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Hey, you're the one that asked what made great fantasy. Eddings certainly has the confrontation with a straw god...though I would have to say his fantasy is far below greatness. Jordon also has the confrontation with God (and with the straw god), though of course he is not great either...

Funding an innovative space program. Why? Because more money, in and of itself, does not economic prosperity make. If you got this money by any means that didn't in and of itself create millions of jobs in the economy, then dumping it on the market will simply cause a marked decrease in the...

Embryonic stem cell research does raise some ethical issues that aren't present with adult or infant stem cell research, but there is also the simple fact that all the pie in the sky promises about the medical possibilities of toti-potentiality haven't produced anything. Adult stem cells are...

Don't get too attached. Who knows but that next year astro-physicists will decide the universe is really made of green cheese, and thus is slowly shrinking as the whey leaks out ;)

Well there are the books of the EarthSea trilogy. Ged first has to overcome his own lust for power, and learn that to a mage, power is not greatness. Then he has to overcome his fear of the Dark Ones, and learn that he is himself. Then there is Tenar, she faces this in a much more classic...

The expansion of the universe isn't a calculated fundamental constant, it is an observed phenomenon. Prior to the observations of an expanding universe, even Einstein modified his theory of relativity to account for a static universe (he later felt this was the stupidest thing he had ever done...

The confrontation with God. The moment when a character has to question the meaning behind the universe he lives in, and transcends the paper morality of a straw god.

Well, I suppose that is a construction that we could apply to Tinky-Winky...if the shows creators had actually stated as their purpose in creating the character something like, "We want to use this character to train children to be more accepting of the concept of a New Order world government...

Zero Point Energy You're neglecting the fact that this theory incorperates the idea of zero-point energy, which has actually been obeserved in the laboratory. So it is hardly as though they don't have other evidence that this phenomenon exists. The idea that the expansion of the universe...

Re:Ancient Egyptian town rediscovered Take the binary representation for "This is a code that cannot be broken without a key." Use logical bitwise XOR to combine it with a random bit pattern, which produces a string of bytes equal in length to the original code. If you don't have at least...

Currently we manufacture C60 with a bunsen burner. It doesn't exactly take a nuclear reactor. Scientists have figured out how to get C60 molecules to string together into what is called a carbon nanotube. Basically, you have a tiny clump of Nickel and some other metals which catalyzes the...

We are not alone I don't think that anything much would happen. Think about it. First, you would just have an interesting signal. Various scientists would study it, hypothesize that it was being created by this or that natural process, or that it showed these characteristics of being...

There is a theory behind the Pons and Fleishman experiment, though. The general idea is that because microporous pallidium can sort of "absorb" hydrogen, if you use a microporous pallidium cathode in electrolysis of deuterium enriched water, then the high density of positively ionized hydrogen...

I didn't think that Tinky-Winky was gay either, until I read the statements of the show's creators that they were intentionally trying to subvert gender roles in the characters they depicted...after which I had to admit that if he wasn't gay, at least he was supposed to be. Just like I don't...

Well, if we're making nominations.... Does anyone remember Waterworld? Now that was a truly "awesome" movie.

>:(Grrr! >:( I already debunked the moon hoax claims!

The typical method seems to involve sending something through, which has the side benefit of checking to see if the wormhole is actually stable.

Re:Ancient Egyptian town rediscovered I would tend to exclude a hoax as an explanation, given the amount of evidence. Besides, if the tablet wasn't intended to be decipherable without a key, then it could easily be made impossible to decipher without the key. It may be a marker, perhaps one...

Yes, well, if SETI succeeds, I'm sure that the FCC will become a very important agency indeed ;)

We won't be "sharing knowledge" in any meaningful way. Two way communications at tens or hundreds of light-years wouldn't be feasible anyway. We'd just be listening in on someone else's radio broadcasts.