FTFA:
"The problem, Koster says, is that the Science Café venue was not the right format for a complicated and controversial topic, because events are only an hour long and the Café only has small screens."

And yet, later in the article:
"The Science Café has addressed climate change in its Café programs as well. “This is by no means a new issue,” Koster says."

So, which is it?

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/723/

Yes, I too have RTFA, and I know they explain things in there.

The problem is that it's the headlines that get republished and read everywhere, thus reiterating the fallacy that Interpol makes arrests.
This /. story is just one example of how people rewrite the heading and get the wrong idea.

Except, of course, the headline states: "Interpol Arrests 25 Suspected Anonymous Hackers"

I know that headlines need to be short, to the point etc, but they could have rephrased it with "Interpol has 25 Suspected Anonymous Hackers Arrested", and it would be accurate.

You want a car analogy? Here, Samknows and mlab have already made one for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnIVMfBP4So

Samknows is one of the partners in this project.

Alternative attack vector: In a constituency wherein a majority statistically favors your opposition, just use a pen or whatever, to damage the "void if broken" seals. Presto; you've now cast doubt on the integrity of the votes in that ballot.

Well, sure, if you want. I don't really see any problem with you calling those examples art, but then you have to be prepared to have their artistic value judged as such. There are many ways to judge artistic value, and I'm sure I'm not qualified to give any sort of universal view, but here's my take on it:

Originality counts for quite a lot, and your first two examples, which I guess we could call performance art and/or shock art, pretty clearly fall through here. The installation "lab mice on roof" (or whatever title you want to use) on the other hand, is something a bit more special.

Secondly, most art starts with an artist wanting to communicate something; that which we would call the artists message and intent. Your first two examples carry the incredibly unoriginal message "fuck you" or "I'm a rebel", which isn't really anything new or interesting. But again, there's "lab mice on roof", which certainly has more impact, although it's hard to judge what the actual message you were trying to convey there was. Especially without seeing the installation itself. It's always interesting (but not always necessary) to hear the artists own reflections on message and intent, so please chime in.

The drawback is that people tend to assign value to art, relative to what the artist has been known to produce earlier, which means that your rooftop installation would be judged with that in mind, and probably not come out with a lot of praise.

TL;DR: Yeah, you could call yourself an artist, but your art examples are mostly crap.

But that's just it. You are discussing it here, does that not prove that it has evoked an intellectual response from you?

I know the definition I quoted is incredibly wide; it's basically a catch-all, but it's the best definition I've found for a concept as vague as art.

I agree with that, but coming up with a definition of art which fulfills both criteria, has proven to be beyond difficult. Especially considering that art is also about breaking the rules.

When you study art, you learn what the rules to making art are. You then learn about how and when to break these rules and expectations, in order to effect different responses. The truly great artists of our history have been pioneers in both expression and symbolism.

A definition that is narrow enough to only cover what we today call art, will not be wide enough to cover the truly creative products of tomorrow.

In a word, yes. It can certainly be viewed and interpreted as art.
As can almost anything, which makes the whole definition of art incredibly difficult ... and somewhat pointless.

In case this wasn't what you were alluding to, here's Artist's shit.

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.