I don't think we really need to have this fight. We need to make it clear that people are free to believe whatever they want, they just have to pass the test.

Look at it this way- maybe you're a die-hard free market Republican, but if you're taking an econ class, it's still legit to ask you to know about Karl Marx and Communism. If you take a history course, then you need to be able to explain the South's arguments for slavery, but that doesn't mean you have to endorse them. Same deal with evolution. You're free to believe that God created everything, the bats and bees and Galapagos tortoises. That's your right according to the First Amendment. But it's legitimate to ask you to be able to outline the arguments used by Darwin's _Origin of Species_ to argue for evolution. I mean, we don't say, "we can't discuss Nietzsche in philosophy class! I'm a Christian, and he was an atheist!" All we're requiring is that students are familiar with what science says. They're free to believe it or not. Likewise, it's perfectly acceptable (probably even a good idea) to have a course in high school talking about religion, as long as it's in the context of learning about religious views, not endorsing a particular viewpoint.

And as for all the atheists out there- we need to remember to respect the right of a Christian to believe in creationism. Now, it's true that as an atheist in a Christian society, you often feel like people don't respect your right to disbelieve. Fair enough. But as this one guy once said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And whether he was the son of God or not, I think he had a point.

Manned exploration of the sun is the dumbest idea I've ever heard of. It would be far more cost-effective to explore by sending robotic rovers to drive around on the surface of the sun.

TRANSCRIPT: EMERGENCY STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BY ALL NEWS AGENCIES AND EMERGENCY BROADCAST CHANNELS. "My fellow Americans. I stand before you as President to tell you that at 12:03 AM Eastern Time, a massive asteroid over ten miles in diameter impacted the coast of the North Sea at a speed of over 50,000 miles per hour. This asteroid caused a blast equivalent to over one million of our most powerful H-bombs. At least 100 million souls were killed by the shockwave, but even as we speak, a mile-high tsunami is sweeping across Europe, drowning thousands of years of civilization in the blink of an eye. Molten debris is now being sent hurtling towards us in suborbital trajectories, and will soon ignite wildfires across the globe. Any of you who are unfortunate enough to survive the coming inferno will face an earth that has become a ruined hellscape. With ash blotting out the skies, all crops and plants will wither and die, and the unlucky survivors of civilization will descend into an orgy of cannibalism as they desperately try to consume their friends and families to survive the freezing snows and darkness of our Apocalypse. But I have saved the worst news, the most bitter tidings, for last.

"For with the destruction of Finland, the source code for 'Angry Birds Rio' has been lost to us. Forever. I ask that you now observe a moment of silence. [chokes back tears]. Perhaps we could have carried on otherwise. Perhaps we could have found the will to carry on. The United States as we knew it would never have survived this catastrophe, but perhaps we could have saved the species, and rebuilt something from the ashes. But not now. With the loss of Angry Birds Rio, all hope has been extinguished. There is simply no reason to carry on living. Even if we could save the species, what would be the point? And so I have decided that, with our remaining resources, the American Government will distribute cyanide capsules to help ease your passing. I will now commit suicide live on camera, to demonstrate to you the proper way to consume the cyanide poison capsule. God have mercy on our souls."

For all the conspiracy theorists out there, my question is, why would the Swedes would bow to U.S. pressure in the first place? Sweden isn't some corrupt and backwards little banana republic, they're a modern European democracy and they're perfectly capable of telling the U.S. to go f*** themselves if they feel like it. What leverage would the U.S. have over Sweden that they we could just dictate how their justice system works and what charges they bring against people? What, are we going to threaten that if they don't cooperate, America will block imports of IKEA's new Trogdör bookshelf?

The big drawback with a lighter-than-air design is that your aircraft has to be really large, and that, in turn, inherently limits your speed. Drag on the fuselage is proportional to area, so if you've got an airship five times the diameter of a 747's fuselage, it's going to have 25 times the drag. The result is that airships are limited to low speeds. Top speed of the Goodyear Blimp is 50 mph and top speed of the Hindenberg was 85 mph. It's an inherent design limitation, which means that even with modern technology, this thing will have a similar top speed to a 1930s era airship like the Hindenberg. That's a huge part of why blimps have never really caught on.

Airships have one big advantage, however. It doesn't cost anything to produce the lift. The lighter than air design means that in still air, the airship isn't expending any energy. The aircraft, meanwhile, produces lift by having a continuous flow of air over the wings. That creates drag, so to maintain speed, the airplane has to compensate and burn fuel to produce thrust with an engine.

In short, if you want to take a trip by air, take a plane. But what if you don't want to go anywhere? Well, if you don't want to go anywhere, an airship is the way to go there. Since it doesn't spend any fuel, it can just hang out in one place for a long time. That makes blimps perfect if your mission is surveillance, and if you're dealing with an opponent that lacks any sort of air force or anti-air capability. Which is the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

The issues with antidepressants aren't just hypothetical. The FDA found reports of suicide associated with antidepressant use serious enough to include a "black box" warning to the effect that antidepressants can cause an increase in suicidal thinking. That's not a minor issue, that the drug you're taking to make yourself feel better might actually make you suicidal. Another issue- when given to people with bipolar disorder, antidepressants can actually cause mania, and some researchers believe this can cause the disorder to actually get worse over time. The problem here is that some forms of bipolar (bipolar II) are easily mistaken for depression, since the symptoms are primarily depression, and the ups aren't as obvious as bipolar I. Another issue is that antidepressants can cause what they call discontinuation syndrome- that is, withdrawal effects. For some it's not too bad; Prozac takes a long time to wash out of your system so it's a naturally slow withdrawal, but for others that filter rapidly out of the bloodstream, the withdrawal is really hellish.

