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Given that most recent studies have determined conservatives to be coward, violent and unadaptable as well as uncaring, and even kind of stupid, being messy doesn't seem that bad in comparison.

"So how are they making their money? By litigation. So they're not actually helping progress, they're hindering it."

evidence to this light is found here: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348

a company by the name of thorium power, is designing a real thorium based fuel that would run in a conventional Russian atomic reactor, and along comes this patent troll company trying to eat up the US thorium reactor patents... which will mean Russia and China may be using thorium reactors while America finds itself unable to because 'the patent troll drove the cost too high'

Here's a link to the study about this: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1864

This photo: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/system/files/20071220_nasaarchaelogy.jpg

is actually Tikal, Guatamala. (Not just "Guatamala")

I know cause I was there in 1972. I would love to go back again this time armed with digital cameras. When I went I had a piece of junk for a camera. Remember don't drink the water, you'll get hell of sick if you drink the water. Also, I don't know if they've fenced off Tikal, but there were hella things that can kill you walking around out in the jungle. Like a jaguar for example, although the monkeys can easily rip the shirt of your back too. Thank god all the fighting is done down there so you don't have to worry about the guerrillas (not monkeys, the kind with machine guns.)

I, too, thought of toxoplasmosis when I read this news. Here is an article from back in the spring about research into the specific effects on rats and mice. Parasite-host interactions are fascinating, especially ones that involve several life cycle stages and multiple hosts, such as this one.

Digging up more research on it is indeed a good idea. The chap who runs metaresearch.org reckons that the GPS satellites don't actually correct for gravitational time dilation, because there's no such thing; this is news to everyone else. There's some interesting commentary on the matter here, an article on the fascinating subculture of relativity deniers (who seem an even odder bunch than the creationists).

And in a totally gratuitous ad hominem, it appears he also thinks the Mars Face is artificial.

So far as I can see, his chief complaint with general relativity's predicted speed of c for propagation of gravitational changes is that gravitational aberration ought to destabilise orbits, producing a net torque and a change in angular momentum. As a matter of fact this is what relativity predicts - hence all the investment in experiments to detect gravitational waves carrying away angular momentum from binary pulsars or what have you. However, the effect is small, since most of it cancels out thanks to some more subtle effects, leaving it only really detectable in cases of high gravity or high acceleration.

People are seriously working on the 3D printing of human organs using living cells

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348

Some of the main benefits of thorium reactors are that they vastly reduce the amount of waste, emit waste that has much shorter half-lives, and (here's the kicker) can eliminate existing stockpiles of plutonium and spent fuel.

Fusion does nothing to address the issue of existing nuclear material.

It's not an either-or deal; it's a measured "both."

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1101

Though the Nature newsbrief doesn't mention her, the lead author and the main experimentalist was Naomi Ginsberg, a PhD student in Lene Hau's lab. You can read the article abstract on Nature's website: http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature0549 3 The AFP wire item also gives credit where credit is due: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1028

But the official figures on the cost of coal don't tell the whole story. Coal is a killer: a more profligate one than you would expect. And it maintains a lethal efficacy across its entire lifecycle. One of the main objections held against nuclear power is its potential to take lives in the event of a reactor meltdown, such as occurred at Chernobyl in 1986. While such threats are real for conventional reactors, the fact remains that nuclear power - over the 55 years since it first generated electricity in 1951 - has caused only a fraction of the deaths coal causes every week. Take coal mining, which kills more than 10,000 people a year. Admittedly, a startling proportion of these deaths occur in mines in China and the developing world, where safety conditions are reminiscent of the preunionised days of the early 20th century in the United States. But it still kills in wealthy countries; witness the death of 18 miners in West Virginia, USA, earlier this year. But coal deaths don't just come from mining; they come from burning it. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC - a nonprofit research group founded by influential environmental analyst Lester R. Brown - estimates that air pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 23,600 U.S. deaths per year. It's also responsible for 554,000 asthma attacks, 16,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks annually. The U.S. health bill from coal use could be up to US$160 billion annually, says the institute. Coal is also radioactive: most coal is laced with traces of a wide range of other elements, including radioactive isotopes such as uranium and thorium, and their decay products, radium and radon. Some of the lighter radioactive particles, such as radon gas, are shed into the atmosphere during combustion, but the majority remain in the waste product - coal ash. People can be exposed to its radiation when coal ash is stored or transported from the power plant or used in manufacture of concrete. And there are far less precautions taken to prevent radiation escaping from coal ash than from even low-level nuclear waste. In fact, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S. estimates the amount of exposure to radiation from living near a coal-fired power plant could be several times higher than living a comparable distance from a nuclear reactor. Then there are the deaths that are likely to occur from falling crop yields, more intense flooding and the displacement of coastal communities which are all predicted to ensue from global warming and rising oceans. There's so much heat already trapped in the atmosphere from a century of greenhouse gases that some of these effects are likely to occur even if all coal-fired power plants were closed tomorrow. Whichever way you look at it, coal is not the smartest form of energy.

