Imagine for a minute you'd live in one of the 30 square-feet boxes in the lower floors, after your 78th straight 16 hour shift in some local sweatshop, watching the son of some corrupt local politician drink Pommery in his rooftop park on that other building. I know that 'd snap at some point, that much is clear.

No social tensions will arise from this arrangement, ever, I think.

Would be interesting to know what happens to CO2 and O2 ratio of the air, for each of the colors, would one let them metabolize in a closed system for some time.

Super models seem to have a knack to survive all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios.

Friggin' Pöyzen Böyzen fans.

I'm really, really worried about the course the U.S. is headed for in all these things.

Beautiful letter, thanks for the link.

I'm 100% sure I have seen exactly this clip months ago here on io9. Glitch in the matrix?

Yeah, who would have ever heard of a government abusing its surveillance resources.

Super interesting article. One could make a case though that, once we reach the point of ‘negligible senescence', we will also be in full control of our emotional chemistry, enabling us to simply eliminate boredom via manipulation of our biochemistry. Which would make the whole question obsolete.

The world and what we know about it gets more interesting all the time, exponentially so. I know I could stay un-bored a veeeery long time.

Well, at the very fundamental level that's probably unavoidable, say resources like heat, sunlight, minerals or other elements, etc.. All highly speculative anyhow, time will show, I guess.

Yeah, I always thought that trying to figure out family relations in the third or fourth generation would make one's head explode.

Optimization in evolutionary terms is not subjective at all, it always means optimization of evolutionary success, through whatever means.

Yeah, but by imported species from comparable climate zones, etc. They usually out-eat the natives because they have some evolutionary edge over them. But they are well-adapted to the environment, because it is not very much different from their original habitat. Like the red squirrel getting out-competed by the grey…

If I meet the overall criteria to go, could I influence your selection process to my favor with a generous financial contribution?

If life developed independently on Mars one should think that it is optimized for the conditions there - and thus superior to anything we could inadvertently bring there.

"A Martian colony will need fast, temporary housing and will also need to be profoundly careful with the ecosystem on the planet."

One could rearrange them to perform a merry hillbilly incest gang-bang - without changing the animations a bit.

It does. I apologize.