And you've missed my point. Perhaps I didn't explain myself well.

I absolutely do not disagree that plenty of people have an irrational fear of genetic technologies. Nor do I disagree that we have lots of other ways to screw the world up (you mention the example of massive automated surveillance). And I wasn't arguing that we shouldn't try to resurrect a mammoth.

The GP seemed to me to be making the argument that 1) negative reaction to "messing with life" is because of antiquated religious sensibilities; and 2) we're gods now, so we should just do whatever the heck we want. I don't find either part of that argument compelling. As for part 1, casting any and all opposition to unbridled genetic experimentation as nothing but religious or cultural fanatacism is a straw man argument, pure and simple. There are lots of very rational reasons to proceed cautiously with certain kinds of genetic experimentation (and plenty of scientists agree with me). Why part 2 is wrong shouldn't require any further explanation, and other commenters have already addressed it.

Although you seem to think that the debate about genetic experimentation is nothing more than a conflict between science religion, I assure you that is not the case.

"Messing with life", as you call it, has an incredible potential for doing harm if approached carelessly. It doesn't take much imagination to realize this, either: synthetic infectious agents, engineered organisms that displace natural diversity, and so on.

You state, "Humans are the new god on planet earth (and beyond?)." If you really believe that, than surely you must agree that responsibility and caution need to be part of that job description. Science does not, and never should, exist outside of ethical debate.

That is nonsense. For basic statistical tests (e.g., t-tests), statistical significance depends on the sampling distribution of the statistic, which is a function of both sample size and the source population distribution. For example, a difference in means that is less than the standard deviations of the source populations can easily be statistically significant if the sample sizes are large enough. If you don't believe me, I suggest you try running some simple numeric simulations for normally-distributed populations (e.g., in R).

Precisely. If I had mod points, they'd be yours.

Exactly what I was thinking.

There is a general feeling in the U.S. that public schools are failing (regardless of whether that opinion is justified). It seems to me that buying more technology is the lazy administrator's way of "doing something about it." Purchasing technology also provides a convenient measure of progress, however dubious. Administrators can brag about how they are providing every student with an iPad, or putting smart boards in every classroom, or whatever the current fad is, and claim that they are improving the school.

Are these purchases usually made with a clear plan for how to use the technology, or solid research-based evidence that the new technology will actually improve students' learning? I would guess that most of the time, the answer is "no" on both counts. The fact that we're now having Bill Nye ask K-12 students, "So, you've got all of this cool technology in your school... how is it actually useful?" suggests I might not be wrong.

From the original post: "Such behavior is not tolerated in "real" college courses, so why is it tolerated in MOOCs taught by the same faculty?"

TFA answers the question quite nicely: "Despite a couple of years of discussion, the question of monetization remains largely unresolved. MOOCs are about as popular as they were, they still drain resources from the companies hosting them, and they still don’t provide much to those hosts in return." Good or bad, it's an attempt to try to get something useful in return for the effort it takes to create a MOOC course. It's as simple as that, and there's no reason to read anything more sinister into it.

And let's not hyperbolically describe this as "holding the users hostage," okay? Users are free to leave the course whenever they want -- hostage situations don't usually work that way.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim? In the sciences, at least, open access journals are thriving. Take a look at any of the PLoS journals, for instance. These venues are well-respected and scientists are eager to publish in them.

From TFA: "When academics have been asked why they do not contribute to Wikipedia, or why they do not make their data more easily available, or why they continue to avoid new “open access” publication venues, one of the most common explanations is “not enough time” [7,8]."

The article gets a lot of things right, but that sentence is not one of them. The reasons that academics do not contribute to Wikipedia have been well documented and discussed here and elsewhere. In brief -- you get no credit for your work, and your contributions can be totally wiped out at the whims of editors. The reason experts don't contribute to Wikipedia is not a lack of time; rather, it's because doing so is perceived (quite reasonably) as a waste of time.

In contrast, most scientists I know are quite receptive to publishing in open access journals. Some are still suspicious of them, but I've never heard "I don't have enough time" given as a reason for not publishing open access. Honestly, that objection wouldn't even make sense.

The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes. Do these people actually believe that funding "Obamacare" for a few months is worse than letting the federal government default on its loans? There is no acceptable answer to this question. If the answer is "yes," well -- yikes. If the answer is "no," and this is just shameless pandering to the extreme right faction of the GOP/"Tea Party", then -- yikes.

While I am not questioning that the OPCW does really great work to make the world a better place, my disappointment with this selection is that it is simply uninspiring. The Nobel committee had nominations for numerous individuals who, at great risk to their own livelihood and safety, did extraordinary things to stand up for what they knew was right and just. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to such a person would affirm that even today, one individual doing the right thing can make a difference that is felt on a global scale. Regardless of whether the OPCW was most deserving of this year's prize (which is certainly debatable, as attested to by other comments on this story), the choice doesn't really stir much passion.

Wow -- it has actually been 20 years since Myst came out?? That seems unbelievable. I haven't done any "real" computer gaming in a long time, but I spent many hours working my way through Myst and absolutely loved that game.

I wonder if the popularization of the World Wide Web had something to do with the eventual decline of Myst and games like it. I remember that a big part of the satisfaction of playing Myst and other puzzle-based games, such as the King's Quest series, was that you really needed to struggle through the challenges until you figured them out. For example, a staple of those games was a maze that you had to traverse at some point (remember the little subterranean train thing in Myst?). To solve them, you had to spend considerable time exploring and mapping until you finally figured out how to get where you needed to go. If you were stuck, there wasn't much you could do except try harder until you got it. Sure, the game companies had "hot lines" that you could call for hints, but they charged you for it, and nobody I knew ever used them. As a result, the game was much more rewarding because you had to do it all by yourself. This environment also was conducive to playing the game with others, because two (or more) heads are better than one. My brother and I worked through a number of these games when we were kids, and playing them together added to the fun.

Once the Web became mainstream, the situation changed very quickly. Suddenly, game "walk throughs" were widely available for free, and much of the mystique that led to these games' success disappeared. You need to solve that maze? Just look it up on the walk through and you can be done with it in about two minutes. Once the entire game solution was readily available, the sense of accomplishment from solving the puzzles was greatly diminished, in my opinion.

So, imagine a world where there is no quick, easy way to look up game solutions. It seems terribly quaint now, but that was the environment in which Myst and similar games before it became popular. Once that changed, I think the days were numbered for the puzzle-based games, at least as far as their ability to become blockbusters.

I haven't done any research to compare how well actual market trends correlated with the rise of the Web. This is just my recollection of how the gaming world changed during that time.