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Mother Nature was the first to create nuclear reactors

http://www.alamut.com/proj/98/...

Muslims did also provide the first assassins.

I mention this because most people assume the first assassins were the ninja - which while the ninja were damn good assassins, they were not the first. Muslims also perfected the art of torture (at least historically, this day and age torture has taken a new light with technology)

This is about engineering the creation of a hardline Islamic theocractic regime (i.e., the return of the caliphate), and the best way to do that is to terrorize the enemy that works to westernize (read "support freedom") predominantly muslim nations. There is a long history of terror and assassination used as a tactic against western incursion:

As early as the last years of the eleventh century the Assassins had succeeded in setting firm foot in Syria and winning as convert the Saljug prince of Aleppo, Ridwan ibn-Tutush (died in 1113). By 1140 they had captured the hill fortress of Masyad and many others in northern Syria, including al-Kahf, al-Qadmus and al-'Ullayqah. Even Shayzar (modern Sayjar) on the Orontes was temporarily occupied by the Assassins, whom Usamah calls Isma'ilites. One of their most famous masters in Syria was Rachid-al-Din Sinan (died in 1192), who resided at Masyad and bore the title shakkh al-jabal', translated by the Crusades' chroniclers as "the old man of the mountain". It was Rashid's henchmen who struck awe and terror into the hearts of the Crusaders.

- from HITTI: THE ASSASSINS

You said: "3) Fusion by-products. Enriched uranium and it's ilk are not found in nature"

Hate to nitpick, but you are probably confused when you talk about fusion. Let me clear this up:

Current technologies for fusion have not gotten to the 'break even' point so they are not in use for power generation and not in use except very localized research centers. Of the products produced, the most common are He-3, H-3 (tritium), He-4, H, and neutrons. This is because normally the reactants are either H-1, H-2 (deuterium), or H-3 (tritum). Of the products and reactants, He-3 and H-3 are not naturally occurring. H-3 is also radioactive but it has a reasonably short half-life, so it really isn't a worry about long term contamination of the earth. Additionally any neutron flux in the reactor can activate metals in the reactor complex.

So as far as fusion technology is concerned, only the activated metals in the reactor complex are of a concern. In reality this material will not be the 'high-level' waste that people always worry about. While it is radioactive, it is really nothing compared to fission products.

If you were confused and talking about fission technologies, it becomes much more interesting. The fission products in a nuclear fission are statistically determined and since the proportion of neutrons to protons for stable nuclei is nonlinear, the fission products are likely to be radioactive (and typically takes many individual decays to reach a stable point). Whenever someone is talking about high-level waste, this is what they are talking about. In addition to the fission products, portions of the reactor complex can become activated by neutrons just like a fusion reactor.

When you talk about radioactive material being able to contaminate the earth you are talking about the fission products. But the secret of nuclear power is that you can do so much with so little. The expended fuel from a fission reactor is really a very small amount and when people talk about nuclear waste, they don't always clarify the difference between high and low level waste. For this reason, it many times appears that there is this huge volume of high-level waste (as this is typically implied when no description of the types of waste is given) when the vast vast majority is low level waste that will have little environmental affect. Taking into account that a fission reaction is at least 40 million times more powerful than the chemical reactions that produce eletricity at coal and gas plants, the waste will be that fraction smaller.

But here's the biggest secret of nuclear power: the earth naturally produces more fission products than all the nuclear reactors in the world. The fact of the matter is that the average temperature of the earth is and has been about 800 degrees C for 4 billion years and this can't be accounted for by solar radiation. What can account for it is the spontaneous fission of minute amounts of uranium spread throughout the earth. Additionally a natural nuclear reactor was found in Africa. The earth isn't as clean from fission products as you may suspect.

Actually, there is no plan to convert carbon dioxide to hydrogen with any kind of organism. That would require nuclear transmutation, which so far as I know has never been done in a biological organism.

You'd certainly think not, but incredibly it does seem likely that a natural nuclear reactor was constructed by bacteria some 1.8 billion years ago in Africa - see e.g. NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTORS (OKLO).

We now know that low-level radiation is simply far less harmful (and far better understood) than we thought it was in the 1950's.

In fact, there is evidence that low-level radiation is actually beneficial. This effect is known as Radiation Hormesis

Natural Fission in africa

A longer article

Basically, about 1.8 billion years ago, an area of africa containing Uranium 235 fissioned (?is that a word?) naturally, over a period of around a million years.

Speaking of languages, take a look at THE ANALYTICAL LANGUAGE OF JOHN WILKINS, by Jorge Luis Borges

I read, some time back, a Manifesto of yours dealing with dead (ie doomed or archaic or obsolete) media; it was a very interesting read.

If I'm not mistaken, the thrust of your manifesto was that a research tome on such media should be created, but since you were too swamped with projects, you hoped that people out there on the Internet who read it would come together and help to create the book themselves.

I was wondering if this has been very successful, and if so (or if not) what you have learned from the Manifesto and its consequences.

That's like finding the oldest living tree, and cutting it down to put in a museum.

That's already happened (sort of).

From Alamut:

Prometheus

In 1964, a graduate student cut down the oldest living tree, a bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva, Pinus aristata) in order to count its rings:

"Late in the year of 1964 a young geographer, Donald R. Currey, a student at this university, who was working toward his doctorate, was in the Southwest searching for evidence of Ice Age glaciers. The Wheeler Peak glacier and related phenomena attracted him. When this student and his associate came upon the bristlecones at the timberline, they began to take core samples from several trees, discovering one to be over 4,000 years old! Needless to say they were excited, and at some point, their only coring tool broke. The end of the field season was nearing. They asked for (and I still can't believe it!) were granted permission by the U.S. Forest Service to cut the tree down. The tree was 'Prometheus'.

"After cutting the trunk at a convenient level, which happened to be more than eight feet above the original base, 4,844 rings were counted. This student had just killed the oldest living thing on earth! Eventually, dendrochronologists determined the tree to be 4,950 years of age."

For some reason, Prof. Donald R. Currey's home page at the University of Utah doesn't mention the accomplishment