the asinine cretin

I am also intensely interested in the origin of life. I'd be interested in book and/or paper recommendations; particularly recent sources that give a sense of the current state of things. Anything you've got would be welcome.

DMT might help. (The use of the word "help" is me being facetious. I don't think that the open exploration of existential questions implies a need for help.)

Would you care to elaborate? For instance, could you summarize the theory and methodology of analytical cosmology? And what data sets will you be working with for the CGC thing? And I get the sense that this ultimately has to do with studying the large-scale structure of the universe as a whole. Is this correct? Edit: typo.

There are a great many things that "not everyone" thinks about. This says nothing of significance. Not everyone thinks about important questions of epistemology or ontology. Not everyone is interested in particle physics. Therefore, what? In philosophy the big existential questions are quite "normal." Recommending meds to a person who is pursuing a topic that you aren't interested in seems kinda assholian (zapatos?). Declarations about what is "normal" seem similarly devoid of import.

I recommend my links above. Here are papers related to the recent merger press release if that's what you're curious about. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/related/

I wouldn't mind understanding it. How would you elucidate its meaning?

It's not. I think the "medication" thing is just a condescending way of invalidating your ideas and shutting you up. That was basically the reaction when I argued for a kind of nihilism on a "happy atheist" board. I thought it was pretty amusing actually. Yeah, maybe we're uber special. Who knows, maybe the cosmos exists for us. And just maybe a supreme being will kindly turn is into invisible immortal superheroes when we die. That would be really awesome. I feel better now.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/20/video/c/

Lol. And yeah, if all you're trying to do is hash some strings the real question would be what language are you programming in?

Is there some reason why normal character encoding such as ASCII or UTF-8 is not appropriate? Why are you encoding the words in the first place? What are the requirements and all that?

If the universe is dozens of orders of magnitude larger than the observable universe would it be reasonable to question homogeneity and isotropy? (My guess is that this would conflict with the theory that undergirds inflation in the first place.) What is the smallest actual size of the cosmological horizon allowed if we assume the inflationary epoch? Thanks, people.

Damn. Too bad Zubrin didn't get to actually debate the Ad Astra people.

Now we're talking.

The old invocation of the poor to make the statement that one doesn't value something or other. Noted.

My guess is that the few mile ranged impacts would be a good show but not particularly threatening (unless large debris happened to be ejected our way). I'm pretty sure the 750 mile object would bring about doomsday. Maybe certain impact trajectories would make it less of a threat to us, but I can't imagine it being a good time for us on Earth. Maybe the Earth would get some pretty rings out of it. Always look on the bright side of life, I suppose.

Who is this in response to? I'm a terraforming enthusiast but I think I've made it clear that this doesn't imply the view that terraforming is particularly feasible or desirable in the near-term. This recurring objection is a straw man. P.S. Also, the view that space colonization, including terraforming, has anything to do with offloading excess population from Earth is nonsensical.

I could share my guesses and reasoning behind them, but it would be much more awesome to get a really good physics engine and write a simulator for testing out scenarios of this kind.

Not all. I strongly hold to the view expressed by D H on that subject. This is a bit tangential, but I generally don't like to frame the issues in terms of "overpopulation." The problems tend to be scarcity of some kind, ineffective social organization, inappropriate resource utilization, underdevelopment, and so on. The big umbrella term "overpopulation" doesn't do much for me and I don't think that the good solution is to campaign for less people. From the exposure I've had to the issue I'd say it's a very complicated topic. And damn it, people reproduce. Waste gargantuan resources blasting people off to Total Recall and in the meantime those people will be replaced. I mean, if that's the whole strategy. If the strategy involves other things then why not simplify it and forget about the extraneous space ghettos. I'm very much pro-freedom and all that but I think I would prefer draconian social controls to such an absurd and wasteful project. P.S. In anticipation of the inevitable misinterpretation, I'm not denying the concept of overpopulation. I think the idea of carrying capacity is valid and that overpopulation can occur. I'm saying I think the concept is overused, generally too simplistic, of dubious applicability, and in the end not very useful. It's also a bit charged and has misanthropic connotations that may limit its usefulness for sociological reasons.

Thanks, mate. I have to admit I wasn't expecting to be taken seriously at all.