NGTV / Lion TV via PBS

UCLA Professor Jared Diamond has studied traditional cultures for decades, laying out his findings in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel" as well as "Collapse" and his just-published volume, "The World Until Yesterday."

In the wake of a high-wire "fiscal cliff" performance that wasn't exactly their finest hour, members of Congress would do well to learn a lesson from the tribes of New Guinea and the Amazon: Listen to your elders. At least that's the lesson passed along by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, the author of "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?"

Diamond documented the reasons why European invaders overwhelmed less technologically advanced cultures in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies." He laid out cautionary tales of social breakdown in the follow-up book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." In his newly published book, Diamond draws upon his decades of research in far-flung locales to lay out lessons for us less traditional types.

"Tribes constitute thousands of natural experiments in how to run a human society," he told a capacity crowd Thursday night during the kickoff of his international book tour at Town Hall Seattle.

Diamond says the useful findings from those experiments run a wide gamut, from the benefits of multilingualism to the right way to carry a baby ("vertically upright, facing forward"). But one of his biggest themes has to do with the way older people are treated, or mistreated. He noted that a Fijian friend was shocked to see how often America's senior citizens are shunted aside by the younger generation. And although some traditional societies have their own quirks about dealing with the aged — for example, strangling them when they become a liability — Diamond agrees that American attitudes need an adjustment.

Penguin

"The World Until Yesterday" is the latest book from Jared Diamond, a geography professor at UCLA.

"The lives of the elderly constitute a disaster area of modern American society," the 75-year-old Diamond said in Seattle. "We can do better."

He'd like to see senior citizens restored to the roles they have always held in traditional societies, but in a modern-day context: for example, as baby-sitters in a world where both parents work, or as fonts for the kind of wisdom you can't get through a Web search. He'd even like to see age given more respect on Capitol Hill, where the median age is 57 in the House and 62 in the Senate. That was the theme of my interview with Diamond on Thursday. Here's an edited version of the Q&A:

Cosmic Log: How would traditional societies deal with something like the fiscal cliff? What advice can you give to Congress for dealing with the kind of gridlock that we've seen?

Diamond: "The unrealistic answer is to say that the only senators and House members who are permitted to vote on fiscal-cliff issues are those who are over the age of 70. That's not realistic. But the realistic idea is to say that we should give disproportionate weight to the opinions of older politicians who have experienced a much wider range of financial conditions than have the young members of Congress. That is to say, we should listen to people who have gone through the Great Depression, the bubbles of the '80s, the soaring interest rates of the '70s. They've seen a variety of conditions, whereas younger people have seen only recent conditions, and they don't realize that things can be different. That's what comes out of traditional societies. 

"Most traditional peoples talk about 'tribal elders.' The reality is that the leaders of traditional peoples are always the older people. And the reason is, it's good. They have lots of lifetime experience under very different conditions.

"The same also applies to modern societies: Sometimes I'm asked to talk to hedge-fund groups. I'm struck by the fact that most of the people are in their 20s or 30s. There may be a few people in their 40s, and maybe a couple in their 50s. When you look at the statistics, about half of all hedge funds fail within the first five years, although many of them do spectacularly well for a couple of years. The reason is, the whiz kids are very good at algorithms that make money under good conditions. But they don't realize that conditions can be very different, that there are tough conditions — soaring interest rates, financial setbacks. So they don't have the long perspective. That's an example of how a long perspective is necessary for financial policy, just as it is for governing, for deciding about war and peace."

Q: Is there any institutional reform that can do that, or is it beyond modern society to get back to those ways?

A: "It's not beyond modern society, because if you look around at different modern societies — and I'm talking about rich industrial societies — some of them give a lot more deference and weight to older people than do others. The United States is an extreme in this respect. We are perhaps the modern rich society that has the biggest cult of youth. For example, when was the last time you saw a commercial with an 83-year-old raising a bottle of Coca-Cola? The Coke ads are all about 25-year-olds. That's our cult of youth. But in Europe, there is much more deference given to older people. In China, even more. In Japan, too, and in Mexico and Italy. So there's an area where the United States, in its own self-interest, can learn from the experience of its older people."

Q: I'm struck by one of the comments that a House Republican made during the fiscal-cliff deliberations, complaining about the "sleep-deprived octogenarians" in the Senate. ...

