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So yeah, I'm reading the Bryson book. Right now I've been reading about what a small volume of the planet is appropriate for human life. He also points out about how we little we know about the ocean surface relative to, say, the moon.

One thought: we hear a lot about space travel, but really it's going to be tremendously difficult. I wonder if it will ever become useful to create undersea colonies? You would seem to have some protection if something happened to the magnetosphere, you have a lot more raw materials as well, access to geothermal energy, a potential source of oxygen, etc.

(It took me a while to recall that I had seen some version of this idea as the underwater city Rapture in the game Bioshock.)

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Factoids of the Moment

You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 10¹⁸ joules of potential energy--enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

Please, please, PLEASE no one tell this to our president... suddenly he'd have his justification for throwing ANYONE in jail, never mind the folks at Gitmo.

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Imagery of the Moment

--from this page of post-apocalyptic views of the Statue of Liberty-- mostly sci-fi, some comics and propganda... neat stuff!