[ He'd never seen much difference between the Tsar's regime and American capitalism. To struggle against one, he figured, was to struggle against the other. Sort of this world-wide outlook. "Was a little worse for us, maybe, coming to U.S.A. after hearing so much about 'land of the free'. "Thinking he'd escaped something, only to find life out here just as mean and cold, same wealth without conscience, same poor people in misery, army and police free as wolves to commit cruelties on behalf of the bosses, bosses ready todo anything to protect what they had stolen.]



50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL 1956 - 2006
New Scientist - 18 November 2006
www.newscientist.com
(sounds phoney, but it-s a respectable UK-no-nonsense-science-magazine.)

"The most important development in physics that I can imagine in the next 50 years would be the discovery of a final theory that dictates all properties of particles and fields. That may be too much to hope for. A major step in this direction would be the discovery of particles like gauginos or squarks that are required by supersymmetry. Alas, we don't know what the masses of these particles would be, and they may be beyond the reach of any particle accelerator.

On the other hand, we can confidently predict breakthroughs in cosmology. We will know whether the density of dark energy varies with time at a rate comparable to the cosmic expansion rate, or is essentially constant - a crucial clue to the nature of dark energy. We will either have confirmed the general idea of inflation by discovering signs of cosmological gravitational waves (which I expect), or we will have ruled out inflation by showing that these gravitational waves are weaker than predicted. We may be using laser interferometers in space to detect cosmological gravitational waves that bear clues about the behaviour of the matter of the universe at energies higher than we can reach in accelerators. But the origin of the universe will remain obscure until we make more progress toward a final theory." [Steven Weinberg forecasts the future in www.newscientist.com "50th Anniversary Edition]



"Cosmologists have much to look forward to: the direct detection of dark matter and gravitational waves, the extraction of more secrets of the early universe, the discovery of the cosmic neutrino background, possibly an exploding black hole, understanding dark energy, decisive evidence for or against the existence of other dimensions of space, new forces of nature and the possibility of time travel; perhaps even nano-sized space probes. I could go on.

All this is exciting, but take a moment to think back 50 years and look forwards. None of the greatest discoveries in the astronomical sciences were foreseen. The transformation in the practice of science brought about by the web is barely 30 years old. No one predicted it. Pulsars, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, the standard model of particle physics, the isotropy of the microwave background, strings and dark energy were equally unexpected. None of these was predicted 50 years ago.

Perhaps scientists are as blinkered as the politicians and economists who failed to foresee the fall of the Iron Curtain and the climatic implications of industrialisation. Yet this myopia may not be a fault. Perhaps it is a touchstone. If you can foresee what is going to happen in your field over the next 50 years then maybe it is mined out, or lacking what it takes to attract the brightest minds. Nothing truly revolutionary is ever predicted because that is what makes it revolutionary."
[John D. Barrow forecasts the future in www.newscientist.com "50th Anniversary Edition"]



["Think about it (...) like Original Sin, only with exceptions. Being born into this don't automatically make you innocent. But when you reach a point in your life where you understand who is **** who (...)who's taking it and who's not, that's when you're obliged to choose how much you'll go along with. If you are not devoting every breath of every day waking and sleeping to destroying those who slaughter the innocent as easy as signing a check, then how innocent are you willing to call yourself? It must be negotiated with the day, from those absolute terms."]