HOT5 Daily 7/30/2010

1. "Round One Masque for the "Ground Zero Mosque"" One of the better articles I've seen on the NYC mosque controversy.

Representative Sample: Moslems have as much right to erect Islamic cultural and religious centers as do members of any other religion; we have freedom of religion in America. But that does bring us to the other side of this controversy: How far does religious liberty extend? And must we treat every religious institution with exactly the same degree of scrutiny as all of the others, or can we discriminate on the basis of actual behavior?

2. "Say it after me: “If Bush had said this…”" There would probably have been calls for his impeachment.

Representative Sample: if Reagan, either of the Bushes, Clinton… or any modern president had said that, there would be huge demonstrations and race hustlers such as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton would be calling for his resignation. If it were said at a Tea Party or put on a sign, it would be taken as proof that the Tea Parties are just a racist front.

3. "The Truth About Scientology (Infographic)" Scientology vs. reality in graphic form.

Representative Sample: It's a graphic.

4. "Farms: On the Moon? Quite Likely" Could we grow food for other space exploration missions?

Representative Sample: Apollo-era research suggested that plants would grow fine in moon soil, and that it was safe for food crops. But there just wasn't enough to do thorough field testing (literally and figuratively) with what we found on Earth's satellite.

5. "Six reasons why you won't upload your mind" Just in case you had plans to do so. Links an interesting article and comments on it.

Representative Sample: I agree that our understanding of human consciousness and how it supervenes on brain activity is at a primitive stage, and there's no sign that it's improving at the rate needed. The lack of sufficiently powerful hardware is not the real issue: the deepest problems would remain even if we had infinite computing power available.

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