No, the point was not that they don't like religious people. The point was that they don't like religion, and the undue influence of religious leaders.

I have noticed that there are a thousand Richard Dawkins on the internet, and all but one of them are made of straw. You have just made that a thousand and one. Slate has an article by someone who claims that Christopher Hitchens was wrong when he thought that banning religion would fix the world. Except that Hitchens never called for a ban on religion, and he certainly never thought that eliminating religion would solve all the world's problems. The number of people misrepresenting Hitchens has skyrocketed, because no one would dare do it while he was alive. And that makes me suspect that they know they are lying.

If you are going to criticize someone, could you please exert the slightest rudimentary effort to understand what they did in fact say. I'm quite certain that 99.9% of the disputes on the internet would vanish if people could just learn to listen.

And before you say that we don't understand religious people, please be informed that most of the atheists I know were devoutly religious for most of their lives before becoming atheists, and we not only understand it, we were there, which is more than I can say for most of the people slinging this nonsense. The deepest theological conversations I have ever had took place in atheist meetups, between former believers who understood theology very well--in fact, it was theology that made them atheists. And yes, this includes Muslims.

Please take the time to become likewise informed.

If the monopoly is not run for profit, it can. Executives of health care insurance companies take home bigger bonuses than bankers, and spend more money in lobbying than the oil industry. All of that was money that was supposed to be going to health care.

The U.S. spends 20% of it's GDP on health care, while most other first world nations spend about 12% and cover more people. Many European countries combine public single payer with public and private health care providers, and this seems to deliver the best results for the least money. And the 20% in the U.S. does not include the cost of medical bankruptcies, or the cost of lost opportunities caused by people who are afraid to strike out on their own and start their own business because their health care is tied to their job, and entrepreneurship means going without medical insurance until your business is a success. The American health care system strongly discourages entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile, companies that want to hire the best are saddled with the additional cost of expensive health care insurance. Even with the dollar at par, Canadians are cheaper to hire because the company doesn't have to carry this cost. And because private health care operates with small sample sets of people for a single company, actuarial tables don't work, because outliers are more frequent, so the companies demand more for insurance than average rates would suggest. The best way to bring costs down in insurance is to insure the largest number of people possible and spread the costs more evenly. This is precisely what public, single payer systems do. And they also do not result in a balkanized health care system, where your insurance may not cover you at the closest hospital, or even in the town that you happen to be in.

I'd be interested to see what Grint could do with the role, and I wouldn't count him out for the future. And no, he's not 12 anymore (making a movie at 12 doesn't make you 12 forever.) The most exciting suggestion was Tilda Swinton; she would be magnificent! And yeah, the Catherine Tate thing could work too; the Doctor is dead--oh, wait, remember that there was a hybrid...

GMO does not mean Monsanto, unless you have a large anti-GMO movement. The anti-GMO movement is the best friend that Monsanto ever had. Thanks to you guys, Monsanto will rule the agricultural world.

Here's how it works. A small company engineers a new crop that can be grown in third world conditions and dramatically increase the food supply. But they need to obtain clearance, which, thanks to the anti-GMO movement, they can't get. For that they need lots of money and lawyers. So they go broke, Then Monsanto comes along, buys the IP for a fraction of what it took to produce, and they do have enough money and lawyers. And because there is actually nothing wrong with GMO foods, they win, because unlike anti-GMO activists, the court has to listen to the facts, and Monsanto brings it to market--probably modified to be a terminator crop (by the way, Monsanto did not invent this, and many of the seeds that you buy for you garden will not produce offspring.)

So keep up your good work. Monsanto thanks you. Without you, they could not do what they do.

You're talking about monoculture. This is the rule with crops bred the old fashioned way, not the exception--the orange crop is a monoculture, and that's why they're having this problem. Bananas are having the same problem. We've actually gone through three types of bananas. There is a blight that is wiping out the current monoculture, and after that, there will be no large sweet bananas unless we engineer something that can resist it. This has absolutely nothing to do with genetic modification.

And don't forget that there is a natural source of radiation--the Sun. And all of this happens with that too.

Oh, but it's natural. That makes it much better than GMO. Yeah. So is cyanide, mercury, cancer, and bubonic plague.

By the way, genetic modification is the one source of mutation where we know what effect it has, because we are actually trying for it. Random mutation can produce anything, including produce that is highly toxic.

Agreed. What they are predicting is not a population increase in Africa, but a devastating population collapse. What Africa is currently undergoing is the baby boom, when a scattershot reproductive strategy (have lots of kids, no birth control, and hope some live) meets modern medicine. But Africa does not have the food, resources, or social capital to support this, unlike the first world during their baby boom. Emigration is not an option either; the first world has already begun to face the limitations of cultural assimilation, realizing that a large population from a culture with low social capital cannot reasonably be expected to assimilate to the norms of a country with high social capital without massive disruption. The habits and traditions just aren't there. Tribal warfare--gang violence--and zero sum economics (you get rich only by taking from others; a common idea in Europe until only three or four centuries ago, and probably less) are still the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. They're like us, but a few centuries back.

Was there reason to suspect improper practices? We've been having a lot of problems in Canada with the Conservative Party (currently the party in power.) Is this a follow up on previous known practices?

