So something can be entirely subjective, and at the same time hold some universal truth? That's quite impressive.

But as for your main point, here's the definition of the concept of art, as quoted from Wikipedia:
"Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect."

I'd say; a coherent political statement that says something by means of symbolism, can easily be viewed as art.
The fact that people are getting quite heated in a discussion about this, I think lends credit to that viewpoint.

It's been 15 years, and still most people (including most Christians) have not picked up on the fact that the Catholic church concluded this long ago.
In a papal statement on the subject of evolution, dated Oct. 22nd 1996, pope John Paul II stated that "truth cannot contradict truth", and therefore the Genesis story of the Bible needed to be interpreted metaphorically, not literally.

For those who are interested, the message is available here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp961022.htm

How is it that Christian people (Catholics in particular; the pope is supposed to be your earthly representative for God) just seem to "forget" this ever happened?

I think that's part of the reasoning behind this; it's just time to reset the bar.
If you have hardware or software that advertises itself as being "linux 2.6 compliant" today, it could still be up to 7 years old, and not give a damn about features added since then.

You "don't believe in fact"?
Does that mean you deny all knowledge, and are basically living a Descartian world, where the only thing you accept as truth/fact is that you exist?
So when you exit your second story flat, you're as likely to do it via the window as the door?
Or perhaps you deny the existence of the wall and just go straight through that?

I know I'm trolling right here, but I'm trying to make a point.
It seems to me, that you're asserting that if science doesn't learn the absolute truth, it is worthless.
That is wrong.

All knowledge we have, is empirical. Our view of the world, is not the actual world, but the world as perceived through our senses, which we know deceive us all the time.
We need something else than our fallible senses, perceptions and preconceptions to understand the world.
Science, and the methods surrounding that idea, is simply our best way of gaining knowledge, and has been for hundreds of years.

When new evidence comes to light, science adjusts its views. That is how knowledge evolves.
Thus, "facts" as you state (by which I think you actually mean "knowledge in general"), are not absolute, and what we "knew" earlier may be different today.
And there are differences between facts (e.g. the sum of degrees in all three corners of a triangle is 180) and theories (e.g. the theory of gravity).

Facts in themselves are not man made, they are merely discovered by us.
I don't think there are too many actual facts known, outside the sciences of math and maybe physics.
The remainder of our knowledge is based largely on theories.

Theories are merely models of how we think the world works. The difference between a scientific theory and how we use the term "theory" in everyday life, is (among other things, I'm sure) that a scientific theory is testable and disprovable. The fact that it is disprovable, gives us reason to trust its validity, because after many tests of a given theory, if it still hasn't been disproven, the likelyhood of it being true, grows. Strong, well-proven theories, become foundations for new theories, and our system of knowledge grows. Some theories are so well-proven and interconnected with other theories, that we simply accept them as facts. That does not mean they are facts.

A short, but imperfect example is Newton's theory of gravity. This theory works well for most applications, and as such is a useful model in many cases. There are, however, cases (such as when doing calculations on star-size gravity-fields), where you instead have to use Einstein's theory of relativity in order to get more accurate answers. This does not mean Newton was completely wrong, or that his theory is somehow worthless.

Yes, it's incredibly naïve to think that what we "know" today, is the absolute truth. Actually, we know that it most likely isn't the absolute truth.
Whether or not it is a good enough approximation (or model) of the truth is a rather more interesting question.
That is; can we live with the mistakes and miscalculations we undoubtedly are making every day?

For my part, the answer is unequivocally yes.
Science is a difficult concept to fathom, but in all honesty, I can't think of any better approach to learning truths.

If I may offer you some advice: You'd do well (as would many, many others) to learn a bit about the foundations of science, and the philosophy of science. The people who made the foundations of science, were largely philosophers, searching for a means to learn "the truth." It is a subject which I myself found immensely interesting and rewarding to learn about.

I very much agree with your sentiment, and sincerely hope you are right in this, but with world oil consumption still on the rise and peak oil production having occurred sometimes in the late 70's, I just can't manage to be optimistic about this.

I guarantee that we're going to stop using oil frivolously, but I fear it's not going to be because we can, but rather because we will be forced to, through the sheer economics of the situation.

I get the sense that you're being sarcastic here, but I honestly believe you're on to something.

After all, it is getting more and more expensive (both in terms of money and energy) to retrieve crude oil. Once the energy cost of producing a barrel of oil exceeds the energy we can retrieve from it, there is going to be a huge market for alternative sources for oil.
If the cost of recycling plastics back into oil becomes lower than pumping up new oil, this becomes a viable alternative.

Why is JBIs solution supposed to be a better alternative than the UN sponsored machine made by Blest (founded by Akinori Ito)?
IIRC, /. reported on this earlier this year, but no-one mentions a comparison between these solutions.

Check out the article and the video about Blests "plastic to oil" solution.

From what I can see, two of Blests major advantages, is that the equipment is so small that it's portable, and that it requires no chemical additives to do its thing.
That's going to be a huge factor when it comes to introducing this to the developing countries, which we most definitely will need to do in the long run.

It's a shame you posted that as AC, because that truly deserves a "5, Funny".
Well, perhaps with a "but slightly distasteful" addendum, but what real comedy isn't?

Not true. At least not everywhere.
The AnsaldoBreda Driverless Metro is already in operation in Copenhagen, Denmark.
It feels strange to sit in the front seat of the first car, with a completely undisturbed view of the tracks, but (at least for my part) it still feels completely safe.

Troll? Seriously?
Come on! It was a direct reference to the nature of the quote being discussed.
I would have thought the ";)" was implied.

Are you calling me stupid? Because I'm sure you're not implying that I misquoted that on purpose.

what can be attributed to stupidity.

1) Microsoft cheated by optimizing Internet Explorer 9 solely to ace the SunSpider Bechmark. To me, this seems like the best explanation.
2)Microsoft engineers working on Internet Explorer 9 could have been using the SunSpider Benchmark and unintentionally over-optimized the JavaScript engine for the SunSpider Benchmark. This seems very unlikely to me.

I see no reason why explanation number one is more likely than explanation number two.

You gotta love the page source comment for that site :)

If they can make it open enough (and dialing the censorship back to a bare minimum) so as to harness the incredible creativity that's seen in all the Minecraft videos online, then they may be onto a winning formula.
Because that game is more than a little bit addictive.