"For over three decades the creation of these molecules have baffled the scientific community."

Statements like this are rather disingenuous to the scientific community and fail to accurately depict the scientific process. Certainly there are a large number of "baffling" topics under investigation, but I wouldn't necessarily characterize the investigators as being "baffled". The overuse of this word in the context of science reporting seems to imply inept bumbling rather than the actual methodical (and occasionally inspired) process of scientific investigation (observe->hypothesize->predict->experiment->evaluate->refine). Certainly, many hypotheses are created, tested and found wanting for any number of reasons, but the very fact that an hypothesis has been falsified or found to be incomplete adds to our knowledge of what isn't so, and narrows the field of possible explanations.

Certainly, some instances (such as the summary blurb above) can be explained away as laziness in reporting and the desire to reach the lowest common denominator. However, this popular media representation of "baffled" scientists is easily hijacked for the mis-characterization of inconvenient findings by politically, financially or ideologically motivated groups. Couple with the joyful glee with which young earth creationists, ufologists, ghost hunters, psi investigators, AGW denialists and other pseudo- or anti-science proponents claim that science is "baffled" by (or worse, suppressing) their various claims, it is no wonder that a frighteningly large number of people have little understanding of the scientific method, little trust in the scientific enterprise, little appreciation of the degree to which their lives have been improved by science and almost no concept of the time and effort required to move from an observation to a consistent theory to explain it or a practical application of a discovered principle. Scientific literacy seems to be trending sharply downward (at least here in the US, but probably many other countries as well), and the general population is less and less equipped for critically evaluating the endless stream of claims and counter-claims that appear in the marketplace of ideas. Perpetuating the baffled scientist meme is not particularly helpful in combating this trend.

Granted, this article is a single example, and the case is rather benign, but I am increasingly dismayed by the inaccurate use of "baffled" in science reporting and felt I had to make my case. Perhaps a better statement would have been "The creation of these molecules has been a topic of intense investigation by the scientific community since their discovery in 1985"

Sounds like a good thing to me...apply the nanobot hunter-killers directly to the tumor, they do their job, then the host's own housekeeping systems clean up the nanobots.

Either that or develop nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killers (let's call them "snakebots") and when those start to overrun the place, apply nanobot hunter-killer hunter-killer hunter-killers ("gorillabots" perhaps?) and when wintertime rolls around they simply freeze to death

Flying cars have been around since the 30's. The problems is not that no one has invented a flying car, but rather that the demand is insufficient and the safety/regulatory issues are truly daunting. Until a flying car can be made foolproof and fail-safe, there isn't going to be a Cessna in everyone's garage. We already lose something like 35,000 people a year to car accidents, and they only move in two dimensions, along generally well-defined routes at (usually) a few tens of miles per hour and zero feet off the ground. Also, if your car's engine dies or you run out of gas, you can generally coast to a stop on the shoulder rather than plow screaming into side of a building. Flying cars dramatically change the operating parameters and the safety issues multiply rapidly. Automation (even autonomy), obstacle avoidance, route conformity, operator certification and some sort of safe (for everyone, including on the ground) emergency landing capability have to be worked out before flying cars become a practical reality. Advances are being made on all these fronts, so it may be a foreseeable reality, but there's still a long way to go and I don't think the FAA is going to be too keen on an order or two of magnitude increase in the number of objects and operators they have to keep track of.

I had an interesting thought along these lines not long ago. To whit - what if all those nasty buggers that were burning heretics, enslaving Africans and slaughtering aboriginal populations in the Americas in the 1500's and 1600's were still around? Would their attitudes and social norms have adjusted, or would they still be world-class a-holes by our standards? What about folks from the Great War and Depression era in the US? A lot of people I know who grew up in a segregated US still have a strong, even vicious, racist bent, but they are steadily dying off and being replaced by people with a more egalitarian worldview. Racism is still a problem, to be sure, but I think it is less common now than it used to be and will continue to decline as more people are exposed to liberal views on the subject during their formative years.

