I am aware of many ideas that "young Earth believers" foster to explain the stratigraphy of fossils in a 6K-year old Earth.

Question: What explanations have you heard? What answer can you offer from the middle ground between a scientist (whose expertise relies on that stratigraphic record) and a man of faith who reads the same Bible that the "young Earth believers" do?

It is my observation that reader comments on science article quickly follow a Godwin-like trajectory to a flame war between those who hold to religious (though many are scientists) beliefs and those who hold to scientific (usually atheist) beliefs. The two factions spew hate, obscenity, and generally impugn the intelligence of the other.

Question: What advice can you offer to help the readers, and thus the comment posters, to strike a balance? Can there be some kind of 'kumbaya manifesto' to skip the quarreling and get to the matter at hand? Climate change, dark matter, even human colonization need well-tempered minds, of all persuasions. How do we get there?

Would this allow Androids to Dream of Electric Sheep? (Too obvious, should have been in the tags.)

...and when do we get there? And why haven't we gotten there yet? I mean, Duke Nukem Forever is out. Didn't we miss a lot of deadlines when it finally released?

of Orbital Mechanics. Physics, too... when convenient.

1. Let's start with the mass of this asteroid, so we can determine the VAST amount of energy it will take to "nudge it." Recall that the 365-foot Saturn V pushed a capsule the size of a VW Bug.
2. Secondly, note the orbital change is a plane change, which takes orders of magnitude more Delta-V than an in-plane maneuver.
3. Thirdly, what will they gain from this rock that will be worth the effort, energy, money, and risk to the planet?
   Sure, mining asteroids is a great idea, in principle, but not in theory.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I know this is YMMV source, but according to it, IE hit 50% in August of 2008.

I know how browsers are detected. It's about as scientific as a Slashdot poll.

For example:

1. I'd bet that Chrome's download page has a much lower percentage of Chrome users than the general populace.
2. I'm sure M$ could show you stats with IE at 92% and the rest reading the files from FTP.
3. Corporate vs. Academic sites would probably see great variation for a single browser.

What makes any one set of browser share statistics any better than any other?

"When there's no limit to what Droid gets, there's no limit to what Droid does^H^H^H^H can do to you."

Amazing at how well-timed the previous XKCD turned out to be.

http://xkcd.com/893/

Not the same thing. Analogously, that is like saying "I can mail this letter, and if the envelope is opened, I can tell." vs. "I can mail this letter and get it to Mars in 23 minutes (this month)."

The first defies someone's opinion on a theory. The latter defies physics. You can fool the theory, but you can't fool the physics.

BTW, you just did what I initially complained about. "technological breakthrough."

Sadly, I have heard people use the argument that "the experts miss calls like this one" to point to how we can achieve Faster-Than-Light once we start to "think outside the box".

None of these missed calls, esp. satellite radio, defy the known physics of their day. Those FTL-friendly people see FTL as a mere 'technological breakthrough."

How much energy did it take to keep the polar caches in place? That's the difference. NASA can't just hang it up there, turn on the anti-gravity, and find it there in 10 years. I mean... explorers sailed to new worlds for centuries using nothing but windpower. Why doesn't NASA do the same thing...

Oh, right... they also have to take their own oxygen, and don't have a medium upon which to float. Gotcha...

Nope. I'm with LWATCDR. Check your facts or post on Facebook!