{"id":1250,"date":"2006-06-20T20:18:31","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T20:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2006-06-20T20:18:31","modified_gmt":"2006-06-20T20:18:31","slug":"this_island_ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1250","title":{"rendered":"This Island Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><DIV>Stephen Hawking is warning that it might be time to start thinking about <A href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20060613\/ap_on_sc\/stephen_hawking;_ylt=Aj96R2T3rCE1d6TT7tyuwzMDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBhZDhxNDFzBHNlYwNtZW5ld3M-\">leaving the cradle<\/A> to ensure the long-term survival of the species.&nbsp; Of course, neither Hawking nor anyone can predict with any accuracy the number of habitable planets that might be within a reasonable distance of our solar system.&nbsp; And even if we did identity one or two planetary baskets into which we can place some of humanity&#8217;s eggs, we aren&#8217;t going to get there anytime soon.&nbsp; I&#8217;m not even sure I&#8217;ll even see a mission to Mars in my lifetime.&nbsp; Hawking&#8217;s &#8220;Spaceward Ho!&#8221; exhortations are well-intentioned, but somewhat lacking in practical suggestions.&nbsp;<\/DIV><DIV>&nbsp;<\/DIV><DIV>But if some variation of Big Bad does slap the human race back into the Stone Age, somebody better remember how to find this <A href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2006\/TECH\/science\/06\/19\/arctic.seedvault.ap\/index.html\">global seed bank located near the Arctic<\/A>.&nbsp; After all, survivors of the apocalypse are going to need some greens to complement their steady diet of irradiated giant rat.<\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen Hawking is warning that it might be time to start thinking about leaving the cradle to ensure the long-term survival of the species.&nbsp; Of course, neither Hawking nor anyone can predict with any accuracy the number of habitable planets that might be within a reasonable distance of our solar system.&nbsp; And even if we <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1250' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-ka","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}