Considering that people seem to become more conservative and inflexible as they age (in general...there are exceptions) would we ever have achieved anything vaguely like the society we have today (not without it's problems, but certainly improved in many ways from earlier periods) if Ponce de Leon had discovered the Fountain of Youth? It seems to me that death, not only of the individual, but of norms and attitudes, is a vital component of societal maturation and that the achievement of immortality or greatly increased lifespan would essentially crystallize civilization and culture at a point in time, leading to stagnation. How long could human society continue if all the negative aspects simply carried forward indefinitely instead eventually yielding to new attitudes.

This, of course says nothing of the problems of limiting population growth, resource exploitation and generational power imbalances in a world where the old folks just keep getting older and the young folks have no room to grow and prosper

...if it has expanded provisions for public employees, particularly legislative, executive and judicial officers of the state. The expanded provisions would include publicly accessible, 24x365 audio/video/GPS monitoring, real-time transcription of all conversations (whether in person, by phone, email, telegraph, sign-language, semaphore, IP over Avian Carrier or whatever) and detailed, publicly accessible accounting of all cash, credit, loan, barter, swap, IOU, promissory and other transactions, transfers, exchanges, conveyances or transformations of wealth, goods, property, influence, information, intellectual property, favors or anything else of any conceivable value.

This is, of course, all in the interest of protecting the children (from growing up in a totalitarian surveillance state) and to curb terrorism (by the state, against it's people and their rights)

They are public employees after all, and since they should have nothing to hide, they should have nothing to fear.

I agree.

Netflix and Hulu on ROKU have completely obviated my need for cable (actually satellite, in my case). There were basically three reasons I wanted satellite in the first place: SciFi, Discovery and HBO. HBO and Discovery still have some good programming but the quality of the SyFy (lamest re-brand ever) lineup is approaching terminal velocity. They have a long sordid history of killing the few shows I do like (Farscape, Sliders, MST3K anyone?) while letting crap (Lexx, Tremors, John Edwards, etc, etc) go on far too long. Today they seem obsessed with wrasslin' and "let's freak each other out with spooky noises" shows. How about just airing some decent syndicated shows like B5 and old Dr Who? Meh, whatever. Screw SyFy.

There's tons of good stuff in the catalog of the streaming providers to keep me busy while I wait a season or two for the few current original series I like (Dexter, Spartacus, The Office, Eureka, Dr Who, etc) to come out on Netflix or I can get some of the more timely stuff like Colbert Report or shows like MythBusters on Hulu. I used to be all about the Tivo because it was TV the way I wanted it, when I wanted it. But that is beginning to seem quaint and naive now that on-demand high-quality streaming is a reality.

To quote the woman herself, from her 10/24/2008 policy speech in support of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA):

She made no specific reference but it can be presumed she is referring to the 2008 appropriation for research into controlling the olive fruit fly by California Rep Mike Thompson, of which ~$211,000 did in fact go to research performed in France. The olive fruit fly is a harmful pest that causes considerable damage to crops in California and many other places. Rep Thompson defended this appropriation and it's allocation as follows:

This says nothing of the valuable research into genetics and other biological systems that frequently utilize the more common drosophilla fruit fly, such as this, which could actually lead to treatment for the very people she claims to be supporting in the aforementioned speech. This dismissive attitude toward legitimate and useful science is very disturbing in a publicly elected official who should have a mature and non-simplistic understanding of how science and technology policy lead to practical benefits. But it would appear she either has a grade school understanding of the topic, or she was attempting to manipulate her constituency through sound bites that give the impression of a scrappy everywoman fighting senseless waste of taxpayer money. If the former, she is unqualified to participate and should keep quiet. If the latter, her image is tarnished by hypocrisy. (WARNING: PDF. See $1.5M in FY08 and $400K in FY09 for fighting invasive species in Alaska)

Your bias is evident and name calling simply makes your argument less credible

The first is a scathing indictment of BOTH parties for trying to force the square peg of science into the round holes of their ideologies. The second is simply evidence for more of the same on one side of the political spectrum. I'm not sure what your point is here...are you trying to counter my statement or simply restating what I said? Maybe I wasn't clear initially, so I'll make up for it now - I find the politically motivated manipulation of science to conform with an ideology to be a repugnant character flaw in policy makers regardless of their party affiliation or position on the politcal spectrum. Clear enough?

