Ask500

I had family that moved there but they ended up moving back to the mainland because of the high cost of living.

Mars should be the real goal. A colony on the moon would be a good practice run.

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. --Robert A. Heinlein

Can we live without it? Sure. We can also live without electricity, a/c, cars, internet, etc... But do you really want to?

There are safe, environmentally friendly ways to go about. Like any other industry it needs to be policed and the operations need to be inspected to make sure that companies are doing things the correct, safe way.

One liter of oil has the equivalent of 35 man hours of energy in it. One barrel of oil has 159 liters which is 5565 mans hours of energy. The current price of a barrel of oil is about $100. That is a lot of work for the money.

As far as the others go: Gold is over priced, cameras quickly become outdated and unless you own a farm, the horse will end up costing a lot more than you get out of it.

Why not save half your money and buy a decent MP3 player or tablet? There are much better products out there that have more features, better hardware/software and that don't come with that pricey Apple brand name.

I am currently using an Amazon Kindle. I love reading and I am very attached to real books and thought that I wouldn't like using an ebook device. My wife upgraded and gave me her older Kindle. Turns out that it is a very easy transition to make.

I would recommend that anyone that likes to read should at least try an ebook.

Yep.

The steel mill I work in will shut down for the Holiday weekend. Some of us maintenance people will have to be on site to make sure the place doesn't burn down.

I will work 12 hours Christmas eve night and 12 Christmas night. Kind of sucks but I will be getting paid double time and a half.

There hasn't been a true democracy since Athens. I much prefer the current representative democracy that we have. There is no proof that a large group of people can make a better decision than a small group of intelligent well educated people.