WANT TO REALLY UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE? USE SCIENCE!

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Phoenix spacecraft confirms Martian soil contains ice

The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time.

The robot heated up ice in one of its instruments earlier this week. Scientists say the chemical test confirms the presence of ice near the Martian north pole.

A bit more here.

From Houston's KHOU TV:

Houston doctors say they may have found a way to destroy HIV

There is real hope that what’s happening in a Houston lab might lead to a cure for HIV.

“We have found an innovative way to kill the virus by finding this small region of HIV that is unchangeable,” said Dr. Sudhir Paul of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Dr. Paul and Dr. Miguel Escobar aren’t talking about just suppressing HIV – they’re talking about destroying it permanently by arming the immune system with a new weapon lab tests have shown to be effective.

Click here for the rest.

And from ABC News courtesy of the Huffington Post, courtesy of AlterNet:

Personalized Stem Cells One Step Closer to Reality

For the first time, scientists have proven that embryonic-like stem cells that are specific to both a person and to a disease can be manufactured using adult human cells.

Personalized stem cells may be the holy grail of science because of their potential to treat and allow the study of a myriad of diseases and conditions. And while there are still a number of hurdles to clear before this advance can be applied to humans, in the clinical setting this latest step, some say, shows promise of eventual human therapies.

Researchers from Harvard and Columbia Universities used skin cells from two patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, to create stem cells and then reprogrammed them to morph into replacement motor neurons.

Click here for the rest.

The only sure fire way of getting a handle on physical reality that the human race has is science, which is based on this simple philosophical maxim: observation, hypothesis, experimentation, repeat. Using this approach, scientists over the centuries have discovered the tools and physical laws that have created the building blocks for the marvelous civilization in which we now live. Without science, there would be far fewer human beings, and the relative few who would be around would live a short, miserable, painful, and fearful existence.

Yeah, I'm a nerd.

But this stuff really blows me away. Water on Mars dramatically ups the chances that evidence of non-terrestrial life will be found there. A very possible cure for HIV has its own obvious benefits, as does the ability to tailor make stem cells. This shit is incredible!

What's really wild is that the science community is making breakthroughs along these lines every fucking day of the week. I mean, it's a massive army of thinkers all trying to figure out how the universe functions, all for the purpose of making human life a bit better, increment by increment.

What's really disgusting is that science's main social competition for figuring out reality, religion, has some severe problems with all three of these milestones noted above. For instance, the fundamentalists, in keeping with their literal interpretation of Genesis, insist that god created life only on Earth: what will happen when science finds absolute evidence on Mars that the Bible is wrong? Another example, these same fundamentalists, along with other more moderate religious homophobes, pressured Congress for years in the 80s to block funding for AIDS research. Would this non-mutating part of HIV, this AIDS Achilles' heel, have been discovered five or ten years ago if gay-hating god-believers had kept their fucking mouths shut? Yet another example, these same people greatly slowed down stem cell research by banning federal funding for experimentation on embryonic stem cells because, according to their anti-abortion philosophy, embryos are human beings, and not to be used for experimentation, even if they are slated to be discarded by scores at fertility clinics. Would we already have a cure for Parkinson's or ALS if the religious loons of America did not try to impose their holy book knowledge on rational society?

And then there's the evolution versus creationism "debate."

Really, this whole fight between science and religion is simple. Religionists insist that truth comes from "holy" documents, handed down to man by some sort of paternal and invisible god figure; scientists insist that truth comes from observation, hypothesis, and experimentation. Call me an old-fashioned modernist, I put my faith in science.

It's a goddamned shame that so many Americans put their faith in bullshit.

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