I'm not saying you should never take antidepressants, but these are very powerful chemicals we're talking about, so you really need to be careful. That means be sure you're working with a good psychiatrist, not your primary care physician, who simply does not have the know-how to diagnose and treat serious mental illnesses. That means doing a lot of reading as well- educate yourself about what you're up against and what the treatments are.

And it's a good idea to consider the various alternative/complementary treatments. Things like exercise, meditation, EPA (the active stuff in fish oil), supplementation with zinc, B12, folic acid, vitamin D. The thinking here is that these things have an attractive risk-reward profile. That is, the evidence for these things isn't fantastic (although that could be because there's not a multibillion dollar fish-oil industry sponsoring clinical research) and while they might help a little, they probably won't be miracle cures. On the other hand, they're cheap and because they're stuff that you consume anyway, they're unlikely to do much harm. They're worth giving a shot if you don't think things are quite dire enough to require medication but you aren't feeling great. Alternatively, if you do need medication, they may improve its effectiveness.

This is a pretty well-known phenomenon, it's known by psychiatrists as the "Prozac poop-out". After a while, the antidepressant just stops working. It seems to be particularly common among bipolar patients, to the point that some psychiatrists actually consider it a sign that you're dealing with bipolar, rather than classic depression http://www.psycheducation.org/depression/02_diagnosis.html. And if the doctor you're seeing doesn't know about this, you should seriously consider a different doctor.

Which would be great if that's what Myrhvold was doing. Here's what the article says:

So it's not even Myrhvold's money, he's actually using Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's money and then lecturing to others about how they should do more. Yes, Nathan, by using other people's money to help people and then boasting about it, you've really shown us the way. Your selfless sacrifice, nobility and sense of humility have truly touched us all... you're up there with Jesus and Gandhi.

Is this story some kind of sick joke? Nathan Myrvold lecturing us all about being better people? What the hell has Nathan F***ing Myrhvold ever done for the world? Myrhvold first became filthy rich as chief technology officer for Microsoft. He helped the company make billions of dollars abusing their monopoly power to get consumers to buy crappy software.

Unlike Bill Gates, who sees the light and decides to devote his life to charity, Myrhvold goes on to devote his life to setting up Intellectual Ventures, the world's largest patent troll. Gate's post-Microsoft career is dictated by his desire to work at something other than making money. Myrhvold's post-Microsoft career is dictated by the idea that he still wants to make an assload of money, he just doesn't want to actually do any work any more. He'd rather screw around in the kitchen and write a cookbook, while his company makes money by threatening to sue the people who are actually trying to innovate and create something.

Hell, he's not even funding this effort. Guess who's funding it? The article says it's "funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Asset Trust". So Gates is putting up the money, and Myrhvold is running around trying to take all the credit for being this great philanthropist. Well, I've got a suggestion for you Nathan. Want to make the world a better place? Shut down Intellectual Ventures. That would do far more to spur innovation than anything you've ever done.

What a pretentious douche.

Incidentally, here's the secret, proprietary code he stole:

10 SCREW CUSTOMER
20 MAKE PROFIT
30 GOTO 10

The history of the term goes back to the German STG-44. The "STG" means "Sturmgewehr". "Sturm" is German for "assault" and "gewehr" is rifle. The Sturmgewehr 44 was the first battle rifle to combine an intermediate size cartridge, detachable clip, and fully automatic fire, and so later weapons with these features- like the AK-47 and M-16- became known as assault rifles.

Here's the citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44

Are you sure you don't? Quick, check your pocket change!

Listen, America has done plenty of things that we should be ashamed of. When you're blindly supporting the country through things like unjust wars and human rights abuses, that's nationalism. But sometimes the country does something genuinely right, something true to the values of the nation. Like the guys at NASA did tonight. I think we've earned the right to take a brief break from worrying about how screwed up things are with the country economically, politically, and militarily, and feel a little pride about doing something something that's genuinely amazing. So please f*** off.

All of this just shows what a huge mistake was made in cutting the budget for planetary science and future Mars missions. Tonight, NASA did everything that they are supposed to do. They pushed us further out into the solar system, giving us the most detailed view yet of another world. They pushed scientific boundaries, sending an entire laboratory to another planet to look for extraterrestrial life. They pushed the limits of engineering. And they showed the world what we look like at our best- an America that is innovative, pioneering, and willing to take risks.

Times are tough, but of all the things to cut from the budget, why cut planetary missions? The cuts mean that we don't have anything in the works; we've got Curiosity but we have no plans to follow up. I find myself deeply disappointed that the White House would do something so short-sighted. The thing is, what happened tonight was genuinely inspiring. I felt truly proud of what my country had done. And I tried to remember the last time I had felt like that, and then it hit me. It was when Obama was elected.

There's more than a little irony to that.

True, there are certain phases of the mission where you can recover from a malfunction. If there's a software problem en route to Mars, or a hardware malfunction once the rover is on the ground, you can try to find a way to fix or work around the problem. The problem with the landing, obviously, is that you've just got one shot. If the pulleys jam or the cables tangle, if the explosives don't cut the skycrane free, if it selects a bad landing spot or comes in too fast... and it's all happening 15 light-minutes away, so by the time NASA figures out something is wrong, it's already too late to do anything. If something fails during that phase, that's $2.5 billion spent adding another crater to the surface of Mars.