OK, sure. A bit tedious and forced but I'll go along with it. Your statement about SciAm is a bit of a non sequitur, though

All these disciplines (including biology, which we both missed) also have a tremendous amount of research that directly relates to evolution and which is a consequence of findings that have broader implications than just evolutionary science; you can't just pick and choose the pieces that appeal to you. There is also a tremendous amount of cross-checking and independant confirmation beween these disciplines as it relates to evolution, particularly with dating. For example, in geology, lithostratigraphy (which operates under the assumption that younger rock generally lies on top of older rock) is useful in dating fossils relative to each other as well as absolute dating. This is complemented by radioisotope dating techniques which ultimately come from nuclear physics. Calibration against growth rings in trees (botany) or deposit layers in ice cores (climatology) strengthens the case for radioisotope dating techniques for the fairly recent geologic past. Genetic sequencing shows similarities between related species, and analysis of the differences, when combined with other dating techniques and fossil evidence, gives us an approximate molecular clock that can tell us how long ago two species diverged from a common ancestral population. All these diverse pieces of evidence come into play when asking a question such as "How old is this fossil and what is it's relation to other species?" Many of the tools used in evolutionary studies were appropriated from other fields because they happened to be useful in that context as well as the original context. Radioisotopic dating is a very good example. If radioactive decay did not proceed in a statistically predictable manner, we wouldn't have nuclear power plants or PET scanners and it would be useless as a tool for studying evolution.

I did not claim that evolution is the only possible interpretation of the data, that would be an ideological claim, not a scientific claim...and I did not make it. I did make the oblique claim that there is no legitimate evidence for supernatural explanations involving creator gods from numerous contemporary or historical religions. I will also make a supplemental claim that evolution is the best supported interpretation we currently have to explain the diversity of life and biological systems we observe in the world today, particularly given the evidence we have for things being very different in the past.

In much the same way that the Easter Bunny Story explains how my dog manages to find a rotten egg or two under the bushes at the local park every spring. There is no supportable claim for the accuracy of the Genesis fable. However, if you insist on a literary interpretation, I am curious about your opinion on several other passages, such as Genesis 19:8 (throw your daughters to the crowd of rapists to protect a stranger), Genesis 19:32-36 (incest is not a particularly egregious offense compared to sodomy, or is it...Leviticus 20:11-14), Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (gather all the elders to stone an unruly son), Deuteronomy 22:23-24 (stone the vitim of rape), Numbers 22:28-30 (donkeys can talk, just like in Shrek), Isaiah 34:7 (unicorns exist), 1 Kings 2:23-24 (death by bear mauling is a fitting punishment for name-calling), 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2 (Pi = 3), 1 Samuel 15:2-3 (scorched earth policy, genocide is OK), the entire book of Job (don't blame God if he kills your servants, livestock and family, reduces you to a beggar and visits all sort of other nastiness on you...it's just a test and you'll get more riches and prettier daughters in the end), Mathew, Mark and Luke all agree that one must hate one's family and one's self to become a follower of Jesus. The list of absurdities, barbarism, cruelties and debauchery goes on. What sane person would want anything to do with such a fickle, arbitrary, petty, omnicidal god. BTW - this is not actually a straw-man argument, it goes directly to the credibility of the Bible as an accurate historical document and it's relevance in the modern world.

I find this far from conclusive. Is there an element of faith involved in the typical layperson taking a particle physicist's word for the existence of protons, gluons, etc? Certainly. One might be tempted to say this is no different than taking a shaman's word for the existence of evil juju infesting your hut and causing your sow to miscarry, or accepting the truth of the claim that an invisible magic-man who sees and knows all created everything from scratch a few thousand years ago and is intensely interested in who you sleep with.

