Tales Of Brave Ulysses

Three interesting pieces from Salon that I read last week:

• Decline and fall – America is just as doomed as Rome, Spain and Britain were in their imperial ambitions. A trifecta of ominous portents; peak oil, religious zealotry and mounting debt all point towards collapse of the Republican kakistocracy.
  
• Planet of Slums – First it was a planet of weeds, now comes a planet of slums. It looks to me like it will probably be a world of both weeds and slums. Guam’s starting to look more and more like both.
  
• I, Nanobot – But never mind the desolation of the planet, we’re about to push our species into extinction through the creation of artificial life forms. And we’ll go joyfully into that good night, dazzled by our brilliance and the beauty of our limitless future.