I take it you're happy with the way government agencies are currently running? And with the political leadership we've had these past, oh, however back you wish to go? Well, congratulations on being one of the few. Pretty much 90% of the country disapproves of congress, and just about every government agency you can grant initials to, or at least how they're performing their job.

What does DARPA have to do with the NSF?

Interesting...As a physicist, I attack string theory.

My main problem is it's method of development. Unlike most of the rest of the theories in the history of physics, string theory seems to be developed with a preconceived notion about what the solution is. If you look at the rest of the physics world, the theories were developed after data came in and partially upset the previous theory, and they were developed in accordance with the new data.

While I think that the birthers are silly, I feel bound by honesty to point out that your article (which I followed for amusement) explains that Hawaii isn't honoring requests because they get too many -- but also that only the State Health Director of Hawaii has made claims to actually having seen it.

I realize a majority of Muslims are not violent. My problem with the Muslim community as a whole is that while Christians come out and protest when violence is committed in their name (such as with Abortion doctor killings), and make it known that such behavior is NOT acceptable behavior to most of them, the Muslim community very rarely condemns the violent behavior that comes from their ranks. Instead, they almost always deflect away, usually blaming Israel. Hamas and Fatah both atrociously use terrorism, human shields, and other non-acceptable behaviors as they fight, but the behavior also extends to the radical sexism Muslim countries display so frequently: honor killings, locking women and girls into burning buildings because they're not completely covered, caning women for sexual immorality because four male witnesses can't step forward to verify that it was rape...it's just awful.

I'm not saying the majority of Muslims explicitly support these behaviors, but the fact that cartoons about Allah and Mohammed are able to get so many of them protesting and even rioting because they see it as offensive and reflecting badly on Islam, while these disgusting sex crimes, war crimes, and absolutely unjustifiable terrorist behaviors committed by other Muslims in the name of their religion can occur without mention is absurdly hypocritical and shows at least a tacit willingness to look the other way for so many of these behaviors.

Again, I'm not claiming Christianity wasn't as violent as anything else during the middle ages, and even more violent than many - and it probably is more of a statement about human nature than anything else. And I'm not trying to say that Christianity is superior to the other religions. My only point here is that while pretty much all of the other religions grew up in the past couple hundred years and figured out how to be tolerant of other cultures and religions, Muslims are still massacring each other and everyone else around the world, launching wars of religious conquest, enslaving, raping, and pillaging throughout Africa and southeast Asia, and in general not acting too different than they did throughout the whole middle ages. And very few Muslim organizations actually stand up and condemn so many of these atrocities that are being committed, in the name of their religion - while just about every other religion condemns the few instances of bad apples they get in their mix.

Sure, if the SHTF maybe some of the other religions would revert to more thuggish behavior, but right now Islam is the only religion I see taking hits out on people, and I just find it absolutely retarded when people try and spout politically correct moral equivalency crap about how because a handful of abortion doctors were murdered and Christianity waged religious wars a thousand years ago it's just as bad. It's utter bullcrap, and I'll call it when I see it. I would do the same if I saw someone say similar about Buddhism or Hinduism, but they're not the politically correct religion to bash.

It's true that Muslims had a higher level of civilization during the middle ages. That doesn't mean they were peaceful though - Eastern Europe, Moorish Spain, their history is all about Muslim conquest after the Roman Empire fell, much of that conquest during the middle ages.

Oh, and as far as the child molesting: I agree that the Catholic church has done a bit of coverup with their scandals - but I doubt any more than any other organization. In fact, the rate of child abuse is lower for Catholic priests than most other professions that work with children - the media just loves a scandal. Do you know how many more teachers have committed statutory rape than priests, and are STILL KEPT ON PAYROLL!!!? Look up "rubber rooms" sometime.

At one time, Christianity was pretty brutal, medieval, and savage. I'll admit it. But Islam never left that stage of development. When was the last Christian mob assembled for violence? Find me one incident in the past 200 years. How many times have artists "bravely" done things like submerge a crucifix in piss in the past 100 years, especially?

