In what world do you live where your cheapo home projector is the equivalent to that required in a drive-in?

"post-secondary" should read "post-translational"
I should really proof read

That's nice, unfortunately the rate limiting step isn't processing time or RAM or the cost of sequencing. The rate limiting step is our understanding of neurobiology and developmental biology. Even PZ misses some of the complexity. One of the really difficult problems is figuring out all of the electrophysiology of the brain (spike timing dependent plasticity...of every area, all of the electrotonic structures and how they're modulated and how that and post-secondary modifications muck with everything, etc.). It'll be 10 years before the Blue Brain Project is really show something super cool in this regard, and that's a single cortical column of a mouse brain...
Kurzweil doesn't even know enough to understand what would actually be required to do what he's saying.

Then maybe you shouldn't have posted.

So you're a conspiracy theorist. Do you also believe that the government is covering up the evidence for alien abductions and the the UN is secretly plotting to take over the US? What about water fluoridation, is that a secret plot by the communists to implement mind control or steal our "precious bodily fluids?" All of those conspiracy theorist beliefs are equally absurd.

Right, because when I want accurate and timely medical information the first thing that comes to my mind is "Hey, I'll see what a bunch of random non-experts on Youtube have to say." If you want to actually learn something useful, try searching on pubmed. You can also read the Cochrane Reviews on the subject if you want the predigested non-definitive summary (being a scientist and not a clinician, I prefer the original literature to the reviews, but of course I'm not busy seeing patients).

Sheesh, the H1N1 vaccine is no different from every seasonal flu vaccine ever made, with the exception of this one likely being more accurately targeted (and thus having higher efficacy). We've been using these things for decades, and you can search pubmed to see studies looking at their safety and efficacy.

You can also search for timecube to learn the true theory of everything. Try searching the actual literature and see what science finds. You do remember science right? Its the thing that gave us the internet, drastically increased our lifespans and largely eradicated previous scourges like polio and measles. Funny how useful that science thing has turned out to be...

I can partly answer that. Papers are only ever retracted when there is near absolute proof of fraud (and there are usually lots of lawsuits surrounding them at the time). Essentially, everyone waits as long as possible to try and cover their butts legally. The GMC ruling gave the Lancet cover to fully retract the paper without getting slapped with a lawsuit (the absurdity of British laws surrounding libel and slander is evidenced by the whole Simon Singh kerfuffle). I agree that this is a wholly unsurprising occurrence. 10 or so of the coauthors already retracted the findings, which was the only way they could salvage their careers. I know Wakefield will never retract, but of course when you're a paid shill that's unsurprising.

The "meat broth" they speak of is DMEM or something like it. Most of that you could purify from plants or bacteria or any other such source. The tough thing is that, currently, you usually supplement the DMEM with some source of serum (horse or bovine) and perhaps chicken egg extract. So, depending on what's needed, you might be able to produce meat using fewer resources and, therefore, more cheaply.

Those patients have been studied and the variant in them (CCR5delta32) is different from this pseudogene. Work related to CCR5delta32 is ongoing.

Yeah, those darn elitists with their moving from lower to middle class and getting scholarships so they can attend better colleges consequently thinking they might have a better understanding of issues revolving around discrimination and poverty.

It's what he thinks someone might possibly someday do (this all seems to be premised on something Geithner said as a brief aside). Must be a slow news day.

To give more examples, a lot of the transgenic mice used in disease research have human genes inserted into them. There are also many stable hybrid cell lines that are used daily in research (usually mouse/human hybrids). Bills like this are created by people who obviously have no clue what they're talking about.

My thoughts exactly. Having played in band I'm annoyed when I hear the "sizzle" sound that low-quality mp3s produce from cymbal sounds. But if I didn't have that frame of reference then I probably wouldn't care.

Businesses spend a lot on health care. By increasing the efficiency of the medical profession we should be able to decrease costs so businesses (and individuals to an increasingly greater extent) can allocate their resources to other matters (such as reinvestment). Granted, there are a number of assumptions in that, but that's at least on of the the reasons for putting this in the stimulus bill.

You might try the term personhood. Soul has a lot of baggage attached to it and other commonly understood connotations. As you noted, sentience isn't the bar anyone actually uses (infants wouldn't pass). Perception changes throughout development critical periods and consciousness probably has similar problems (though I agree with you that it's by far the best word you proposed). Personhood contains most of the same concepts as consciousness but lacks the less desirable connotations (the joys of making up words).

Anyway, your overarching point about the subjectivity of assigning consciousness/personhood/whatever to such things stands (I wouldn't make such an assignment to an embryo but that's just as subjectively correct a position as someone who would).

This is only true if you believe that personhood happens at the moment of conception. Otherwise, there's no moral problem with this. These embryos wouldn't be grown until "birth" (the meaning of which sort of fails in this discussion)...likely not even remotely close.