Seriously? This guy creates a TARDIS console he displays at a Maker Faire, and he is interviewed by Tim Lord?

I'm not sure if I'd prefer that to have been deliberate or coincidence...

One feature that Reader has, and no other service I've found can match, is historical feed data.

When I discover a new podcast, I like to go back and listen to their old episodes. Reader makes this possible and easy; I can go back and look at very old articles that aren't even listed in the live feed any more.

For example, This American Life only keeps the latest three episodes in their feed; but using Reader, I can go back an arbitrary distance into the past. (I'm sure there's a limit to the history somewhere, but I'm not inclined to go looking for it.) I assume Reader is taking advantage of Google's cache in order to achieve this.

I just tried theoldreader on a recommendation above, and it also has a buffer, but it only goes back 20 episodes.

There are other similar services, but this is the killer feature of Reader for me. Very disappointed to see it go.

Someone like, say, Michael Chrighton, or Freeman Dyson, is vilified for speaking out against AGW, especially given their lack of expertise in climatology. Al Gore, however, is treated like a hero, despite having not only no experience in climatology, but his total lack of scientific expertise, because he espouses an opinion for which there is scientific consensus.

Uh, yeah?

So Al Gore is acting (to a degree) as a spokesperson for the scientific consensus.
(Consensus based on repeatable results, not just "we all agree with that guy", by the way.)

Anyone taking a contrary position to the scientific consensus will need to have some fairly impressive scientific results backing them up, if they want to claim the majority of climatologists working in their own specialist field have got it all wrong. If you haven't got some real compelling research, and it's not even your field of expertise, then you run the risk of looking like a crank.