"Until and unless - and probably after - the black boxes of AF 447 are found, argument and debate over the cause of the crash will dominate all discourse. Of course it’s ridiculous to call the brand or any one of its products a “lemon,” but it is certainly worthwhile to consider whether or how the unique characteristics of the plane may have contributed to its end."

We certainly don't want to make any judgements until as much of the flight data as we can glean is in, but one fact so far is telling: that intact tail found floating in the Atlantic, accompanied by fifty bodies bubbling to the surface from one place. If the Airbus plastic tail can snap off when crossing wake turbulence in New York City airspace, what's it going to do in the maelstrom of a tropical thunderstorm? It may be that AF447 lost its tail in the storm and flat-spun its way to the water (hence the 'flat entry' noted in last week's news). This is the kind of product flaw we need to characterize as soon as possible.

For any product, I can find a range of quality trading off with price. For most of my everyday shopping, I like Walmart just fine. But there are times when I will choose to pay more for the special-occasion meal, the premium bath towels, the business-class upgrade, the Apple smartphone. The choice is mine, and I feel no shame whatever in shopping either the big box or the special spot. I'm saving tons of money, and I can always find the quality I really need.

This author would like the whole economy to be run like our US healthcare system: all our buying decisions made for us by people like herself, self-selected to lord over us while picking our pockets. Perhaps she can afford the dreamworld she writes about. I can't.

"Time was, a popular novelist like Sinclair Lewis could win a Pulitzer (even if he declined it) with a novel like Arrowsmith. The protagonist is a scientist, rather dashing in his way--he gets, not one, but two girls. The science-run-amok trope isn't inevitable; it's a sign of the right-wing union of anti-progressive romanticism and fundamentalism."

Written science fiction is by science buffs, for science buffs; in some cases, by working scientists. But when a SF plot is whittled down for use by the liberal English majors who control Hollywood, the first thing they have to chuck overboard is any science that confuses them, personally. Then they add paranoia, explosions and the dash of anti-American sentiment that seems to be required by California law, and...they have themselves a movie.

"So why does Salon regularly print columns by Camille Paglia, a global warming denier?"

The scientific method is designed to survive all forms of faddism and corruption, eventually always arriving at the verifiable truth. A crucial element of the method is ongoing skepticism. No actual scientist would call any of his colleagues a "denier". Words like that are for politicians.

"I fear that Palin was just the first of many to come, as it seems that the movement has now taken on a joyous celebratory quality- the problem is with those damn smart people, not with US. "

You correctly identify the problem in your post, but the modern anti-science movement - the very one commented on by Robert Pirsig - flourished in the Seventies. Long before the coming of Palin and her belief in creation, Jane Fonda and her ilk had already driven America's industrial might overseas.

"Apparently a Nobel Prize isn't enough to convince some people in this area that Gore's argument is real. "

There IS NO NOBEL PRIZE in climatology, a brand new discipline, so the Nobel has no bearing on the accuracy of the global warming hypothesis. The Tennessee Charlatan's award was the Peace Prize, which is supposed to be go to a person who risked his life for the cause of peace. Gore stole the 2007 Nobel from Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean, who did exactly that.

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"How have the repeated trips to the moon, the "international" (paid for mostly by the U.S.) space station and the pointless shuttle flights benefited mankind in general? You can't defend the space program because space exploration borders on technological masturbation. It is the antithesis of the most bang for your buck."

People like you were around every time some adventurer stepped off the edge of the known and ventured to utterly different place. Fortunately, we are here today, doing what we do now, because the explorers didn't listen to them.

"You really are a giant clueless smelly A-hole."

This is how liberals use the English degrees they get at Bryn Mawr.

"France uses lots of nuclear power and they deal with the waste by reprocessing the fuel. The reprocessed fuel is more expensive than virgin fuel, "

We definitely want to recycle our nuclear waste. It's too valuable a resource, as France and Japan have found out, to throw away. But because America has a stable desert place to store waste in, it makes sense to keep it at Yucca Mountain while we wait for nuclear recycling to get cheaper.

Petroleum is Iraq's major marketable resource, so it follows that oil development is exactly what a war-ravaged nation needs to rebuild. If you had been around right after WW II, I supposed you would have whined on about 'exploitation' as soon as the first Toyotas started rolling off the production line.