I was going to post a frivolous Brain Parade up tonight but as I’m all grumpy and introspective from my battles with nicotine withdraw I can’t be asked to write anything funny. So today I’m going to give you a bit of controversy by asking whether scientists should criticize religion or if this is counterproductive?

We ask the question: Much of what has been written about nanotech revolves around fairly advanced/far future scenarios. What however do you thing are going to be some of the impacts and applications over the next few years?

We kick off this week with a series of brain parades on nanotechnology, it’s risks and possible rewards.

Putting aside grey goo style scenarios for a moment, do you think there are other existential risks/safety concerns that we should be worrying about with respect to nanotechnology?

Just in case you thought I’ve turned into a completely silly blogger I’ve got a brainy and serious Brain Parade for you:

We seem to be awash in technological/scientific issues that raise serious ethical questions nowadays. Of these which concern/interest you the most?

Do you think it likely that the first discovery of extraterrestrial life will be made by a rover?

MT: I’m not properly qualified to answer this question but I will anyways: Yes. There at least I kept my uninformed opinion short.

That Mars vs. Moon debate isn’t new. I’m partial to the Moon myself, partly out of sheer practicality and partial out of temperment. There’s something very appealing to me about a human presence on the moon.

Maybe this comes from four years of filling out hazardous waste pick-up labels when I was a grad student, but I’m inclined to think we might be better off working out energy technologies that don’t produce hazardous waste.

I kick the week off with a short exchange with technology writer Paul Gilster author of Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration on the subject of spaceflight.

We’re seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of scientitic research and conspiracy theories involving climatologists and Global Warming. At the same time supernatural thinking (new age, crystals, ID, deified interpretations of the Gaia hypothesis) are thriving. Should we be concerned by the level of magical thinking in our society? And if so what, if anything can be done about it?

The 21st century has been hyped up to be the biotech century. Do you agree with this assessment? And if so what killer app do you think we might see (or would like to see) next?

The world’s commercial airline fleet vanishes overnight. What do you replace it with?

MT: And once again I’ve been beaten to the punch by the commentators (Tim Pratt is the guilty party this time). Without further adieu:

I’ve got a lot of good commentary on this Brain Parade from people who are much more knowledgeable and articulate on the subject than I am so instead of giving you my two pence let’s just get straight to the commentators:

I’m not going to answer this Brain Parade myself. I’ve already in fact written on this topic here (link) and I’ve got plenty of good commentary that covers most of the bases I’d want to elaborate on further anyway.

One thing I like about this blog is that I get to ask just about all kinds of brainy types questions that have been nagging me. Today I have a short interview with Daniela Cerqui. She’s an anthropologist currently conducting research at the University of Reading’s Cybernetics dept

Today we talk about our aspirations of what we’ll be doing on the internet in five years time. Here’s today’s question:

What do you see yourself doing on the internet in five years that you aren’t doing now?

Today I pester science blogger Jennifer S Griffin on biological and molecular kinds of things.

MT How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

JG There is a very wide range of science fiction, and some of it is brilliant and fascinating.

Robert Peckyno has been a lecturer for the “Introduction to Space Studies” course at the University of North Dakota as well as the webmaster for Volcano World for the past four years. He is currently leaving UND to begin PhD work at Oregon State focusing on Martian volcanism and geomorphology.

I’m responding to this article (link) in Seed titled Discovery for the Sake of Discovery (cheers to Double A for the spottage)

The author makes comparison’s between science and religion which I think are totally naff and I’m going to tell you why.

I’m continuing the robots and ethics thread that I started with that Kevin Warwick interview last week (link). This week I bring you the perspective of Daniel Wilson author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising, a funny and informative book on the future of robotics that reads like a quirky non-fiction take on science fiction.

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate and how changes related to varying forcings relate to variations due to intrinsic (unforced) climate variability, using general circulation models. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us on the subject of climate change.

Being the hard sf geek that I am I decided to run a Brain Parade where I questioned some science types on how they felt about the way science is portrayed in the genere. Here’s the question I posed:

How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

As promised here’s the second part of our Underrated Technology Brain Parade. Just in case you missed it the original is here (link). Here’s the question I posed to our commentators:

Out of our currently exsisting technologies, is there one that you feel has the most underrated potential?

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics and carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. I first heard of Kevin Warwick on the news several years ago when his nervous system was wired up to a computer. I didn’t take much notice of him at the time but I saw him again on Building Gods (a documentary available on Google Video- link)

I had the pleasure of interviewing Natasha recently, a transhumanist theorist and futurist with a background in the arts. She was kind enough to answer a few questions about transhumanism and futurism for us.

The timing could not have been worse. While the United States suffered repeated pounding by hurricanes, on 19th September 2005 NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin announced the details of President Bush’s plan to return human explorers to Earth’s moon and go on to Mars.