Why Hacking the Atmosphere Won't Happen Any Time Soon →

It’s worth spending some more time on the National Academy of Sciences reports on geoengineering prospects and concerns — the concerns mainly being about adding sun-blocking particles to the atmosphere to counteract global warming driven by the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
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Pierrehumbert’s prime concern (there are plenty more, all legitimate) is that any sun-blocking intervention done at climate scale would have to continue unabated for millenniums, or until CO2 removal was in high gear — or risk climatic whiplash if veils of reflective materials dissipated.
That should be enough to deter any countries from going global with such efforts.
But I’ve long seen plenty of other reasons why this is almost assuredly a nonstarter in any case. The main one is diplomatic, not technological. Who sets the thermostat?

Canada's Right-to-Die Ruling May Fuel U.S. Movement: Experts →

The Canadian Supreme Court's reversal of a 21-year ban on doctor-assisted death offers a bold, new legal argument that could propel the American movement—in short: Aid-in-dying is pro-life, activists assert.
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To qualify for assisted dying in Canada, an individual must be a consenting, mentally competent adult with a "grievous and irremediable" condition that causes "endless suffering," physical or psychological, the court said.
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"People [in most states] who are terminally ill and looking forward to some sort of horrific symptoms before they die are forced to end their lives prematurely … while they can still boost themselves over the balcony or in front of the train or put a gun in in their mouths," Coombs Lee told NBC News.
If death-with-dignity was legal across the U.S., those people might live longer, knowing they could have a "peaceful aid-in-dying option," she said. "It prolongs lives, pure and simple."
Only five U.S. states allow aid-in-dying: Oregon, Washington and Vermont by legislation; and Montana and New Mexico by court rulings currently being challenged. Forty states explicitly ban the practice.

If I die on Mars: meet the people on a mission to be first on the red planet ... and stay there – video →

Three volunteers are on the shortlist to be among four people on the Mars One programme, the first manned space flight to Mars – a one-way trip that's effectively a suicide mission. A physics student in the UK, a young doctor from Mozambique and an Iraqi-American woman, all happy to sacrifice their futures for a place in history. Why do they want to leave Earth, and who are they leaving behind? As the list of potential Mars explorers is whittled down further on 16 February, meet those competing to be the first to land on the Red Planet.

Obama Sends Letter to Congress Seeking Authorization of ISIS Fight →

 President Obama on Wednesday formally asked Congress to authorize a three-year military campaign against the terrorist group the Islamic State that would avoid a large-scale invasion and occupation but in addition to air power could include limited ground operations by American forces to hunt down enemy leaders or rescue American personnel.

A proposal sent by the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday would formally give the president the power to continue the airstrikes he has been conducting since last fall against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, as well as “associated persons or forces.” The measure would set limits that were never imposed during the wars of the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq by expiring in three years and withholding permission for “enduring offensive ground combat operations.”

But in a letter to Congress accompanying the proposal, Mr. Obama, who has said there would be no boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria, envisioned limited ground combat operations “such as rescue operations” or the use of “Special Operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.” He also said the legislation would allow the use of ground forces for intelligence gathering, target spotting and planning assistance to ground troops of allies like Iraq’s military.

No Escape From History →

...And there is simply no way to understand segregation in this country without understanding the housing policies of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt and the G.I. Bill signed by Democratic president Harry Truman. Barack Obama is a Christian and the president of the United States and thus the inheritor of the full legacy of that grand office. He is neither, as Ross tries to position him, an outsider to American sin nor Christian sin. It’s his heritage too, and Obama is wise enough to know that he can’t simply charge off the bad parts of that heritage to intransigent Southern bigots.

It has been enlightening to watch this entire spectacle play out over the past week. There are now intelligent people going on television to tell us that the president should not use the word "crusade" to describe ... The Crusades. The problem is history. Or rather the problem is that there is no version of history that can award the West a stable moral high-ground. Some of the most prominent Christian leaders in this country used their authority to burnish the credentials of South Africa's racist regime—not in the 1960s, in the 1980s. At this very moment, there are reports that Uganda's attempt to make sex between men a capital offense is tied to the very sponsors of the Prayer Breakfast where Obama spoke. In such a world, a certainty about which "side" is always good and which "side" is forever evil doesn't really exist. And in an uncertain world, Obama is making a wise appeal for vigilance—vigilance against the death cult of ISIS, and vigilance against the allure of death cults period—even those inaugurated in the name of one's preferred God.

Christian Soldiers →

The debate over the meaning, tone, and quoted history of Obama's address at the National Prayer Breakfast keeps on rolling, and there have been several excellent essays recently:

...The vastly different environments of pre–civil rights America and the modern-day Middle East belies the substantive similarities between the fairly recent religious violence of our white supremacist forebears and that of our contemporary enemies. And the present divide between moderate Muslims and their fanatical opponents has an analogue in our past divide between northern Christianity and its southern counterpart.

This isn’t relativism as much as it’s a clear-eyed view of our common vulnerability, of the truth that the seeds of violence and autocracy can sprout anywhere, and of the fact that our present position on the moral high ground isn’t evidence of some intrinsic superiority.

The point (to me) of Obama's most fractious passage was to end the divisive "Us versus Them" mentality of many in the US Christian community against Muslims in general. Taking a look inward, reviewing the grotesque parts of Christian history, can be healthy, useful for building bridges with allies. It's too bad (but not surprising) that hasn't happened.