Dixzon

Your "machine of light" description sounds similar to trips people have on DMT, sometimes referred to as the spirit molecule because of the profound spiritual experience people have while on it. These experiences are said to be like near death experiences. Do you believe what you saw represented something real, but beyond your understanding, or was it just a fantasy your brain cooked up?

What is your opinion about the professor at Harvard who had to resign after suggesting that men and women's brains may be different?

I am a research scientist, planning on filing a patent application for a new type of plastic solar cell. I don't know yet for sure if it will work, but if it does work the way I think it does, it could be an enormous boon to humanity. However, if someone with more funding than me can simply steal my idea, where is my motivation to invent this thing?

I suppose there is altruism and doing it for the good of mankind and all that. But altruism won't put food in my belly. What do you think of people in my position?

I also have no reason to share my knowledge concerning useful things I create. to mankind that unless I can patent it.

Don't you think abolishing patents would stifle and slow scientific progress? Seems like a lot to sacrifice for some ideals about property rights. I don't want to sue anybody, but I do want to be able to own the knowledge I create, so that I can profit from it in an honest legitimate way, i.e. producing and selling the product.

I can't ever do that successfully though, if Dow chemical can simply read my recipe and do it themselves, outproduce and undercut me.

So I guess I'd be forced to use a trade secret then. I have to keep my invention and the recipes to make it a secret. Now nobody but me can ever have or benefit from the knowledge. How is that a win for anyone?

Sorry, lots of questions I know, but I am just trying to understand why you think this way about intellectual property.

Apparently the anthrax scare shortly after 9/11 was from a strain of anthrax traced by the FBI back to a U.S. military research lab. In your opinion, was that scare a psychological operation carried out by the CIA or a similar organization to get people behind an invasion of Iraq?