Unfortunately your opinion does not qualify you to dictate what is and is not morally or ethically acceptable behavior (neither does your political affiliation, nor having or not having a uterus, but then again, with simplistic reasoning such as yours, I'm not surprised you've resorted to chauvinism). Saying "it's science" or "it's progress" doesn't answer the question of whether it *SHOULD* be done... Throughout history there have been countless examples of clearly ethically dubious behavior and even blatant atrocities in an attempt to illicit some scientific "advancement" of one form or another. You don't want to debate the morality of the destruction of embryos. You want to castigate anyone who disagrees with you and frame them as somehow anti-Science. It's asinine and you (should) know it.

Yeah, I guess subtlety is not often appreciated around here.

The next time someone at work asks me to do something my response will be "I can't. That's NP."

Your analogy is erroneous in that there is no such thing as "normal" weather or "normal" climate. Human body temperatures don't fluctuate noticeably unless there is a problem (to which you allude). The same cannot be said for weather or climate. By the way: "proxy data" is laughable. I'll just leave it at that.

Sounds like a great way to land a spot on a terrorist watch list, to me...

I'll bet this Tate guy would use his iTunes in the production of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons if not for the courageous and providential oversight provided by St. Jobs's.

Anyone have a clue why the shuttle would be making a retrograde descent?

If you have students just beginning, the most important thing you can do to help them is to introduce them to a language/framework they can tinker with themselves. C and C++ can be problematic if the students run Windows at home. Be honest. If the students have as little experience as you say, the students will get far more benefit from becoming familiar with a language they can use at home, on the weekends, or whenever they feel like tinkering than they will being shoehorned into using C to fit under a competition's "CPU limit". Disclaimer: I have no personal experience with VB or Pascal, so I didn't comment on them.

You are mistaken. By "single solution" they are not referring to a "solution" to the problem, but a "solution" to the problem of calculating the solution. That is, the class of problems are related in such a way that an efficient algorithm for one is an efficient algorithm for all (because each problem can be decomposed in polynomial time time into "sister" problems of the same class).

"I'm really annoyed that health care is currently distracting the Senate from an issue that affects the future of the entire human race." That wouldn't have anything to do with your desire to see your career funded, would it? Research fellowship get denied?