There are profound and non-trivial differences in these two types of belief, though. Anyone can learn about the fundamental science behind the proton claim and perform an experiment to demonstrate whether the observed phenomenon matches the predictions. Anyone can also come up with a different theory or interpretation to explain a phenomenon and test it for validity. Such a theory may encounter tremendous resistance (the scientific community has enormous inertia in some areas), but repeatability and novel predictions that bear fruit will win the day eventually and hardly anyone will gird themselves for war to put down the heretical new theory. Science is a dynamic, living body of knowledge that is subject to challenge and accessible to anyone who is interested enough.

Religious faith on the other hand, is very narrowly predicated on the authority of an (often incomplete) collection of ancient texts, some of which were written decades or centuries after the events they portray, and which have often been supressed or accepted based on how well they supported a political ideology (Council of Nicaea being the most famous example). This authority is bolstered by unsubstantiated, non-repeatable, subjective, revelatory claims. Many of these claims follow periods of fasting, exertion, hypnotic techniques and "magic potions" all of which are known to produce hallucinatory experiences and feelings of expansiveness or connectedness. These states can also be induced by psychotropic substances, transcranial magnetic stimulation, brain lesions, stroke, epilepsy and various psychiatric disorders. New interpretations of scripture and conflicting revelations are actively discouraged in most religions, as evidenced by the many bloody persecutions and pogroms that have been conducted over very nuanced interpretations of religious scripture, dogma and tradition. (Cathars, Paulicians, Manichaeans, Anabaptists, Kurds, Baha'i, etc). Novel ideas in religion frequently do not lead to discussion and eventual consensus, but rather to fragmentation and rivalry of a scale and animosity unequaled by any other human undertaking. Religion is a body of largely static tradition and dogma that suffers challengers little if at all. It may be open to all or closed to all but a select elite, depending on the sect.

Good is a subjective term with no absolute meaning. I can also claim something is good, but you can disagree. Disease is a good state for the organism causing the disease.

Not only wrong, but non sequitur. Genetic mutation is indeed a largley nondeterministic process in individuals, but natural selection in a population is anything but. Random mutations that lead to greater distribution of offspring are selected for by deterministic processes (longer legs allow you and your offspring to outrun predators more often, bright feathers are more attractive to potential mates, the ability to metabolize certain alkyloids protects against some venoms and environmental toxins). The statistical significance of any given beneficial mutation typically manifests over many generations, a timescale that is not part of our everyday experience, but which which makes the "evolution is completely random" argument fall apart. Your premise for evolution "stultifying investigation" because the investigator is random is utterly bizarre. However, the mirror image (religion stultifies investigation) is a tenable, even provable assertion. If one accepts that the good book says this is how it happened, there is no point trying to look behind the curtain. On the other hand, if one rejects this notion and assumes that physical phenomena are the result of physical processes, one is at liberty to discover the nature of those processes. It isn't necessarily easy, there may be blind alleys and obstacles to progrgess, but the efforts of many investigators using the self-correcting methods of scientific investigation will eventually lead to a body of knowledge that can be relied upon as a useful model of how things work and may even predict phenomena or consequences that had not previously been observed and which may yield exploitable results or explain other phenomena (quantum theory->lasers, germ theory->antibiotics, relativity->GPS, evolution->MRSA)

Really? Godwin's Law is in effect after only 4 posts. That's pathetic. This is one of the sillier arguments against evolution and is an association fallacy of the first order. First, Nazi eugenics was inspired by American eugenics in the first decades of the 20th century, so we should lay the blame where it truly lies. The selection of Jews as the primary target for ethnic cleansing in the Third Reich also grew out of 1500 years of European anti-semitism and Christian persecution of Jews. At any rate, it is individuals who assign virtue or value to things, not evolution. Evolution is simply a process of differential reproduction that operates over geologic time. Using the existence or features of this process to further an ideological goal is an entirely human activity that is only peripherally associated with evolution insofar as it justifies or reinforces an agenda. A much better argument can be made for claiming that numerous religions actively promote the subjugation and/or extermination of "lesser races" e.g. unbelievers, infidels, heretics, Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines, Shi'a, etc. Finally, even if your claim were true (evolution=eugenics) that doesn't make evolution any less valid, only less palatable

All the comments I've read focus on laptops, but let's not forget that this readily includes smart-phones, PDAs, tablets, iPods, flash drives, Kindles, portable DVD players, Gameboy/PSP, digital cameras....anything with memory/storage. Heck it might even apply to programmable calculators and your uber-cool, geek-chic calculator watch.

