From the air Illinois was a vast emptiness studded by lost-looking little towns. - Stephen Baxter

No wonder you can’t figure out the Fermi Paradox, Malenfant, if you don’t know your own wife’s dress size.

To some extent the human race today seems to react as a single organism to great events. After all, we live in a wired world. Memes—information, ideas, fears, and hopes—spread around the media and online information channels literally at light speed.
It may be that this mass reaction is the greatest single danger facing us.

What makes you think anybody with power will listen to a bunch of scientists? They never have before.