A: "Sure, but the octogenarians have had 80 years to see the advantages of taxes. Taxes are an investment, they're not money taken away from you. They're your own money that's being used for long-term purposes. Our taxes are paying for roads, they're paying for schools, they're paying for armed forces, they're paying for inspectors, they're paying for regulators. The more we put in, the more we get out. Now, this is not to deny that every government wastes some tax money. Nobody has figured out how to spend taxes in a way that there's no waste. But the basic mindset is that taxes bring benefits. The longer you live, the more you see those benefits."

Q: Is there an analog to taxation that has worked for traditional societies?

A: "There is, but it's not until you get to medium-to-large societies. Small traditional societies of a few dozen to a few hundred people really don't have anything like taxation. Once you get to a society of a few thousand people, where there's a chief — big enough that you can't have a face-to-face discussion, but you've got to have a chief — chiefs practice an early form of taxation. They require that the commoners turn over a fraction of their agricultural products to the chief. Part of that is used to support their own lifestyle, and part of that is also held in reserve to redistribute to the commoners in a time of famine. One could say that that's a precursor to state government taxation."

Q: Are there other things on your short list of lessons that could help break the societal gridlock we see today?

A: "Another whole area that's open for discussion is the area of conflict resolution. The American system of conflict resolution in the courts is a system of determining right and wrong, with winners and losers. But in traditional societies, conflict resolution has a different goal. The goal is to achieve and maintain peace between people who are going to have to deal with each other for the rest of their lives. The society is small, so you know everybody. In the United States, a big society, if you have a traffic accident, the other person is likely to be someone you never saw before and will never see again. So who cares whether they're unhappy with the result? But the reality is that anybody who's been involved with the American civil or criminal justice system knows that its goal is not to achieve reconciliation. And the result is emotional agony, often for the rest of one's life.

"It's particularly sad when that agony involves divorcing spouses, or so often it involves brothers and sisters, or parents and children who end up suing each other in inheritance disputes. That's because when you use courts and lawyers, the goal is not to achieve emotional clearance, but the goal is to decide right and wrong. That is another big subject area we could happily talk about for a few hours."

Q: Another big subject area would be how to deal with the emotional scars left by the string of mass shootings we've seen lately. Are there any lessons that can be drawn from traditional societies addressing that issue?

A: "My one-liner there would be the balance between individual interests and communal interests. The United States' laws provide that if an individual wants a gun, that individual is going to have a gun, even if that is bad for society as a whole. Today I'm talking from Seattle, which is 100 miles from the Canadian border. Here we have a neighbor that is as affluent as the United States, but has a different balance — with much more emphasis on communal interests and much less interest on individual rights. Among other things, Canadians do not feel that everybody should exercise their God-given right to carry a gun."

Think there's enough in what Diamond says to get a discussion going? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More from Jared Diamond:

• Bilingualism is good for the brain
• Why the Navajo have thrived
• How to prevent a pandemic
• Video: Corporations vs. collapse

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

20th Century Fox

Let's face it: Funding a Death Star would push the federal budget off the fiscal cliff and into a fiscal Death Valley.

The 25,000-plus signers of a "We the People" petition calling on the federal government to start building a Death Star by 2016 must be feeling as peppy as the Rebel Alliance, now that they've put their plea over the threshold that will trigger a response from the White House.

Campaigns on 4chan, Reddit and Twitter helped put it over the top with a day to spare. This means someone at the White House will have to take a good look at the Death Star issue and draw up a response (unless officials decide it would be improper to speak out on something that's more appropriately addressed by, say, the Defense Department, NASA or Lord Vader).

The rationale for securing the funding and resources to start construction was laid out in the petition, created on Nov. 14 by John D. of Longmont, Colo: "By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense."

Building the kind of moon-sized Death Star portrayed in the "Star Wars" saga would be a heck of a stimulus program, however. Earlier this year, Centives calculated the cost of the steel alone at $852 quadrillion, or roughly 13,000 times the world's gross domestic product. At the current rate of production, it would take more than 833,000 years to produce enough steel to begin work.

I'm afraid the White House's political deflector shield will be quite operational when that petition arrives.

Administration officials have had a lot of practice dealing with "We the People" petitions that address far-out topics like the Death Star: Last year, for instance, two petitions calling for full disclosure on extraterrestrial visitations reached the standard requiring a response, and the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy rose to the challenge.

"The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race," OSTP's Phil Larson reported on the WhiteHouse.gov website. "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye."