I'm not going to do your research for you. Perhaps you could start with GOP energy policy, or the politicization of science and politically motivated alteration or withholding of scientific findings. It might be interesting to see if you can determine why Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research is based on ignorance and good sound bites rather than insight into what the goal of that research is.

Also, if evolution isn't tangible science, what exactly is your criteria? Science deals with naturalistic phenomena...saying God/Jaweh/Allah/Brahma/Ahuru Mazda/Quetzalcoatl/Damballah/FSM/(ad infinitum) did it is either an act of blind religious zealotry or an argument from ignorance...the equivalent to saying "Since we can't explain every last detail of evolution, it must be false and all the scientific disciplines that support it, including anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics, are wrong too." Please refer to my statement about improving science literacy and critical thinking skills.

One significant problem with this idea is that those who make public policy decisions can't be trusted to make wise decisions based on the evidence provided to them by the science community and the consensus opinions that emerge from analysis of the evidence. Just look at the far-right in the US; they seem to consistently make public policy decisions that are completely counter to what the science indicates and just happen to be perfectly harmonious with certain popular dogmas, then try to change the science to conform with the policy. Before anyone accuses me of partisanship, I am also of the opinion that the far-left seems equally disposed to kowtowing to their supporters' ideologies rather than what the scientific consensus indicates. On the other hand, science is a very cut-throat business in which only the strongest evidence and best supported interpretations get any serious consideration. Nearly every finding and conclusion is subjected to a brutal review process that is designed to identify and eliminate errors. It just so happens that this review process meshes very nicely with ambition and ego on the part of the reviewers...finding a flaw in the procedures, data or conclusions gains prestige and may open new doors. Even failure to find flaws can lead to new research opportunities by looking for unanswered questions in the original, which an either confirm or refute. In simple but not entirely accurate terms, scientists want to prove that some other scientist's piece of research is flawed or some conclusion is misguided. So, how do you choose? Do you go with "We should do X, because I'm an expert and many other experts who actually have a vested interest in proving me wrong happen to agree with me" or "We should do X, because I think it will give me the biggest short term popularity/financial gain or happens to agree with your dogma" The real answer is better science and critical thinking education. But we have to stop wasting court time with silly things like ID and getting our panties in a bunch because of some out-of-context emails that simply show that science is a messy process.

Perhaps you don't understand the sheer number and immensity of galaxies. The Milky Way Galaxy alone is estimated to have somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars. Andromeda is somewhat more populous than the Milky Way, and may have 0.5 to 1 trillion stars. By your statement in relation to the scale, the entire universe should only extend to the bounds of the local group, never mind the Virgo super-cluster or any of the hundreds of billions of other observable galaxies and clusters. So, given an approximate number of stars in a typical galaxy (whatever definition is settled on) being something like 2x10^11 and 2x10^11 galaxies, the entire universe is more like 4x10^22 stars, than a number that would conform to your statement (1x10^12)

Let me know when full-motion color video comes to thin, flexible displays. eInk/ePaper isn't there yet and this doesn't even look like it's an advance in that direction, but rather off-the-shelf, conventional rigid LCD repackaged with a small battery and storage as a gimmick. Hardly more innovative than singing birthday cards.

No, Bohr invented the atom...Einstein invented speed limits

Never heard of aluminum dust explosions? There's all kinds of ordinarily innocuous materials that are absolutely not safe around flame if powdered and disbursed in the air...even flour or rubber dust can be made to explode