> “If this is your God, he’s not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he’s so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He’s a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being.” — Spock, The God Thing, by Gene Roddenberry

This quote was recently making the rounds on Facebook. It’s taken from a newly discovered script, what The Complete Star Trek Library is calling “Gene Roddenberry’s Last Star Trek Novel.” Roddenberry was an ardent atheist and it appears he was constantly working his critique of religion into the series. The God Thing is a testimony to Roddenberry’s atheistic aims.

http://mikeduran.com/2012/08/star-treks-loopy-deity/

> “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

> It's like when atheists are dumb enough to treat all Christians alike, or Muslims, ...

No it's not like that at all.

When you join an organization that espouses certain values, then you must agree with those values. Otherwise why would you join?

For example, if somebody joins the KKK, it would hardly be wrong to think that person is a racist. And if somebody joined NAMBLA, then it is fair to believe that person believes it is okay to molest children.

Atheists have no set ideology. For that matter, theists may not either - unless they belong to some organization that has some specified sort of ideology.

But if you are Christian, Muslim, whatever; then you are claiming that you ascribe to those values.

> And of course the excesses of the church pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of Stalin and Mao

Which is "the church?" All religions? Christianity? Catholicism?

Let's remember the Nazis were very Christian, and the holocaust would not have happened without Christianity.

Christianity was also used to justify slavery, and witch burning, among other things.

I have read that throughout Islamic history, about 270 million people were killed for the cause of Islam.

Furthermore, Stalin, and Mao; were not motivated by any sort atheist ideology. If there is such a thing as "atheist ideology."

> The problem is even atheists still feel a need to believe in *something*

Nope.

> with varying details of what they consider "good".

By that you mean: bigotry, misogyny, blood sacrifice, slavery, and war. Also severe punishment for free speech, not worshiping as told. And of course, must give loads of money to those humans who claim to have a direct connection to "god." Finally, do not use reason, do not think critically, just accept everything on faith - that is the ultimate good.

From the article:

> "To which one might reply: Science is all those things. Between holocausts!"

My understanding is: without religion, there would have been no holocaust.

German Christians hated Jews. Hitler was a product of his strongly Christian upbringing. At the time, in Germany, Jew hatred was taught in public schools.

Why on earth would you blame science, and not religion, for the holocaust?

They don't collect the gaseous hydrogen in the electrolyzer; they soak it up with a "liquid sponge" ("a recyclable redox mediator (silicotungstic acid) " according to the article's abstract. In principle at least, hydrogen could be stored and transported in this form (a liquid sponge soaked with hydrogen).; the hydrogen can be catalytically released (wrung out of the liquid sponge) when needed. Whether such a system could be built with a practical size, weight, and cost for use in vehicles is another matter.

I was being serious, but if you want to think I'm clever, that's OK too.

CMEs usually lead to an enhanced chance of aurora, so if I'm in a suitable location it's more a case of getting the camera gear out and heading off to somewhere scenic and away from any major source of light pollution. Keep watching the skies, we could be in for something spectacular if it hits us head on.

Broken in half (after removing the filter) and inserted in the nostrils, they're pretty effective at filtering out (or maybe masking) odors that would otherwise make you nauseous.

I don't know why this got modded "Troll". The mis-naming of those tablets is not necessarily a good thing for Apple. When your brand name becomes commonly used as a generic name for a class of products, it dilutes the value of the trademark; IP attorneys refer to it as "genericide". Kleenex, Q-Tips, Band-Aids and Aspirin are great examples of this. Now excuse me, I have to go google how to photoshop some pictures.

I've a very good idea that RAM prices are artificially inflated, that the fab plants are poorly managed, that the overheads are unnecessarily high because of laziness and the mentality in the regions producing RAM.

I'm absolutely certain that 15nm-scale RAM on sticks the same size as sticks used today would cost not one penny more but would have a capacity greater than I've outlined.

It could be done tomorrow. The tools all exist since the scale is already used. The silicon wafers are good enough, if they can manage chips 4x and 9x the size of a current memory chip with next to zero discards, then creating the far smaller dies (so you can discard more chips and still get the same absolute yield) is not an issue. It would reduce idle time for fabs, as fabs are currently run semi-idled to avoid the feast/famine cycle of prior years but 15nm would let them produce other chips in high demand, soaking up all the extra capacity.

What you end up with is less waste, therefore lower overheads, therefore higher profit. The chip companies like profit. They're not going to pass on discounts, you getting a thousand times the RAM for the same price is discount enough!