sexual. Of course, I have no proof of this, and I haven't followed his tabloid-filtered life. It's just a general impression.

I think he definitely "loved children" in an unhealthy way, but it's definitely not clear to me that that he had sexual attraction to children or that he acted on it. I don't think I'd use the word "genius," either, but certainly he was talented like very few others. I would agree with Pangloss' formulation that he "drew inspiration from unusual places."

And yet, AFAIK, no "psychic" in the modern world has ever been assassinated, no matter how publicly they declare their "abilities" nor how large their following. Ronald Reagan consulted astrologers. Billy Graham has told several presidents what God wants. And a number of police departments have sought the assistance of psychics, convinced of their efficacy even without Randi's prize. Obviously it's impossible to prove that nobody is out there hiding psychic abilities, but there are plenty who loudly proclaim themselves and are widely believed even by the powerful, and face no consequences.

How would you go about solving that?

Yeah, that's probably true. But need it be? Does Nancy Pelosi's staff get all that information, and if so are they actually entitled to it? How effective would more draconian accountability be? If, say, we establish precedent for prosecuting leaky Congressmen for espionage... Yeah, actually, that might create more problems than it solves.

What do you mean by manipulate?

Fair enough - I don't pretend to understand string theory. But still, the dimensions wouldn't be some "other place," right? It would just be directions in which most aspects of us (except for gravity, etc.) have zero extension, just as if we encountered a 2D flatlander drifting around our 3D space. Or am I way off?

You just need the intermediate steps, each of which are influenced by plausible mutations that are beneficial (or at least non-harmful) at every step of the way. So, for example, we're never going to directly evolve "resistance" to shotgun blasts to the chest. But perhaps the adaptations that make you more likely to survive, say, a bullet in the leg (missing major arteries) would then make certain other mutations more plausible, etc. Or maybe not. There are plenty of organisms that can fully recover from extreme physical trauma, but none of them had to evolve from a mammal...

My first instinct is that the number should be increased, possibly to every member of Congress. If I was a representative and was Constitutionally obligated to provide oversight on and vote on legislation while being kept in the dark about relevant details, I'd be very annoyed. As a representative I'm supposed to be providing oversight on behalf of my constituency, not the party leadership that just tells me to trust them. If security is that big of a problem that members of Congress can't be trusted, then maybe we should hold politicians actually responsible for leaks.