I'm hoping that the Death Star petition will provide an opportunity for Larson and his colleagues to come up with a pithier, more creative response ... maybe something that will satisfy the fanboys. Here are a few examples that have popped up over the past few days:

• "The farce is strong in this one." (Commenter on The Ticket)
• "We find its lack of signatures disturbing" (MSNBC's Ed Schultz)
• "We have a bad feeling about this" (Modern Man)

Which "Star Wars" cliches would be most fitting for the task? Try to think of some suggestions you can leave in the comment space below. On second thought, try not. Do, or do not. There is no "try."

More on the Death Star and other petitions:

• White House petitions range from serious to silly
• How the online petition program got started
• Management lesson: Don't rebuild the Death Star
• How much would the Death Star cost?

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The climate change issue has been virtually a non-issue during the presidential campaign — but it's primed to take a higher profile after the elections, in part due to Hurricane Sandy's horrific aftermath. At least that's the view of Shawn Lawrence Otto, one of the founders of ScienceDebate.org and author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science of America."

Otto focused on climate politics during Wednesday night's installment of "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show airing online and in the Second Life virtual world. You can hear an archived version of the hourlong program, hosted by yours truly, via the BlogTalkRadio archive or iTunes.

Hurricane Sandy already has re-energized the debate over the global effects of escalating greenhouse-gas emissions.

On one side, experts point to the fact that this season's warmer seas helped the storm keep up its strength as it moved northward, and that higher sea levels added to the strength of Sandy's storm surge. Such conditions are expected to be more common if current climate trends continue. On the other side, skeptics point out that Sandy's strength was in line with extreme storms of the past. For more on the back-and-forth over Sandy specifically, check out this posting by Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard and this one by Dot Earth's Andrew Revkin — and be sure to follow the Web links.

Otto sides with those who believe Hurricane Sandy will bring the climate debate back into the spotlight.

"I do think that, moving forward, it may be a watershed moment, so to speak," Otto told me on "Virtually Speaking Science." However, he acknowledged that the same claim could have been made for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which didn't end up moving the dial appreciably on attitudes toward climate change.

Hurricane Sandy may not make voters more amenable to cap-and-trade schemes or a carbon tax, but it's more likely to highlight the flip side of climate policy: how to adapt to potential impacts and encourage climate-conscious innovation. More people are talking about the cost vs. benefit of storm surge barriers for the New York metro area, for example. Insurers may add disincentives for coastal development, in anticipation of higher sea levels or more frequent extreme storms. The federal government may provide more support for energy technologies that cut back on greenhouse-gas emissions.

That's basically GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's strategy on the climate issue. In his response to ScienceDebate.org's questionnaire, he said he favored "robust government funding" for research into low-emission, high-efficiency industrial technologies. He maintained that this kind of "No Regrets" policy would benefit America "regardless of whether the risks of global warming materialize, and regardless of whether other nations take effective action."

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has long championed the development of renewable-energy technologies as a way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, even if such efforts have occasionally gotten him into trouble. An example of that is the controversy over Solyndra, a solar-panel company that went bankrupt after receiving more than a half-billion dollars in government-backed loans.

Otto speculates that Obama may have a freer hand to pursue climate initiatives if he wins a second term — and that post-Sandy reconstruction may serve as a rallying point for political allies.

There's some evidence this is already coming to pass: Just today, New York City's independent mayor, Michael Bloomberg, cited the climate challenge and the lessons from the superstorm as reasons for endorsing Obama.

"The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast – in lost lives, lost homes and lost business – brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief," Bloomberg wrote. "Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be – given this week's devastation – should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action."

Bloomberg said Obama was taking major steps to reduce carbon emissions, while Romney abandoned "the very cap-and-trade program he once supported."

The mayor's endorsement probably won't have much impact on the vote in New York, a state that's as solidly in Obama's column as any state could be. But does it hint at a major change in the political climate?

For more food for thought, watch this archived video from a Capitol Hill debate between Obama surrogate Kevin Knobloch and Republican Mike Castle, who served two terms as Delaware governor and nine terms in Congress. The debate, titled "After Sandy: Climate Change, Science and the Next Four Years," was moderated by Otto and Climate Desk Live's Chris Mooney.

