One additional response that was missed here is that simply in energy terms, Palin's facts to not wash. We are at or near peak oil, and what this means is that there is no way we can drill our way out of it. An excellent presentation by Jeffrey J. Brown on UC TV (http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=14989) mentions that when Texas passed its peak (long ago), drillers went wild looking for more oil, but production declined just the same. The Republican mantra of "drill, baby drill" is just whistling past the graveyard, as well as selling our future down the river environmentally and economically.

I can not believe that anyone takes Stu Kaufman seriously. He throws out the most nebulous thoughts, makes up meaningless words for his empty ideas, and people flock to him like he was some kind of new-age guru. He is interested in important questions- he just is not offering any coherent thoughts about them. Quantum involvement in brain consciousness? How absurd- he should be drummed out of the sciences. If you really want to learn something about the brain and consciousness, read Buszaki: Rhythms of the brain.

I'm sorry, but this poem was atrocious, featuring all that has gone wrong in modern poetry and writer's workshops for decades.

Joseph Lowery's benediction- now that was poetry! Gritty, rooted, heartfelt and sung with transcendent emotion. Beating tanks into tractors? Wow!

Future inaugural organizers should stage contests for poetry, so that a thousand flowers can bloom, and perhaps some rap will come our way at the next inauguration!

The 2088 video was interesting, but what they forgot to mention was virtual reality. It is highly likely that by that time we will all be so plugged into our mighty-mini-computers that while we will still have domestic lives and enjoy local physical interactions, anything farther than a walk will be virtually accessible- work sites, vacations, conferences, etc... it will all be immersive, total virtual reality, Matrix-like. All the frenetic traveling that we now do will be a thing of the past... something for documentarians and adventurers.

With all due respect, the false "balance" of this piece is clearer nowhere than in Andrea's indictment of blogs as the poison of the new body politic. The principle conduit of hate over the last decade has been conservative talk radio and FOX news. They have found commercial gold in cultivating and fondling the fear and hate-sensors of the red body politic. As she says herself, the rabid participants of her rallies are parroting- not blogs, but the broadcast hate media.

Conversely, the progressives were pathetically late to this party, mobilized on MSNBC and the blogosphere only after the descent into horrifying misgovernment of the last eight years, which has been so evident to (virtually) all. On the radio, Air America has gone nowhere, and why? Because progressives are not, by nature, haters. They vote for hope and healing when they can. Even now, the blogosphere is going to be all over the place- far more diverse and atomized than the top-down corporate-controlled (not to say Republican-controlled, via Ailes) broadcast hate media.

With best wishes...

This story was unbelievably stupid. Are the stomach, intestines, liver, etc. the organs of digestion? No- food is needed as well. These organs interact with food, so any study of digestion will require a noetic, holistic, possibly dualistic, emergentist, certainly mystic, and probably gnostic, study of the organ-food gestalt .. to put it in philosophical terms, of course.

A small vocabulary note is in order here. Wingnut has valiantly stated the conservative view in the best possible light, tenuous though it may be. But he slips in an expression that I think is not fair pool:

And conservatives, as a general rule, have an interest in conserving those traditions.

In this debate, it is really gays who have an interest, seeing as they are being discriminated against. Conservatives have a preference about hewing to traditions, religious dogma, etc. They are not being torn from their marriages or prohibited from co-owning assets, etc. The cases of interest that Wingnut does bring up, regarding the rights of conservatives to continue discriminating while employed in public and commercial enterprises, are regrettable instances, but are not class-wide interests, or at least one certainly hopes not.

"Expert opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of massive government investment in technology."

Well, to be frank, expert opinion (outside the oil industry) is even more on the side of raising energy prices to incentivize this research, exactly as Waxman says (not to mention incentivizing conservation, as another letter-writer says). Just look at what is happening right now to renewable projects caught in the blowback of low oil prices. Solar and wind projects that previously were economic no-brainers are now hanging by the thread of government mandates.

The comparison to computer economics is spurious, because energy is not as leverage-able. Progress in squeezing an extra few percent efficiency out of solar panels is far more difficult than progress in miniaturizing circuits another ten-fold, and has lower payoff. This is exactly the situation where markets shine, generating diverse ideas and approaches in a huge industry with a glacial pace of change. Remember the synfuels fiasco of the Carter administration? The government did a great job there!

I really don't get it- one censorship mistake, and the world is up in arms? Cool your jets, people. Most of the complaints have been that they are too restrictive. Now not restrictive enough. I wouldn't call that a fiasco, I'd call it doing a pretty good job keeping on a fine line.