Paging Mr. Bond

Declan Butler probed into a shadowy organization with "3,000 scientists, including more than 100 Nobel laureates" on its membership rolls.
"Nature polled several WIF fellows who advertise their fellowships on their websites. What emerges is a pattern whereby scientists join on the strength of the list of existing members, but know little about the foundation or its activities."
"Among the WIF’s stated goals are the creation “for the future benefit of all humankind” of the ORE-STEM Complex, a proposed US$22.5 billion proposal it describes as a “scientific, technological, engineering and manufacturing complex — the world’s largest open-research establishment."

Visionary futurist organization, or Bond supervillain organization.

You make the call.

How not to reconvert an atheist

As I mentioned a couple years back, the LA Times' religion editor lost his faith and wrote a few articles about the experience. He's recently expanded these to a whole book, and he's gotten a lot of fan-mail from Christian readers helping to pull him back into the fold. Here's his response.

He remains a "reluctant" atheist and (as I said at the time) I never found his reason for giving up Christianity very compelling, but his essay still has an interesting perspective (and a few funny bits).

Live in a geode

Better housing through chemistry.