I'm a professional scientist myself, and I love reading intelligently written popular articles about specialties other than my own. I have honestly tried to read Goldstein's piece, but I can't get through it. It is gibberish, and hysterical gibberish at that. Why not ask Ray Kurtzweil for an article? He's a bit crazy, too, but at least he can write.

According to the patent application that is linked in the article, this process works at over 300 Celcius using a zeolite catalyst. The innovation seems to be in the heat management of the reactor, not in a novel catalyst. Zeolite catalysis of cracking or depolymerization reactions is not new, and it's not a particularly clean process. So I'm having some trouble figuring out what all the fuss is about. Which is not to say that it wouldn't be great -- I just don't see anything on the Green Power website, or in their patent application, to get excited about.

I find this very interesting. In the early eighties, I worked on a coal liquefaction project funded by the British Coal Board. My boss had just returned from a sabbatical in Alberta, working on the tar sands and I can remember him predicting that Sasol would make all kinds of money if sanctions were lifted and if the price of oil reached about $30 per barrel (this was in 1982 dollars). I am now in the scientific instruments business and just last week I visited a Sasol facility to talk to them about some equipment for monitoring the performance of Fischer-Tropsch catalysts.

The Sasol technology is certainly capable of producing gasoline, but I believe it is mostly used today to make higher valued chemicals. The problem is that coal is a very high-carbon feedstock and a good deal of hydrogen must be added to convert it into lighter hydrocarbons. Has anyone looked at the economics of the entire coal-to-gasoline cycle using the Sasol method?

Take Alfred Russell Wallace, whose own independently developed theory of natural selection was presented with Darwin's at a London scientific meeting in 1859. Although he continued to study and defend evolution, Wallace decided that its mechanics lacked something crucial. He believed in the soul, and possibly in a divine hand directing some of the evolutionary process

Fair enough. But Miller goes on to claim that Wallace's position "seems like an early form of intelligent design", and that is simply nonsense. The whole point of "intelligent design" is to eliminate the idea of evolution as a force in the emergence and development of life on earth. Wallace, on the other hand, played a major role in the early development of evolutionary theory and he deserves better than this offhand comment from an ill-informed reviewer.

The missionary was David Livingstone, and he was Scottish, not English.

This is one of those "Doh!" moments, though, where the minute I read it, I wonder why we didn't all realize this years ago.

Best wishes for the future of How the World Works, Andrew. It's one of the things that keeps me subscribing to Salon (the other being TableTalk).

Although, come to think of it, "avoiding commmoditization" should be a basic human right.

I have to disagree with you here. Commoditization of cell phones means that they become cheap and widely available, which is good in terms of getting them into the hands of the poor. The people who fight commoditization are the manufacturers, because it means severely decreased profit margins.

We tend to think of "Big Oil" as an evil monolith but, in the case of global warming, there has been considerable diversity in the way the oil companies have reacted. Both Shell and BP, for example, have made considerable investments in fields such as solar and in "alternative" carbon-based fuels. You can argue the pros and cons of their specific strategies and the resulting image-grooming has been pretty egregious, but I still find it encouraging that Exxon's deny-it-and-it'll-go-away approach has not been adopted industry-wide.

Isn't it more likely that Western pressure on the Islamic world will lead to a partial sinking of differences between Sunni and Shia? I think there is more of a parallel there with a supposed unification of humanity in general.

I inherited tattered copies of all David's books from my mother, who cooked a lot of her recipes in 1960s Scotland and I'm pleased to see her work getting some exposure in the US. It's a bit of a stretch, though, to claim that seasonal food was "subversive" in the UK in the 1950s. On the contrary, it was well into the sixties before fresh peaches (from Israel) were available at Christmas, or hothouse tomatoes (from Holland) became other than an expensive treat. Outside of cans, seasonal food was all we had, especially for vegetables. And believe me, whole winters of nothing but cabbage and brussels sprouts and canned peas are not nearly as much fun as the neo-luddites claim.

This faith in science is often accompanied by the antiquated view that there are facts separate from values and interpretations.

Wow! You mean, if I just stop believing in carbon dioxide, it'll go away?

Congratulations on two years of HTWW.

Intelligent political commentary...minimal bloviating...no mention of "my partner Alison"? Who is this and what have you done with the real Camille Paglia?