I had an epiphany about 8 years ago, when my home office went from having 4 big tower PCs in various states of repair and OS, along with my own servers and NAS and lots of cable runs and so on, to a single iBook running off Wifi. I used to spend an hour a day doing admin tasks and updates, and the rest of the day listening to cooling fans. Then I went cold turkey, dumped the lot, bought a mac, and haven’t looked back. I can get my geek cred from actually doing stuff, not by spending time configuring something in the hope that I will. And I get a lot more done letting Google worry about my email.

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The airless surface of the Moon has other scientific advantages as well. It is a superb site for some types of astronomical observation. The lunar far-side, in particular, is probably the best site for radio astronomy anywhere in the inner Solar System, as it is permanently shielded from artificial radio transmissions from Earth, and also shielded from solar radio emissions during the 14-day lunar night. Optical astronomy may also benefit from the establishment of lunar observatories. As the Moon lacks any obscuring atmosphere, the lunar surface is a much better site for astronomical telescopes than the surface of the Earth.

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As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest. And because geopolitics and global culture are, ultimately, Darwinian, other societies either follow suit or end up marginalized. In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development devised the Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries. With few exceptions, the greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success. Aid agencies have started to recognize this relationship and have pushed to institute political quotas in about 100 countries, essentially forcing women into power in an effort to improve those countries’ fortunes. In some war-torn states, women are stepping in as a sort of maternal rescue team. Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, portrayed her country as a sick child in need of her care during her campaign five years ago. Postgenocide Rwanda elected to heal itself by becoming the first country with a majority of women in parliament.

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The postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today—social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus—are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true. Women in poor parts of India are learning English faster than men to meet the demands of new global call centers. Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China, where a red Ferrari is the new status symbol for female entrepreneurs. Last year, Iceland elected Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned explicitly against the male elite she claimed had destroyed the nation’s banking system, and who vowed to end the “age of testosterone.”

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Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found.

Experts believe flavonoids are the key ingredient in tea that promote health.

These polyphenol antioxidants are found in many foods and plants, including tea leaves, and have been shown to help prevent cell damage.

Public health nutritionist Dr Carrie Ruxton, and colleagues at Kings College London, looked at published studies on the health effects of tea consumption.

They found clear evidence that drinking three to four cups of tea a day can cut the chances of having a heart attack.

Some studies suggested tea consumption protected against cancer, although this effect was less clear-cut.

Other health benefits seen included protection against tooth plaque and potentially tooth decay, plus bone strengthening.

Dr Ruxton said: “Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it’s got two things going for it.”

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I’d also like to point out that large financial centers in certain cities around the planet are certainly going to kill millions of us by destroying our social safety networks in the name of their imaginary financial efficiency. You’re a thousand times more likely to die because of what some urban banker did in 2008 than from what some Afghan-based terrorist did in 2001. *Financiers live in small, panicky urban cloisters, severely detached from the rest of mankind. They are living today in rich-guy ghetto cults. They are truly dangerous to our well-being, and they are getting worse and more extremist, not better and more reasonable.

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As a vision of the future, cyberpunk quickly became obsolete. As we entered a new millennium and the millennium bug (anyone remember that?) didn’t kill us all, the internet became a casual place where everyone connected through pastel-colored social media and paid their phonebills. Even cyberpunk godfather William Gibson, who predicted both virtual reality and the Internet in the 1984 novel “Neuromancer,” ended up writing about the present. It was exciting enough. In the face of web 2.0 we said our sad, but necessary, farewells to the future 1.0.

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