Not being a regular Penny Arcade user, I immediately was confused by the idea of a 16th century webcam.

This argument is just going to semantics. Faith can easily be used to refer to people. Trust can be used for ideas. You are applying the connotations heavily. My point was just that saying they are not the same thing at all is not true. Also, the troll thing was a joke. I suppose I should have clarified. But their work in general will result in a flame war even in real life (though I think i person they are called heated arguments, and yes, that is another joke). Is the assignment naive? Definitely, but I can understand the line of reasoning, even if the end product isn't ideal. Finally, I'm not a frequent slashdot poster, so why aren't my line breaks holding? (yes, stupid noob)

ID refers to the creation of life, not the creation of the world. While the Bible says God created life, it doesn't specify how. ID maintains that evolution could not be that how, while, as JustNiz says, many high ranking religious people have no problem with evolution (any more). Notice that not even ID defenders rely on the Bible, just their (horrendous) version of science.

Faith and trust are the same thing, just with different connotations. Faith tends to mean more of a gut reasoning to believe something, but it is still a form of trust. As for the article, syllabi generally don't explain projects in full, so its very easily possible that students are required to defend their positions in a post or two. I'm hesitant to call this out right trolling because of that possibility, but its certainly possible. I think this falls into the domain of the unprovable God theory. If you can't prove they are trolling, are they really trolling?

Assuming that the ISS has ample electrical resources is exactly what I was referring to, in fact. The solar panels have jammed in the past, dramatically reducing efficiency.Also, while they just replaced the batteries, the last ones only lasted about 10 years. While that's good, is it good enough. From what I understand, Progress will certainly be enough to keep it up until the planned retirement, but I think the ion engine idea is interesting. I just don't think its something we could just toss up there and forget about. The ISS will still need to maintain a team of people monitoring it if is up there, which takes up budget. I'm not against the idea, but I do think just leaving it up there without a plan would be a (potentially hazardous) waste too.

Yes, ion engines might be possible, but the question then becomes keeping those maintained, and that is expensive. Nothing in space holds up for extreme amounts of time, and whats the point of keeping an orbital junk pile? People keep saying historians of the future, but think about the chance for space trash. If we just leave that thing up there, the chance for a collision is greater than zero, so we are risking another source for the ever expanding amount of space trash. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision for an example). The more space trash, the riskier space flight becomes, the harder it is to keep up the budget. I'm all for keeping the ISS up and running for as long as its useful, but the idea of a flying monument to ourselves is arrogant and wasteful. If it's not generating science, then its sucking money from projects that could be, and that's NASA's goal, to generate science. An ion engine would be expensive to develop (really, there are only prototypes), expensive to transport to the station, expensive to attach to the station, and nearly impossible to maintain without someone on the station, which would then mean that it might as well be manned fully to complete science. If its manned fully, then there will be Progress launches to keep them supplied, and with a Progress up there, you've lost you're reason for an ion engine. That didn't need any long division, now did it?