As Eric Holder's administration has shown, the Department of Justice ought not to be trusted with such authority. As the incompetent, overbearing, and at times downright nefarious Transportation Security Administration has exhibited, some things created for our "protection" can end up proving to be far too much of a burden to reasonably stand. Furthermore, with the examples of China, Iran, and North Korea before us, we ought to be leery of anything granting the federal government any overreaching powers over the web. Piracy of entertainment and trade secrets must be reined in, but not at the cost of Internet freedom. SOPA has good intentions, but it does not too. Whatever bill is past must have a few more checks on government power here so that the medicine is not worse than the poison.

The divisions in this show how contentious and big the intellectual property battle will be, and all sorts of odd alliances are appearing. In favor of SOPA you have Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the Recording Industry Association of America, Netflix, the Directors Guild of America, Viacom, Nike, L'Oreal, Ford, Pfizer, NBC Universal, the National Basketball Association, and scores of trade unions, business organizations, and entertainment industry groups. Yes, the AFL-CIO, Hollywood, and the Chamber of Commerce all working together. Silicon Valley represents the bulk of the opposition, which includes Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, eBay, Wikipedia, and Mozilla, in addition to groups such as the Brookings Institution, American Express, Reporters Without Borders, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Tea Party Patriots. The Tea Party allied with the Silicon Valley giants and ACLU.

Congress is even more split, with all sorts of unusual alliances being made over SOPA. In favor of the act are a diverse sets of members including Howard Berman (D-CA, from Hollywood), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). Opponents, meanwhile, include Darrel Issa (R-CA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and John Conyers (D-MI). Odd, yes, to see Rubio, Feinstein, Boxer, and Grassley pitted against Issa, Pelosi, the Pauls, and Bachmann. I have not yet decided, but at this pointed I am leaning towards the argument against SOPA in its current form, and I say that as someone who has a very vested interest in protecting intellectual property, especially that of the entertainment industry. I just fear that there are not enough safeguards in SOPA in its current form, and that it would thus be dangerous to internet freedom and pose a direct threat to social media, Facebook and YouTube in particular. It is imperative that we find a way to stop online piracy, which costs American firms hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but we need to do it in a way that balances protecting both internet freedom and intellectual property.

The sea-dwelling mammals have long been of fascination to human beings for their often playful and curious nature, and their relative intelligence compared to most other creatures with whom we share the world. Of the sea creatures, they have proven to be among the most useful and easy to interact with for humans, in a way that horses and mules and dogs and cats are useful. There has been some excitement in the blogosphere lately due to this study that plans to create the first two-way communication between dolphins and humans through the use of some sophisticated technology and long-studied habits of the creatures. Some of the excitement is a bit overdone, though, as one of the scientists involved pointed out.

This is not an advancement towards "conversation" with dolphins. One cannot have true conversation with one's dog, for example, but we can relate certain commands to a dog that it can learn to be familiar with (as an aside, I tend to sometimes think my dogs can understand me or at least get what I'm feeling, but I understand there's no reasonable basis for that, just a feeling or a hope, I suppose!). It will be similar to the dolphins; just as we have worked out way of communicating certain things with our dogs (and are sometimes able to get an idea of something the dog is trying to communicate too depending on its actions and mood), these scientists are expecting to do the same with the dolphins. Perhaps it will help us learn more about how these creatures act, but it likely isn't going to be bringing any sort of tremendous revelation or use to us outside of the realm of these studies. At the end of the day they are still irrational and guided by instinct, incapable of understanding concepts like justice, liberty, and morality. Good luck, though, to these researches in working to further understand the fun creatures and building some sort of communications with them!

For a century, the scientific world has lived mostly under Einstein's theories of physics and relativity. Much of this theory is anchored in the idea that nothing is faster than the speed of light; that is the north pole for the compass of the theory currently accepted as law. It looks like CERN, however, seemed to consistently make some particles go 60 billionths of a second faster than the speed of light. Naturally, this is now causing the entire scientific community to scratch its head. The physicists at CERN quickly published the results of their experiment so that other scientists around the world could critique it and do their own studies. I am sure right now there are many-a-physicist crossing their fingers and hoping that someone finds a flaw in their experiment, rather than upending a century's worth of scientific theory. Apparently this kid, Jacob Barnett, who I referenced some months ago really was onto something when he said that parts of Einstein's theory of relativity don't compute. I'd be happy to see what he makes of the data!

Good luck to them in their pursuit of knowledge. If the current theory regarding time and space is proven wrong, all-the-better for us and our continued efforts to figure out how things work. Science should be ever-changing and ever-learning to try and understand the physical things of life. But perhaps this can serve as a lesson to people to remember that science presents only theories and probabilities--useful, yes, but theories nonetheless. If you want truth, go read some Aristotle.