We have the media, which is such a waste in the sense that you can actually feel your IQ get lower as you watch TV.

Cesium, iodine from the Chernobyl reactor accident went around the world many times and everyone on the Earth has a piece of Chernobyl in their bodies, but it's very tiny - too small to cause much damage.

A related aspect of intelligent consciousness is delay of gratification: the wisdom to accurately predict whether delay rather than acting on impulse will yield greater benefit.

Science is the engine of prosperity. But you'd never know it, listening to some of the politicians. They're lawyers and businessmen, not scientists. Lawyers and businessmen massage wealth; they don't create it.

Time travel and teleportation will have to wait. It may take centuries to master these technology.

Chances are, the aliens will not want to land on our backyard, or even the White House lawn, with their flying saucers. They may have tiny, robotic self-replicating probes which can reach near light speed and can proliferate around the galaxy. So instead of the Enterprise and huge star ships, the aliens might actually send tiny probes to explore the universe. One might land on our lawn and we won't even know.

We physicists know that the brain is a milliwatt transmitter of radio. We have computers that can decipher much of this gibberish coming from our brain and we could then use that to control computers.