No one. No one should decide when another person's life should end, and that includes our own decisions about our own life. Adams is one of those people who thinks that life should always be happy, joyful, bountiful, and overflowing with comforts. Well, Mr. Adams, there is suffering in this world. There always has been and there always will be but we are never allowed to end someone's life to relive their suffering or our suffering, be it psychological, physical, financial, or emotional. Never. In the case of your dad, you wanted to end his life to relieve your suffering. Yes, it's hard to watch your loved one suffer. Yes, you are suffering too as a consequence. But no, your job is not to end a life but rather it is to do what you are able to do to relieve their suffering and to endure your own suffering with no complaint.

Okay, flying drones are possible. Flying drones with power generation methods such as solar cells on board are possible. Flying drones that can fly for weeks or months through the high atmosphere are perhaps possible with some technology development. Flying drones that can fly for months through the high atmosphere and generate a significant quantity of excess power might be possible some day with significant technology development in solar cell or wind turbine efficiency. But...but...but...transmitting that power 'wirelessly' to a ground station with any sort of reasonable efficiency is definitely NOT possible with any technology currently known, such as microwaves or lasers. To do that would take some sort of breakthrough insight into a completely new technology such as, for example, quantum energy exchange between coupled atomic reservoirs, localized gravity field modulation, or, more ambitiously, time progression distortion in a localized electrical transmission field. But...the article says they will have a working prototype in one year after receiving the modest quantity of startup funding. This entire project sounds like a scam to bilk investors akin to running cars on water as a fuel or, perhaps, a CIA cover story for some sort of screwy long-term drone surveillance scheme, to name just two possibilities. In any event, the story as presented is complete and utter bullshit.

St. Peter's square is the site of the old "Circus of Nero" chariot racing track. The roman's (emperor Nero) martyred St. Peter along the "spine" of the old chariot racing track in 67 as entertainment for the chariot race attendees and then buried the body in a little cemetery located next to the track (which was handily located to clear out the victim(s) from the night before to prepare for the new day's activity.) St. Peter was held in high esteem by the early Christians of that time and they secretly excavated near his burial site in order to construct a memorial shrine, to have a place for Christian worship, and to allow other Christians of the time to be buried near St. Peter as they were martyred. As the centuries passed, and Christians were no longer persecuted, churches were built over the site of St. Peter's burial, leading to the newest one, the present St. Peter's basilica which was constructed approximately 400 years ago. St. Peter's grave is located directly under what is now the altar.

The comments here are about the difficulty, the expense, the problems with user acceptance, etc. All of those imply that this sort of change is somehow and optional thing that they can choose to do...or not. In actuality, however, this change is both mandatory and inevitable...and only a matter of time. Maybe next year, maybe in 5 years, or maybe in 10 years but every single enterprise will eventually be forced to make this switch as Microsoft evolves and changes ('implodes' is the word that comes to mind) as it tries to maintain growth and earnings while trying to continue selling the same thing to the same places that already have purchased more than they will ever need.

Imagining that all life must have originated from Earth is an amazingly earth-centric point of view that is similar to the idea in the middle ages that all planets must revolve around the Earth. Obviously, if life can travel from Earth to Europa, it can also travel from Europa to Earth...or from planets outside of our solar system entirely. Moreover, the fossil record shows the presence of life on a very early Earth, leaving far too little time for life to form in primordial Earth oceans under any sort of process currently envisioned. Not only is pan-spermia possible, it is currently the most likely explanation for the source of life on Earth. The real question is 'where did life originate in the universe?'

"As it stands, the IR absorption by CO2 seems pretty well understood."

If, by this, you are referring to the blocking of IR heat radiation into space by CO2 molecules, then no, it (the atmospheric heat transfer process) is not well understood, or even understood. CO2 absorbs only a very narrow and specific wavelength. THAT is understood. Moreover, a CO2 molecule that has absorbed a photon, immediately either re-radiates the heat or loses it via a collision with one of its neighboring molecules which, in the earth's atmosphere, are going to be O2 or N2 molecules. Those molecules, in turn, re-radiate the heat into space. The heat does not 'stay' in the atmosphere but is constantly re-radiated into space. The atmosphere is not a heat storage reservoir. That is NOT understood.

"Also I assume that you don't think volcanoes in Antarctica aren't causing melting in the Artic as well, that's a pretty big clue that they're not the main cause.

Typical global warming 'reasoning.'

"Judith Lean, a climate and solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, said if we’re headed towards a Maunder Minimum-type event, its arrival is hardly imminent."

She knows that how? Oh, yeah, we find out in the next paragraph: "...if solar activity is indeed in decline it will, I suppose, take a few centuries to reach a Maunder Minimum type event.”

