For all the talk of technological advancement and our current predicament, there is no mention of the advances in two possible avenues for clean energy which are gathering momentum: Fusion and Space-based-solar.

Plenty will say they're still "pie in the sky" but they are as real as the revolution in memory and microcircuitry that has brought us a world of nanotechnology and quantum computation...and they are leading us to where energy will be so inepensive that rectifying past environmental wrongs and utilizing manufacturing techniques that by today's standards are dirty (cuz to make 'em clean would cost too much energy) will be not just the right thing to do, but it will be cheap since the energy required will be cheap.

This new energy revolution is at hand, which doesn't mean we can afford a misstep or to be ignorant and careless. There's still a good chance of missing the opportunity...and one way, aside form war on a global scale, to hobble these advances is to place the imaginative but largely un-substantiated claims of climate change in such a position that it makes building that bridge to the future all the more difficult. Let's use the trillions of dollars that climate change would cost and use it to develope the clean and abundant energy that is ubiquitious in our world. It's raining soup and all we need is a bucket...preferrably one with a functioning bottom.

Enjoyed reading this, and was delighted by Nimoy's anectdote regarding his meeting "not McCain".

You know there is particular segment of our population who find great affinity with Spock as well, those with Aspergers. I reminded of the remarkable story of Temple Grandin who despite her being diagnosed as being autistic is able to communicate at a very high level and has been remarkably successful in her profession in Veterinary Science and as a writer explaining the perspective of those who who think visually, instead of symbolically...and logically...and, no surprise, she has commented on how her fellow Aspies find a something of a role model in Spock.

Where would Silicon Valley be with those who emulate Spock?

So if Obama is Spock, Biden is Kirk, and it's nice to see the "Enterprise" operated using logic, facts and science instead of political drama for a change.

Thanks Wingnut. Always appreciate your perspectives here. I hope they continue, if for no other reason than the uproar being good for the spleen.

The rise of the recent anti-science rhetoric is heavily dependent on a few perceptions, evolution in schools being one and of course the perception of stem cell research and the heavy moral overtones...and last but not least the AGW claxon of alarm.

I am pretty much a left leaning liberal in most things and I am astonished at how anti-science the left can be too...as a matter of fact it appears that it's a race to the bottom when it comes to appealing to the fear and lack of understanding in science research and it's pretty easy to mischaracterize research as either a waste of money (anyone remember William Proxmier?) or a misplaced piece of political polemics. But why not, look who we elect on either side? Lawyers largely who are better at rhetoric than research and show over substance.

The Dems have disgraced themselves as many times as anyone when it comes to anti-science: Jenny McCarthy and vaccines? I applaud her compassion but that's not science. The unspoken but widespread prohibition on discussing the genetics of race and sexual characteristics or intelligences...ooh, watch out for being called a nazi. And now climate change...worst case scenarios only and what's so scientific when a lifelong politician, smart though he may be, declares unilaterally that "the debate is over"?

What would be really scientific is if we stopped interpreting the world as right versus left but intsead took a deeper and more nunaced look at political science itself and redefinied the landscape as being along an x+y axis instead of the shallow silhouette of right and left (ignoring the historical origins of it), without parallax, without depth, without form...our political thought and discussion, for the sake of simplicity has become a complex shadow that resembles nothing in reality and everything in nightmares.

Who'd a thunk that Britany's boy toy would grow to be the master of skit comedy on SNL...it was a really brilliant bit. Of course, hilariously funny usually signifies something profound underneath and in this case it is certainly the case. Here, the hippest are enraptured by mature women, who hold the mysteries of sexual pleasure and can teach it to them. Of course older men are fixated on youth. It's in our genes, just like younger women want mature men so they can be elevated in status and be more certain of successful offspring.

Our lockstep age cohort system of teen-dating has placed an un-natural taboo on the very type of age mixing that used to insure the the generations weren't stratified but were intertwined, cohesive and as our biological history and evolution have shown, made us the successful species we are. Now that's science.