Now look at all the attacks committed in the name of Islam every day, around the world. All the honor killings, all the terrorist bombings, all the antisemitic attacks and torture. Trying to even compare the two is laughable.

Ah, I knew someone would bring up Abortion as proof that Christianity was just as violent as Islam.

There's been what, 10 abortion killings, ever? That's so clearly proof that Christians are just as much a threat as the same religion that's exiled Jews from their lands, launched worldwide terrorist guerrilla wars of conquest against practically every other religion, in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Sudan...the same religion that riots through France and Belgium torching cars, demands Sharia law trump all national laws and customs, and rarely condemns their own honor killings and terrorism against their own members (see Hamas vs. Fatah, Sunni vs. Shiite).

Christians, like practically every other adult religion regularly condemn any extremists. For every abortion killing numerous public groups come out and condemn the killer.

Next time you want to try and make a moral equivalence argument, try looking at the facts.

I think the implications of a national ID entirely depend on implementation. National IDs could be very scary indeed if, for example, they directly tied things like your tax history to the card. On the other hand, there are ways to do national IDs that would be an absolute boon to businesses, privacy, security, and personal liberty. Some time ago I submitted a proposal to ANSI to develop an ID standard. If national IDs were implemented as a set of requirements to a standard, than private issuers (think Credit Card issuers, for example) could compete with each other developing as secure and convenient of cards as possible. Furthermore, you could require those companies to store all personal data, and require that merchants (or whoever else needs to access your data, such as hospitals accessing your medical records) not store the data, and be verified and audited for security before they access it. This would in fact give citizens control over their own personal data, and provide a known level of security around everything.

My proposal is here, in pdf form.

Rare earth elements, yes. Oil, no. Oil is a complex molecular soup, yes, but made from fairly common elements - and we can in fact produce it ourselves: http://www.changingworldtech.com/ Oil is therefore not a finite resource, which is one more reason why continuing to be the only major country that doesn't try and develop its own resources, the Bakken reserves, ANWR, the Gulf deposits, and all of the other areas where we could be producing oil on our own land (and certainly cleaner than most other countries drilling processes), is purely idiotic, and religiously environmentalist.

Right. That's why the solar scientists managed to successfully predict the temperatures we've been seeing, both the warmer temperatures from several years ago, as well as the cooler temperatures of this year and last year. You're following the same line of denial as the Democrats and media keep pushing about the Republicans and their "lack" of health care plans - you just deny that such a thing exists and get like minded people to go along with you.

I never said regulation wasn't necessary - however, in the absence of government regulation, many industries are incredibly good at forming their own regulating organizations.

The Soviet Union managed to have economic growth rates exceeding the U.S. only by manipulating the numbers, overproducing specific items that it knew would be measured, for instance. As for Germany, they managed to have better growth than the U.S. prior to the war, but that's really comparing apples to apples - as our economic policies under FDR honestly weren't too different.

I think you're missing the point of the above commentator, or somewhat superimposing your own. Just as with the technology, there's a serious amount of handwaving that goes on from the writers regarding the economic functions of the star trek universe. Since scarcity does exist in the Star trek universe (not everyone has their own planet, starship, and holodeck yet), it should be dealt with. Admittedly much of the drama of star trek is concerning things that have little to do with anything really economic, and as Star Fleet is a military organization it can leave certain things behind the scenes just as many of our present and past military movies do - but just as with the technology, it would be nice if there was a little less handwaving and a little more thought. And by the way, study history. Capitalism IS teh best. Pretty much every totalitarian ideology has had some aspect of socialism at it's core, just because it can't stand to leave the economy alone - and every implementation of socialism has involved meddling in plenty of non-economic affairs, because the politicians can't resist. And also, there are plenty of capitalists who have motives that are entirely non-economic, but who realize that the more free our markets are, the easier it is to implement just about any other socially magnanimous change they strive for.