All true. Too many people have this cartoon image of those they disagree with as being comic book villains, cackling with glee while plotting their next nefarious act. What this misses is the reality of motivated reasoning, by which people convince themselves of opinions of convenience--those which are flattering, consoling, or advantageous to themselves. They don't know they're lying. Even Hitler thought he was going to heaven, not in spite of what he did, but because of it.

And here's the killer question: how do you know that you're not doing the same thing? Serious philosophers and skeptics agonize over this all the time. There is actually a method to determine this, but that would take a book, not a posting.

George W. Bush was not an evil man. In most ways, he was exemplary--smart, considerate, funny, well read, disciplined. But he was a terrible president, grossly incompetent (and as much as I like Obama, he has not impressed me yet.) Bush's trust in Donald Rumsfeld, whom Gerald Ford called the worst person he had ever met in government, is a testimony to this. Rumsfeld really was a bad man, whose ambition trumped all other considerations, but in this regard he is actually quite rare.

Bad politicians are usually not bad people. They really do believe they are doing the right thing, but they came to believe this largely because they wanted to. The idea that this might be morally suspect is actually quite new; religion is a product of the same kind of reasoning, and witness how long it has been given a free pass. A new standard of ethics is being created, and it is still in its earliest stages. Don't be fooled by the cartoon version of reality.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Eno--Music for Airports, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, or checkout Prophecy Theme from the Dune soundtrack. The rest of the Dune soundtrack, by the way, was done by Toto, who did a surprisingly good job.

Actually, don't give up on music quite yet. Music with lyrics will distract you--Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, or Lou Reed would take all of your attention. But a lot of techno can actually function as white noise (which is why a lot of coders in a busy office swear by it)--the beat gives you an adrenaline boost while the content vanishes. Bach and other forms of baroque music can also serve the same function; it fades into the background but has a calming effect, and many people consider it the sound of ordered thought.

Well spotted. Because it is obviously the role of the state to enforce obsolete business models. Especially when the ruling party is paid by the people who are dependent upon them. No bias at all there. Nothing to see here. Move along.

It sounds like most of the controls are wired controllers--that is, if the controller electronics or computer have become faulty, you no longer have a way to control the car. It's a bit like playing a game and having your controller stop responding while your character goes running into a room full of bosses, only in this case, you're the character. This is a lot more common in cars today that most of us are aware; there are many cars out there that have millions of lines of code designed to prevent you from making a catastrophic mistake, but who knows what can happen if this goes wrong. The steering seems to be the only thing that was still available in this case.

I suspect that the reason that Europe has a large Muslim population is the same as the reason that America has a large Mexican population: cheap labor. That and colonial ties to their countries of origin (this is certainly the case of France and Algeria, and the U.K. and Pakistan, India, and much of the Middle East) , as well as the fact that they are just much closer to the Middle East than we are.

Radical Islam in Europe seems to be the new punk for disaffected Muslim youth; their parents had enough of that crap back home, which is why they moved. What better way for a surly teenager to annoy his parents than to hang a bin Laden poster on his wall. Kind of like Che in the 60's (who was, by the way, every bit as batshit crazy as bin Laden, if not more so.) This will pass. Eventually, standing on the sidelines and watching life pass you by loses its charm.

If the European left seems crazy, a recent history of genocide will tend to push the needle into the red in any conversation about immigrants, outsiders, or other races and cultures. As for Muslims voting socialist, that doesn't seem likely, as socialists tend to be atheistic. Canada's recent turn to the right is largely attributed to an influx of immigrants who find the right's regard for religions more appealing. It's more likely that poor Muslim immigrants in Europe don't vote at all.

There seems to be a misconception that religion is separate from politics, and that the involvement of religion in politics is somehow an aberration. This is a belief that is based upon the very recent and historically brief period in which many Western countries have observed this separation. This period now seems to be coming to an end, by the way, with blasphemy laws making a major comeback, within and outside of the West.

But unless a religion specifically prohibits political involvement (and very few do), it is not only true to say that religion is political, but that religion is politics. Expressing disappointment that it is used by unscrupulous people as a tool of political and social control is a bit like being shocked and surprised that a handgun can be used to shoot someone. That is what it is for. All ideologies (and religions are ideologies) are morally neutral; they can be used for good or evil. They are simply tools. It hardly matters that the Soviet or Maoist regimes were not, strictly speaking, true Communist states. Communism is still vilified, and quite rightly so. It hardly matters whether the rulers are true believers or not. As always, religion is considered by the people to be true, by the wise to be false, and by the rulers to be useful--useful because it cuts through all debate with the claim "God says so!", and you can't refute this because God isn't taking his calls. It leaves the rulers free to do as they please, and what psychopath would not drool at such an opportunity? Don't worry about an atheist like Richard Dawkins. He's honest. Worry about an atheist like Karl Rove, who says in public that he is not fortunate enough to be a man of faith, calls believers "the crazies" in private, but can still deliver the evangelical right to any candidate for a price.

As for Constantine, he believed whatever was convenient, put the symbol of Apollo on his shield beside that of Christ to hedge his bets on who the people of Rome would support, and presided over the Council of Nicea to make damn sure that the religion would come out to his liking and benefit. He certainly had little use for its tenets, beyond killing anyone who disagreed with him, which was a practice he was already long accustomed to.