There's something unnerving, to me, about a group of people SO solidified in their belief that this is not just the best thing to do, but the RIGHT thing to do

What did that for you? The last Eight years? Extra-legal renditions. Tacit approval of torture? "Find me a way to argue that this is legal" rather than obeying the golden rule?

Well, to be fair, he also invoked Superman: "...we are Americans, united not by race, or religion, or blood, but to our commitment to freedom, and justice for all."

That is the closer to last phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance. One word is different, "Liberty" is swapped for "Freedom". You didn't pay much attention in grammar school or you're not a US citizen. As the AC says, Superman's line is "...Truth, Justice, and the American way".

when we say "hey, it's heavier than we thought" we probably don't mean we simply upped the gravity field

Actually, it does. That's where the spinning faster bit comes in.

Despite what scientists originally thought, these holes allow 20 times the normal amount of solar particles through when they are facing away from the sun. This being opposite from what the scientists had originally speculated.

Apparently submitted by the department of redundancy department apparently, the problem is that's not what the article actually says.

Scientists once believed that the particles entered when the sun's magnetic field was aligned opposite to that of the Earth's. But findings presented at the meeting show that 20 times more solar particles enter the Earth's magnetic field when it is aligned in the same direction as the sun's magnetic field.

It the alignment of the fields North-to-South being discussed and nightside effects are not explicitly discussed. Some clarification by a physicist would seem in order.

And after reading a paper about how most arthropods may actually hybrids between two or more original animals, I completely gave up on that idea. Some people think that an insect and its larvae were originally two separate animals. So on which branch of the tree do you place the hybrid ?

Are you sure you parsed that correctly? "Some people originally believed that an insect and its larvae were two separate animals" and "some people think that an insect and its larvae were originally two separate animals" are two non-equivalent statements. I do know that there have been some species where the adults were so morphologically distinct and so divergent in lifestyle and habitat from the larvae that the connection had never been made between the two until recently. What exactly would be the mechanism for two species to glom together such that one becomes the progenitor for the other?

I program banking systems for a living.

It's cute that you think "electronics simply don't do [...] accountability." Believe me, I'd be out a job real fast if they didn't.

The bottom line is, this was handled really, really poorly

Or really, really well...

no one liked the potential impacts of a launch failure.

The fact is, no one like(d/s) the impacts of a launch success. Do your own search for the reality.