The way I understand it is the Higgs is what gives particles mass, so with a better understanding some time in the future we could say create ultra massive or ultra light particles by choice. But I'm no physicst and thats way into the future talk.

Just wait for the Bill Nye special, "Let me tell you about my friend the Hardon!"

I rather like the ring of just calling it 'Higgs-Boson' my self, it rolls off the tounge nice with out any need for a fancy religious debate.

If you want to count that aye, but most of that is done at your home station. Feild training is only a few week stretches.

Depends on your unit and mission really, but a year is average. I don't think I've ever heard of any single deployment being longer than 18 months.

If they'd just come out and say that rather than animal rights propaganda I'd be just fine with the whole thing.

I have a theory on cute/sentimental factor when it comes to eating and torturing things. I know people who are adamantly against eating deer because they saw bambi but are just fine with cow.

See, the cognitive argument just doesn't fly with me either, who are we to say one animal is smarter than the other.

An animal is an animal, it should be a oh well this one is less bad (not as cute?) senario.

"But the IOM said that most of this work can be done using mouse models or by studying cells in a dish."

Even thats wrong judging from all the stuff I've read on the subject. Its really just where the calender rolls over to zero to start over again.

I find they have to put these kind of articles out on a semi regular basis, I remember reading more than one article on their site about the Mars being as big as the moon hoax.

Hey, you know Bill stepped down from day to day activities a few years ago right?

On a simular note.

Yet not at the same time.

See that makes more sense than just throwing it out based on it not being in the standard dictionary.

She's a witch, she turned me into a newt. May we burn her?

I could of swore they already did a mentos and coke episode.

So about 2 dollars (conservative guess, I don't buy much coke) for a 2 liter of coke, little under 4 liters in a gallon.

Words exist as we use them in common speech, not how dictionaries written in 1872 say they exist.