Whether we consider coal-mine deaths, or deaths above ground (30,000 - 60,000 in the U.S. annually, depending on which study you read), non-renewable energy takes a stunning toll on humanity. To be sure, going without power would be an even greater killer, since electricity runs most of the life-sustaining and enhancing equipment we take for granted. This boon of energy comes at a huge cost, however, and it does not have to be an either/or choice. Renewable energy has been technically feasible for decades, but a national energy policy which rewards and supports fossil energy producers keeps it from being realized.

The worst travesty is that for all the coal we mine, most of the energy produced is wasted. Over 65% thermal conversion loss occurs (Source: EIA Annual Energy Review 2006) in thermal power plants. There's got to be a better way.

There are so many alternative choices, it's staggering. Wind, which is coming on strong, tidal power, solar (100 by 100 miles of solar collectors could supply enough energy for the entire country, according to Sandia National Labs), and the biggest source of all: the hot rock underneath our feet. The USGS has a downloadable document about geothermal energy which states the following:

Even if only 1 percent of the thermal energy contained within the uppermost 10 kilometers of our planet could be tapped, this amount would be 500 times that contained in all oil and gas resources of the world.

I mentioned respiratory deaths earlier, but we haven't even considered the deaths and massive expenditures required to keep U.S. oil imports flowing. North American natural gas has peaked, and soon we will be importing that too, if the business-as-usual crowd has their way. Now that we have C02 to consider in the equation, it is nothing short of criminal to keep consuming coal and other fossil fuels. There is only one reason it's happening, and it's the same motivation which underlies the equally deadly global arms trade--money.

But there are fortunes to be made in renewable energy as well. Big fortunes. All it takes is a government with the political will to slap down the entrenched kleptocrats in the fossil industries. Let's call a halt to the murderous and wasteful U.S. energy policy. Our planet and our lives literally depend on it.

No relationship, with parents or otherwise, is worth having if a person doesn't accept you for who you are. If you want that acceptance, then you will have to shout who you are in a loud enough voice that everyone you associate with knows about it. (Get some atheist T-shirts and bumper stickers if necessary) You will lose some friends and gain new ones. This process may be difficult, but pretending to be someone you're not is even worse. Get right with yourself, and you will solve the ethical problem that caused you to lie on your application.

Come out! And transfer out of that brainwash-mill you're attending--right away.

Some people prefer that everything be smooth and nice and non-confrontational. That we get along nicely with everyone, no matter what their ideas. But ideas have implications--strong ones. They shape a person's every act. When they are incoherent or hidebound by unsupportable traditions (as we find with most organized religions), they can cause otherwise good people to justify horrendous acts. They make people untrustworthy and unpredictable. God can tell them to do anything, and then God can change his mind.

The bad ideas of religion can also affect your education and modes of thought in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

You're already way ahead of most people, in that you have philosophically rejected religion. Now claim the prize and fully embrace who you are. I was raised religious and I became a minister when I was 23. I spent precious years of my youth professing one thing and believing another. (Though I kind of made myself believe it for a while.)

I had doubts from the time I was maybe 13, I waited until I was 30 to leave the church, and several more years before I fully came out as an atheist. It was a waste of precious time. Do it now. You'll be glad you did.

Salon, another groaner. After your inexplicable dalliance with the confused ramblings of Camille Paglia, it's hard to pretend you're still intellectually or politically relevant, or to justify my subscription fees, which have continued unabated since about 2002. (That will likely change).

Under the jaunty subhead "Atoms & Eden" you pander to the worst cliches and stereotypes about atheism. You give a science-trashing religious partisan absolutely free and unfettered access to your audience. While Steve Paulson tried mightily to introduce a note of skepticism, Haught outmaneuvered him.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Theology cannot survive without attacking science. Theology cannot survive without fabrication, equivocation, and appealing to a fundamentally sentimental anthropomorphization of God and the universe. How it would (the thought is delicious!) terrify Haught if he were to realize that his God exists not only in the form of man, but is also a product of him.

To watch Salon participate in yet another attempt to wheeze life into the expired bones of Haught's discredited Bronze Age fantasies makes me want to gag and hurl great chunks of indignation--the sickening saccharine sweetness and neatness of it all. What, are we two years old??

Ugh.

His book seems nothing if not a desperate lullaby for those too afraid to live with the reality that we are all but specks in an uncertain and unknowable universe. "Go back to sleep kiddies. You are special and loved. God is in his heaven, and it's a place of order--a place for everything, and everything in its place."