And there are (and the AIDS cocktails target a lot of them... AIDS only has about 5-10 genes), the problem is, are they exposed to the exterior surface of the virus? Imagine an umbrella protecting the rest of the virus. You can't change the struts that support it too much, or it doesn't work well, but the exterior…

Hepatitis B does have a vaccine.... you might be thinking of Hep C. But yeah, in general, we've gone after the viruses that are the easiest to create vaccines for first, and gotten quite a few, and its worth noting that they were all diseases that the body confronted specifically with antibodies. However, the immune…

With the advances in artificial diamond making that I've been reading about lately, it may not be too long before we can test these theories experimentally, and try and replicate blue, pink and red diamonds and their various odd effects while building them from the ground up.

A woman may be beheaded in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft in the next couple of weeks.

Now, I wasn't sure if those were Daenerys's bloodriders, or if they were some of XXD's household guards... everyone was wearing the same basic thing, so it could have been either.

Why remove your enemy's greatest weakness? That guy she killed was probably way, way more valuable to them than Theon.

I'd suggest that HBO could go farther, perhaps with its depictions of homosexuality, and male bodies (didn't we get some full frontal of Theon last season?), to balance the books as it were, I think its supposed to be messy, horrible, and uncomfortable. At least its not like True Blood, where all the supernatural…

That scene, and Theon's previous treatment of women in the show, were also good to show how easily he'd blunder trying to seduce his sister, and perhaps point out how different he is from the significantly less pleasant culture of the Iron Islands, given that their whole culture revolves around rape and sexual…

I'd also say that the notion of atheists having no morals is really nursed by the host of conversion stories where people claim to have been completely wild and immoral before they found whatever god they worship. That sort of stuff goes all the way back to Augustine, who was so terribly immoral, he stole fruit from…

I don't think that's even the half of why atheist are distrusted. I think part of it is that simply saying "I'm an atheist" to a religious person is considered offensive, because they interpret it as "I think your important beliefs are wrong". Its something that religious people are constantly trying to pigeon hole…

I guess my only problem with the whole story is that you can't just put scientists in a simulation and expect them to create new inventions, when they have to do experiment on unknown aspects of the physical world that your simulation would have to already know for them do their work. Maybe they could do it with…

Every time I see a Killer Whale rush on shore and take a baby seal, I think, the only difference between a person and a seal is that we are worse swimmers with smaller claws.

The economy will have to be really out of whack when buying a robot will be cheaper than hiring some teenager to work for tips.

I guess my biggest problem is that the message of Avatar is undercut by several points.

Didn't we? I seem to recall there being some weird HAARP like thing that they were using in that movie that may or may not have stopped the Earth's core.

Initially he did.... I liked most of his earlier books, but somewhere along the line he started presuming too much. I think it was around the publishing of Enchantment... the characters in there had the same weird moral obligation to have a big family that didn't make a lot of sense. That sort of stuff only gets…

There was a Retcon in Ender's Shadow, that the Mormon and Catholic parents wanted a third child regardless of the law, because religion demands it, and that makes it the moral choice, I guess? And they just happened to get the dispensation at the same time.

I just assumed that the 8th Doctor looked into the Time Vortex, became godlike and obliterated both the Daleks and the Time Lords, and then regenerated from the strain of it all. I feel like the 9th Doctor was the 'regretful' one... but perhaps I'm reading things wrong, its been along time since I saw the start of…

Yeah, it might be nice, if you're going to throw angels into my sci-fi, to at least take the time to sit back and explain why, if this is all what God wants, why he/she is such a bastard.

I kind of like it the way it is... it seems like the Time Lords going all out in a war would be too insane to actually put to paper. I mean, look what the Master did with a Tardis and a box of scraps. It seems to make sense that the full on Time Lord civilization would be pulling out its own greatest heroes and…