Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. - Wernher von Braun

My comment on Bill Kristol's post repeating the nonsense talking point about Biden being a "a pick from weakness” because he's such a good pick.  

Within the past two days I’ve been whipped from desperate pessimism to wonderful hopefulness about our human future.    

 

James Lovelock this week wrote a piece titled “The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years”.   Ooooo.  That’s bad.  He’s a ‘real’ scientist: a NASA associate, nuclear energy advocate and inventor of the idea of earth as an organism in Ages of GAIA: A Biography of Our Living Earth.  In the OpEd he a makes a horribly believable case that because of our pathological misuse, inevitably our beautiful Earth/Gaia will soon become an uninhabitable wasteland.  Store that bottled water; you’ll need it if you become one of the few initial “breeding pairs” that repopulate the planet after it recovers in a hundred thousand years.

 

But today I listened to the Ray Kurzweil interview on NPR’s Science Friday where he claims that because information and biological innovations are growing exponentially, within this baby boomer’s lifespan, The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology.  I (and you, if you take good care of your current body for 20 years) will be able to stop the processes of aging.  Within another few decades that radically-life-extended old fart body will able to able have her (my) brain downloaded to a non-biological entity.  We’ll live forever in a technological utopia where the air will be clean, poverty eradiated and life is heaven because of accelerated advances in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.   He anchors the flights by keeping it close to current technology.  For instance, some patients now download software to their neural implants, and there’s a cure for pulmonary hypertension in animals using gene therapy that’s been approved for human trials.  Humans have difficulty seeing exponential advances because they look linear in the short run, but he’s so confident, that it’s rubbed off on this human who’s got a lot still to do.

Very funny posting if you've played text based adventure games.

As reported in the NYT today the Catholic Church is rethinking mean old limbo.  Here's one good theologian's take:  "You look at the proper theology, but if there is more consolation, all the better," said the Rev. Luis Ladaria, the Spanish Jesuit who is secretary general of the International Theological Commission, the official body working on limbo.
How convenient - they get to decide "What Is True" depending on "What Is Convenient"  and consoling for possible new converts.  Good for them.  If only science had it so easy!  

From the decision against the Dover School Board - the the biggest evolution case since Scopes:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/051220_kitzmiller_342.pdf

A few quotes:
"rigorous attachment to “natural” explanations is an essential attribute to science by definition and by convention" and "from a practical perspective, attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a “science stopper.”"

Here is the full sentence containing the "breathtaking inanity" phrase:
"The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which
has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."