This scientist confidently expresses her supposition in the Washingto Post to support the 'consensus' that there will be no mini ice age. If these people wanted to have even a smidgeon of credibility regarding climate prediction (itself a questionable proposition), they would be running their computer climate models with a decreasing solar output and reporting the results for different scenarios rather than stating their suppositions about the future of the sun's output (for which they obviously, like the rest of us, have no idea what will happen.) The truth is that IF solar output is indeed declining, the earth's climate is going to dramatically cool...and there is nothing that we can do about it other than prepare. That has happened in the past and it will happen in the future and it may be happening now. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 will have a negligible effect on such a cooling trend...and that's what the global cooling deniers don't want to say.

Humans (and other vertebratans) have been feeding on mollusca denizens for centuries...and they are getting pissed off about it. Snails, clams, octopus, squid, abalone, and geoducks...we've had our fill and then some. Not to mention the unspeakable things humans routinely do to slugs. Molluscans have had enough of our abuse and they are coming after us.

The article makes it sound as if the crows are themselves acquiring genetic modifications giving them resistance to antibiotic compounds. However, it is the bacteria inhabiting the crows intestine that have acquired the antibiotic resistance genes, not the crows themselves. The article also suggests that antibiotics dispensed in hospitals are somehow a major factor when, in fact, the quantity of antibiotics dispensed in factory farms surpasses the quantity dispensed for human medical needs by orders of magnitude. If antibiotic resistance leads to increased human mortality, blame the steak on your plate, not the poor fellow down the street having surgery at the hospital.

Childs was basically attempting to extort expensive employment privileges (job security, work assignments, working hours, co-worker assignments, physical access) from the City of San Francisco by concealing critical information if they didn't cooperate. The sentence for extortion is usually longer than two years so Childs should have gotten a longer sentence. The legal brief is a very sad read when you consider all of the bright people (both legal and technical) who have spent thousands of hours dealing with the machinations of one crooked jerk. The rest of the world must be amazed at the utter waste of talented people who could be employed in more useful activities.

Microsoft still licenses their software like it's 1982 and they are the toll collector on progress. You buy a copy of their newest [whatever] program and pay them the fee that they set. They never look at what they provide and ask themselves 'are we providing value equivalent to what we are collecting in tolls?' Auto companies, in contrast, have to do that with absolutely every thing that they provide since cars are very complex performance-driven devices that are competitively mass-produced and consequently sell for little money relative to their high cost of manufacture. Moreover, cars must be both reliable and supported/maintained for 20 years after they are sold. All of these are foreign concepts to Microsoft which can't see any reason why they should not just release V x.x of their 'car OS' and sell it to manufacturers who would eagerly link everything to it. The manufacturer's, though, need to have control over the source code for critical updates, control over the licensing and distribution, and control over the overall structure and software design. Manufacturer's have been putting software in cars for over 20 years and they could never settle for Microsoft's way of doing things...so turning to OSS is inevitable for them.

"Recorded History" on arctic ice extent is pretty damn short. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) used to list something they called the '1979-2001' average and then showed that, based on that, the current ice extent was pathetically low. Lately, they have switched to showing the '1981-2010' average because the early years of satellite measurements have been found to be wildly inaccurate. Better quality data has only been available since 2002 and, based on that, 2013 is the 6th highest ice extent minimum on record.

"There are many many other examples of bad "design" in humans and other animals that just wouldn't be there if we really were intelligently designed."

By "intelligent design" you seem to be saying 'perfect design.' Perfect design would imply a perfect world without disease, deformity, and dysfunction which would be a world that Jesus did not seek during his time here. For example, Jesus healed many ill people but only as an illustrative example of the power of God and obviously not with the intent to create perfection and eliminate all human suffering. Why not? Moreover, those sick people that were healed ultimately aged, became ill, and died as they are obviously no longer with us today. Jesus pointed to hungry people lacking food and asked for others to share with them but he did not do a 'shazam' and create an abundance of food for all people for all time. Apparently, if this world is God's creation, then all are supposed to suffer and die in it and all have a choice to make...either with God or not. Of course, if you choose 'without' you will still suffer and die. But...where would the choice for us be if there was nothing but perfection, harmony, and abundance?

"The most common form of reproduction in the world is asexual."

No, it is not. Almost all mammals (which is what humans are) reproduce sexually. Among the 'higher animals' that we were discussing, most reproduce sexually, for unknown reasons. It could be argued that sexual reproduction is the means by which a Creator created both us and the biblical animals upon which scripture refers to for for food, transportation, comfort, fear, etc. OTOH, all prokaryotes reproduce asexually but we were not talking about 'all life forms.'