Monthly Archives: March 2009

Glenn, Quoting Heinlein, Nails It

This is just fantastic. Quoted in its entirety from Instapundit:

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: From Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

I’m just sayin’.

Century of Big Ideas or Not?

I don’t follow that many blogs. I mean, probably 40-50, but many of those don’t blog every day, so it really isn’t that many compared to some. So, when one blog says something and another comments on it, it’s kind of cool.

Late last week, Charlie Stross, the science fiction author, posted some fairly depressing speculation about what this century will hold for humanity. Singularity? No. Colonizing Mars? Nu-uh. He’s not all down on the near future, but he’s certainly not hugely optimistic. He’s a pretty smart guy, and I do pay attention to him (and I love his books to boot). The blog Next Big Future came right back the next day to answer him with some fun ideas about how Orion nuclear space ship technology can let us dream big and execute on those dreams this century.

I have no idea if it’ll happen. People that try to predict what’ll happen 100 years in the future with any real degree of detail (read, increasing global temperature) are always wrong. Always. But I do wish people would dream big about what humanity can achieve. If we don’t dream it, we’ll never do it.