Prohibitive corrosion is a common misconception about this type of reactor. The U.S. built an experimental MSR in the 60's and ran it for 5 years. According to the results section of the wikipedia article about the experiment, the corrosion was negligible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Results

I highly recommend Terry Pratchett's 2011 documentary "Choosing to Die." You may watch the full film on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZnfC-V1SY I found the documentary extremely informative and moving.

I have to admit that the first time I read your description of God, I had no idea what you were talking about. I did not recognize it as a description of God, and for that I apologize. I just googled "existentiating definition" and came up with nothing, so all I can do is try to infer your meaning. It sounds like you are making the argument that existence cannot continue existing without something else causing it to exist. I do not see this as a self-evident truth, nor do I see any justification for it in what you wrote. Quite honestly, it comes across as completely insane to me. I'm getting confused just trying to read it. We can agree that there are things that exist. I do not know why you assert that without God, things that currently exist would instantly degrade to nothingness. That seems like a pretty big leap of logic to me. I just realized that I'm trying to debate religion on the internet, which I already knew to be completely pointless. No matter how far we go with this, you will continue obfuscate and make excuses for the preposterous assertions of religions. You may have the last word if it makes you more comfortable in your insanity. I'm done here.

I find it ironic that your defense against my claims that your god doesn't exist is to call my depiction of your god a "straw man." Of coarse it's a straw man. We're talking about something that doesn't exist. Something that doesn't exist is almost the definition of a straw man.

Technically, a straw man argument is one based on a false representation of the opponent's claims. The straw man in the term "straw man argument" is an analogy of a manufactured image, an illusion, a figment, a lie, a false premise. I find it a bit too easy to apply the claim of "straw man argument" when the original discussion is about an actual straw man, a figment of humanity's collective imagination, in this case God. I get the sense that you have become comfortable using the term "straw man argument" as your default defense against any and all claims that God does not exist. It is easy for you to claim that any representation of god that you do not like is just a "straw man" because God is an amorphous concept open to broad interpretation.

I will also note that in your defense, you made no attempt to provide your own description of God. It would be predictable if your next move were to cop-out and say that God is beyond our feeble human understanding, and as such, you are are excused from providing a plausible description of him.

Allow me to clarify the intent of my original "invisible man in the sky" comment. I did not mean to imply that any religious adult in the modern world would describe their god this way (though as a child, this is exactly the image of god I often had). I used this absurd description to illustrate how absurd the idea of a god is to me as an adult. Contradictions abound in the descriptions of what God is. As somebody pointed out above, the Bible does claim that god made us in his own image. It stands to reason then that goes does have an image, and that image is observable from some real place. We are also told that he is everywhere and in everything and invisible. We are told that Heaven and Hell are real places that people go when they die. As children we believe Heaven to be above the sky and Hell to be below the earth. These images are inescapable because people presumably believed this to be true at some point. Modern man knows there is nowhere left in either the ground nor the sky for such places to hide, so the religious mind has moved them to parallel universes, alternate planes, and other unobservable sanctuaries of the mind. We are told that he controls every detail of everything and that he is good and just and perfect. However, we observe a very imperfect world full of injustice and imperfections. The religious mind excuses these contradictions as "tests of faith." This concept makes absolutely no sense to me, and the more I think about it, the more contemptuous this conceptual God becomes. In summary, if you disagree with my deliberately absurd description of your God as an "invisible man in the sky," then by all means, present a physical description of him that is any less absurd. Hold on a moment, let me get my popcorn.... Okay, you may proceed.

What does Atheism have to do with any of this? Because I don't believe there's an invisible man in the sky means I don't have any morals?

If you can contain the mess to your under-garment, then you can salvage the day by making it to the restroom and discarding your under-garments. Otherwise, it's time to leave for the day, but not before grabbing some paper towels to place over the seat of your car. For your sake, I hope you don't use public transportation to get to work.

Better yet, what if Jesus told Romney that God prefers the name Allah? Better yet, what if Jesus told Romney that God does not exist? Causality problems with that last scenario aside, that might just be a problem for Romney's base.

Jesus would be a bad choice for a Romney running mate. Romney would believe it was his third coming, and that could seriously alienate the conservative Christian vote.

My vote just went from "None" to "Under 100" because I just checked in a 2 character change. Changed + to * in two places. Time to call it a day.

My Paradigm speakers sound pretty damn good. With the prices they charge, they have plenty of money to put into R&D. Well worth the price, IMO.

"My mother could actually use this" To be fair, his mother is Kevin Mitnick

One does not simply walk into Metaphor.

I can't wait to live at the exhaust port of power plant where I'm continually blasted by hot air in an already scorching hot neighborhood in the middle of nowhere where I also get to add a massive vertical component to my daily commute!

-1 parent. The exhaust air at the top of the tower is going to keep rising because it will still be hotter than the ambient air. The cold air that falls to offset the rising mass is called the atmosphere. It's big, it's going to be moving slower than the air you just used to spin a turbine, and it's not cost effective to try to make electricity from it until it enters the greenhouse, gets heated, and funnels into the turbines that are already in the design (the one place where air is moving fast in the whole design.