It is not illegal to feed cow parts to chickens and then feed the chicken parts back to cows.

We did not anticipate such a reasonable and eager reaction, but We appreciate it anyway.

The Emperor accepts your praise with humility.

Also, small correction, telomerase is apparently a ribonuceloprotein, not a ribozyme - it contains both RNA and a regular protein.

The study was about somatic cells, eg "body cells" that make up the specialized tissues of your body. Your offspring are formed from germ cells, found in your gonads, and consequently your offspring can only inherit DNA from your germ cells, but never your somatic cells (except in the case of cloning or other artificial techniques).

Telomeres are the "endcaps" of chromosomal DNA. Every time a chromosome is copied, a small portion at the ends of the chromosome get "left off" of the copy, which limits the number of time a cell can divide before the telomeres are consumed and functional DNA segments begin to be deleted. This (usually) prevents cells from reproducing in an uncontrolled fashion, and it's one of your body's main defenses against cancer. That's how it works in somatic cells.

Germ cells, on the other hand, can express a ribozyme called "telomerase," which can bind to the ends of a chromosome and extend the telomeres. This is why animals can reproduce indefinitely even though 99% of their cells are "mortal." (As others have pointed out, when a somatic cell begins to express telomerase it's usually cancer.)

The upshot of all of this is that shortened telomeres in your somatic cells will have no direct effect on your offspring. This particular study in no way supports the idea that environmental factors are responsible for genetic changes in offspring. Your post is therefore ill-informed even if your thesis is correct ("almost everything they teach in American public school is either wrong or simplified to the point of uselessness?").

To rectify your error, your homework assignment for tonight is to study the enzymes called "telomerase" and "reverse transcriptase," followed by learning the "central dogma of biology."

Dismissed.

Would you pay someone to build a house and then not have it inspected? You inspect a building to make sure it meets a specification, and if sustainability is part of the specification, you should hire someone to make sure of that, as well.

There is also an (informal?) mandate for all future government buildings to be more environmentally friendly. LEED certification provides a standard of proof that this goal is being met. In some cases, there may even be funding grants or other incentives to "green" builders who can provide third-party validation. And of course, paying for LEED certification helps the LEED program itself continue, which is arguably in itself a worthy goal for the government and NASA.

You don't even know how much the certification cost, or else you would have included it in your post. You're also probably not an expert on construction, commercial development, or NASA's building needs. And yet, from a position supported by no factual basis, you feel comfortable taking stabs at NASA. Shame on you and your ignorance.

But this is blatantly counterfactual and indefensible:

At most a few hundred million dollars have been spent this campaign seasons. This is an absurd amount of money, but it's not even a fraction of NASA's $18.5 billion 2011 budget. NASA spending represents only a fraction of US science investment.

He places the blame right where it belongs, on those corporations and government agencies that are too incompetent to design secure computer systems or hire those who can:

You're right: Obama has maintained way too many Bush-era policies, he has expanded others, and the remainder he has not challenged vigorously enough.

But bigotry, incompetence, criminality and right-wing authoritarianism bordering on fascism are nothing new at the FBI. It was a problem before Obama, and it will probably continue to be a problem after Obama.

The FBI is part of the executive branch. He IS their boss and that IS separation of powers.

The article makes no mention of when the training manuals were in effect. The comment in question, that the FBI could "bend or suspend the law," came from Robert Mueller, who was appointed by President Bush on September 4, 2001. The most recently-reported race-related scandal at the FBI (prior to this one) also took place during the Bush administration. Both scandals were revealed by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has been investigating misconduct at the FBI for the past few years.

How on Earth did you connect this to Obama?

...is that you do not believe homophobes would undertake a ridiculous, ill-conceived, but technically-sound plan to identify and harass gays. The Emperor does not believe you have interacted with very many homophobes.

No, but they work for organizations with names like "Lutheran World Relief" or "Baptist Global Response," and their logos invariably feature crosses or other religious insignia. And not only that, but they network together, so that all the Lutheran and Methodist and Baptist relief efforts are communicating and working together, but they don't extend nearly the same effort when interacting with secular groups, which leads to a lot of obviously Christian evangelical groups spending most of their time together. They don't make comparable efforts when working with secular groups, and will often work completely autonomously from them, sometimes with disastrous results.

The Emperor knows this firsthand, as an atheist who has helped coordinate fundraising and other efforts for Lutheran World Relief.

Of course, the only atheists you "know" are the vocal ones - that's because you'd never, ever recognize a "stealth" atheist. Get off the Internet, try to meet some real atheists (you will probably fail, due to the nature of atheism), and stop spreading derogatory lies about entire groups of people. The vast majority of atheists and agnostics will not openly bring up their beliefs, perhaps not even if pressed on the subject, because non-believers are the most persecuted and unpopular group in America, largely because of the intentional ignorance spread by people like yourself and your pastor. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE IN HIGHLY RELIGIOUS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, WHERE ATHEISM IS EVEN LESS TOLERATED THAN IT IS HERE. Openly identifying as an atheist is not only extremely improbable behavior for an atheist in any situation, but in a country that does not have a strong tradition of liberalism, it is actually dangerous.

(We have not decided to correct you because you have offended our fellow atheists; The Emperor defends the truth and integrity of all cultural groups, including religious groups whose faith we do not share. But we will not abide libels.)

That is slimly possible, but "idiot" was the polite term for someone who spreads ignorance and libel about an entire group of people. "Bigot," "monster," and "evil" may have been more appropriate, although just "ignorant" probably suffices.

You'll find plenty of atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists doing aid work in Doctors Without Borders, the Peace Corps, Amnesty International and the like. Your preacher got confused because secular charity organizations don't operate in the "name of atheism," and also apparently because he is an idiot.

Not, "How can I write flawless code?," but, "What should I be reading?" The submitter showed no prior knowledge of exploits, so it seemed reasonable to provide him with a simple introduction to the kinds of exploits he may encounter and how they can be prevented.

Interestingly, the 2010 "OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities" have all existed for a decades - a competent developer flash-frozen in 1998 and thawed out today would be able to guard against all of those flaws. That's not good evidence for your position that the question "continually needs to be asked."

Major Perl vulnerabilities still crop up on a regular basis - on average, one or two a year. When was the last time you heard of a major vulnerability in the C programming language? And what "experienced developer" can't be bothered to guard against buffer overflow exploits?

The simpler the runtime environment, the more easily it can be controlled and problems can be avoided. Simple C has one of the simplest runtime environments of any programming language, making it perfect for use in high-reliability situations.