Nuclear is increasingly the only quickly viable alternative to fossil fuel generation of power. I'd encourage all to read the article its a very interesting breakdown of possible energy generation sources.

News update: They've been found.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/818

It's disturbing to think of how close we came to losing them forever. It's also curious to note how little attention their recovery has gotten, in light of the hoopla over their misplacement.

If you use breeder reactors you can convert non-fissile U238 to Plutonium, which multiplies your available fuel (U235) by a factor of hundreds.

The security implications of plutonium breeding make it unsuitable as a solution. And if you imagine fission scaling up to be the primary energy source, even with breeder reactors you still run out of uranium within decades, perhaps a century. Reactor safety is a huge issue (no, pebble bed reators are not as safe as fission fans tell you). And the waste problem remain unsolved.

Thorium spallation in an sub-critical accelerator driven system is a possibility, with much greater safety and availabilty, but doesn't yet exist in practical form. Same for fusion.

Photovoltatics, renewables, and efficiency improvements exist in practical form now.

...notice that their religion has become the new sand, and science/secular humanism/rationality has become the new rock.

This is *exactly* the point I was trying to make, although I like your phrasing better. And I can certainly relate to your "brain in a vat" example of conciousness.

My faith is based entirely on generalization from self. For example, many times in my life I have prayed/meditated/pondered/slept on it before making a big decision. Usually my answer will come to me rather clearly; but from where does this answer come? The collective unconcious? Jesus? Random synapses in my brain? Experience and judgement? A combination of these? Even as I write this I wonder what I am going to type next, meanwhile, another part of me already knows.

I also have strong emotional reactions to certain "spiritual" things; sunrises, great sex, great food, etc. When engaged in these activities I can sense a significance to them that reaches far beyond myself. Is this God, or simply some under-developed schizophrenia lurking in my brain? (Speaking of: this article might be right up your alley.)

My biggest hang-up with the whole "God/no God" debate is death. The logical part of me laughs at the Judeo-Chrisitan definition of "Heaven". However, I'm sure we've all read about those near-death experiences where people see the "white light" before being revived. Is that the gateway as described in the Bible? Perhaps. But perhaps not: I have also taken a few solid knocks to the head, and also saw a bright flash of light, although I was nowhere near death at the time.

My biggest problem with "hardcore" atheism is the concept of nothing; I have never experienced nothing and so I have no frame of reference. When asleep, I dream. When bored, my mind races onto its own little tangents. If I sit in the dark with my hands over my ears, I start to listen to my heartbeat. To me, the concept of "nothing" makes no rational sense.

I'm rambling now, but if you have never seen it I will highly suggest the movie Waking Life which explains that the "after-life" is simply a few minutes of leftover brain activity; a sort of lucid dream in which we can exist in a self-defined universe for a conceptually infinite period of "time" (in quotes because that's a whole quagmire in its own right). I'm not suggesting a religion based on a movie, but I do find the theory extremely logical. For example; if my memories consist of good deeds and happy times, wouldn't this dream state be a personal heaven? On the other hand, if I have lived a "wicked" life and die with a tortured concious, couldn't I lapse into a nightmare of my own personal hell?

Call me crazy, but I'm still looking for the common ground. I can't believe that 75% of all the people on the face of the Earth could worship the same God (Jews, Chrisitans, Muslims) and yet all be 100% wrong.