Over the past several days, I've read several commentaries about Elliot Rodgers and his motivation for commiting several murders. These murders have been blamed on "white privilege", misogyny, a rape culture, nerd culture, a (of course) gun culture, and so on. From what I understand, Rodgers was in psychotherapy for many years. What hasn't been adequately explored (in my opinion) is assigning "blame" to the apparent fact that the shooter was mentally ill. Quite a number of the high media profile mass shootings within the past several years were committed by individuals with histories of mental illness. If there's any sort of answer to these tragedies or any way to address and hopefully avert future shootings of this nature, how about revisiting our system of treating mental illness in potentially violent people? Blaming men, blaming white people, or blaming guns doesn't seem to be an effective countermeasure.

Relative to something like the Big Bang, while it is the predominant theory in cosmology today, it is not an established fact. If half the public doubts that the Big Bang as it is currently understood, was the causal factor in the creation of the universe, they shouldn't be that much different than cosmologists who are constantly searching for better ways to understand how our universe came to be. Doubt is not evil. For that matter, neither is believing that every single scientific conclusion or currently popular scientific theory must be treated as fact. However, sometimes I think the news media and their surveys overstate their point and expect all currently held scientific positions to be treated by the general population as immutable fact that should never be questioned. It's as if the news media wants its audience to accept the statement: "Trust me, I'm a scientist." Science is all about questioning and never about blindly accepting someone else's conclusions.

Wish the polar vortex would get rid of the real pests in D.C., Congress.

We've been a police state since the Nixon administration if not before: http://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Police_State.html?id=1XWQolKIuokC

Cool, but what happens if your prescription changes? You might have to switch to contact lenses to use glass over time.

You'd think the best way to get kids to read books at all would be to ban them. If someone told me I couldn't read a certain book, I probably couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy.

Science is just the study of observable phenomena using a using a specific set of techniques. As such, it is amoral. Human beings introduce any sort of moral structure (or lack thereof) into the interpretation of the results of such observations.

Who commissioned this study and how much did it cost to tell us something every parent and teacher knows?

I've long suspected that the way the DSM is constructed how mental illness is diagnosed has been manipulated by political, social and financial interests (medical insurance companies for instance). Our definition of what is and isn't a mental illness shifts over time. If those shifts were the result of ongoing research, it would be understandable, but as this article suggests, it's based on other factors. It will be refreshing to see a more scientific approach applied, assuming objectivity can be maintained and the causes and indicators of mental illnesses can be reasonably defined and observed.

Apparently you care what I think, otherwise you wouldn't continue to engage me.

The people you're describing have nothing to do with me. I don't believe "God hates Fags" and I have no agenda that involves making you listen to anything I have to say unless you express an interest. Sadly, most people think all religious people are like the vocal few who they encounter. There's nothing like judging an entire group based on the poor behavior of a few. Believe as you will.

I think there are a number of science fiction novels that would be beneficial for high school students to read, but that's true of other times of literature as well. The problem is the minute some politician makes a law that says students must read/study such and thus in school for whatever reason, education is defined by politicians instead of educators. Education isn't a mystery and the only thing that really needs to be retooled is to make the emphasis of the educational system on giving students skill sets that they need to function in the modern job market, not to indoctrinate them in the latest social beliefs and priorities.

Actually, I experience the opposite. Atheists care a great deal that I believe in God and because of my belief, make all sorts of assumptions about me in order to ridicule me. The door swings both ways.

After fifty years of manned space exploration, we've only visited the Moon a handful of time, and most of our experiences of putting humans in space have been temporary visits into Earth orbit. We can't even figure out a practical method of sending people to Mars. What makes you think we'll ever find a way to permanently send people to other planets? We evolved to live on Earth. I say that with a certain amount of angst since I'm old enough to have grown up with the NASA manned space program and it was always my dream as a child and young adult that human beings would personally explore and colonize the galaxy. However, reality had other plans.