The poll choices frame the question as a simple science vs. politics issue. It's a bit more complex than that. On the anthropomorphic global warming/climate change side, you have both evidence-based scientific thinkers and non-scientific wishful thinkers. On the anti-AGW/anti-climate change side you have some very smart cynical people with a vested interest in the current energy economic status quo and a group ideological, unthinking wing-nuts.

The problem for the AGW/CC scientists is that they are not just battling both the cynics trying to preserve their current economic advantages and the wing-nuts who will believe anything as long as it's not "Liberal." They're also handicapped by their supposed allies: the "Lefty Loonies" who undermine the scientific case for AGW/CC by being just as ridiculous as the loonies on the anti-AGW/CC side.

Maybe next time we can get a poll like this:

The Debate Over Climate Change Is:
1. The most critical debate over the fate of humanity ever.
2. An important one, but not the most important.
3. Less important than deciding who will be the next American Idol.
4. Not a debate any more, just people talking past each other.
5. Over, and my side won!
6. Uh, climate change? What's that?

Isn't this the same thing Wakefield was trying to prove before he committed research fraud and started the whole "vaccines cause autism" nonsense?

Every student entering 6th grade should read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and "A Wrinkle In Time."

You can follow a suspect in plain clothes. You can photograph someone from a distance even if he's on his own personal property. You can follow someone in an unmarked car. You can observe someone from a helicopter or via satellite photo.

You can even send people moving traffic violation tickets based on photos taken via automatic cameras.

All of which you can do without a warrant because the subject is publicly visible.

So how is drone surveillance any different from a legal/ethical/moral standpoint?

And Fox News, of course, pushed a story that only referenced the part of the study that found that climate change "skeptics" scored higher (by one point, 51 to 50) on a test of general scientific literacy, proving once (and for Fox) that the "skeptics" know more about science than climate change "alarmists" and are therefore right to doubt anything related to climate change.

Fox News: the experts at picking the one cherry on the entire tree that satisfies them since 1993.

I don't always prefer a robust business solution.

But when I do, I prefer it without bullshit.

...because I do not prefer to listen to recorded music at all. I prefer my music live and in person. The audio processing system doesn't matter. They all sound crappy on earbuds.

No, I wouldn't want to demean the memory of Frank Zappa by associating him with Newton G.

A cheesy '70s sci-fi TV show derivative seems more appropriate.

Newt Gingrich's new Secret Service code name:

          MOONBAT ALPHA

"What!?! Comment my code? You question my honor! I'll kill you where you stand!"
-- Mukluk, Klingon Programmer

Where's the, "I have no money, you insensitive clod!" option?

"Is it worth trying to fix a system that isn't broken?"

It is to the people who sell electronic voting systems. And they apparently have better lobbyists than the average voter.

Let's not forget the two-way video wristwatch invented in the comic "Dick Tracy" by tech support guy Diet Smith in 1964. Many of us grew up dreaming of the day when we'd get to wear one of those things.

We already have Web organizations that do a pretty good job of cutting through BS -- Snopes.com and Factchecker.org to name two. The problem is not that we don't have objective arbiters of the truth, but that many people don't want anything other than confirmation of their existing biases and will label any group that doesn't do that as "biased" against their "truth."

Having the government sponsor the Truth Police will not give it any more credibility and may just make it less credible depending on who does the appointing.

Best example: the Supreme Court, which is supposedly the ultimate arbiter of justice. Justices used to get confirmed by huge bipartisan majorities until someone decided that controlling a majority of the Supremes was a way to achieve political control. The Web Truth Board would likely suffer a similar fate, only much faster..