Update for 8:30 p.m. ET: The Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg sees deep significance in Bloomberg's endorsement, suggesting that it "turned climate change from liability into a potentially winning political issue in this presidential election," and may embolden Republicans who secretly support action on the climate issue to "come out of the closet." Do you agree? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

More from 'Virtually Speaking Science':

• Sean Carroll on what lies beyond the Higgs boson
• Alan Stern on the Uwingu mystery space venture
• George Djorgovski on the future of immersive virtual reality
• JPL's Dave Beaty previews Curiosity's mission on Mars
• SETI Institute's Seth Shostak about aliens and UFOs
• Paul Doherty on solar eclipses and the transit of Venus
• Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto on spaceflight and Yuri's Night
• JPL's Dave Beaty on the search for life on Mars
• Shawn Lawrence Otto on science and politics
• Ig Nobel impresario Marc Abrahams on silly science
• Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin on Mars exploration
• Propulsion expert Marc Millis on interstellar spaceflight
• Sean Carroll on the puzzling frontiers of physics
• Rand Simberg on the private-enterprise vision for spaceflight
• Martin Hoffert on the future of energy policy
• George Djorgovski on science in virtual worlds
• Alan Stern on suborbital research and NASA's mission to Pluto
• Col. 'Coyote' Smith on the outlook for space solar power
• Tim Pickens on rocket ventures and the Google Lunar X Prize

"Virtually Speaking Science" is hosted in Second Life by the Caltech Virtual Astronomy Group. The Exploratorium's Paul Doherty will be my guest on Dec. 5 for a VSS program looking back at the year's astronomical highlights and looking ahead to 2013.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Nationwide polls may portray the presidential campaign as a neck-and-neck horse race, but less conventional data-crunching methods spit out a different picture, with President Barack Obama edging out GOP challenger Mitt Romney.

One big variable remains to be factored in: the effect of Hurricane Sandy. And one big state that's been relatively unaffected by the storm holds the key to the outcome: Ohio. "It's been that way for the entire election cycle," said David Rothschild, an expert on opinion modeling at Microsoft Research and Columbia University's Applied Statistics Center.

Rothschild, who lays out election forecasts at the Predictwise website and blogs about prediction science on The Signal at Yahoo, surveyed the state of the art this weekend at the New Horizons in Science symposium, presented as part of the ScienceWriters2012 conference.

In the final days of the campaign, the divergent spins on the election outlook have sparked a few fireworks. Statistician Nate Silver's analysis for The New York Times' Five Thirty Eight column, which has consistently favored Obama even as many others were reporting a tightening of the race, drew criticism from the National Review's Josh Jordan for including "a little bit too much hope of an Obama victory against what appears to be a surge of Romney momentum."

This week, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough virtually called for Silver's pundit license to be revoked. "Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes," he said on "Morning Joe."

Economist Paul Krugman went to Silver's defense in his own column for the Times, decrying the "war on objectivity" and saying that "all the election modelers have been faithful to their models, letting the numbers fall where they may."

"This is really scary," Krugman wrote. "It means that if these people triumph, science — or any kind of scholarship — will become impossible. Everything must pass a political test; if it isn't what the right wants to hear, the messenger is subjected to a smear campaign."

Silver's analysis is based on a state-by-state assessment of polling data from multiple sources, translated into an electoral vote count. Political prediction markets, such as those studied by Rothschild, use a different method to come up with a surprisingly similar snapshot of the horse race.

The markets offer a glorified kind of gambling on political fortunes: The winner-take-all markets let players "invest" in the prospects of a particular candidate. If the candidate wins, the investor gets, say, $1 a share. If the candidate loses, the investor gets nothing. Leading up to Election Day, investors can buy or sell shares in candidates to match their expectations of success.

The shifting share prices reflect the perceived probability of success. For example, Intrade's market sets the probability of Obama's re-election at 63 percent. The Iowa Electronic Markets go with a little more than 63 percent, while the trading at Betfair puts the probability at 70 percent. That's in the same ballpark as Silver's 72.9 percent estimate.

IEM / Univ. of Iowa

A chart shows share values on the Iowa Electronic Markets in the winner-take-all market for the presidential popular vote. The blue line indicates Democratic share prices, while the red line indicates GOP share prices.

Intentions vs. expectations
What the prediction markets provide is a probability figure, not a vote share figure. It reflects expectations about a given outcome, just as the Vegas odds reflected the expectation that the Giants would win the World Series, even before they swept the Tigers. There was a chance all the way up to the final out that the Tigers could roar back and take four games in a row to win the series. But in this case, at least, the Vegas marketplace predicted the outcome.

So what's the success rate of prediction markets? How do surveys that gauge expectations perform, compared with traditional surveys that gauge what voters say they intend to do? That's where Rothschild's research comes in: He and a colleague, Penn economist Justin Wolfers, looked at the predictions produced by traditional polls ("For whom do you intend to vote?"), as opposed to less traditional surveys ("Whom do you expect to win?"), in 345 political races.

Most of the time, the predictions from the two types of forecasts were in agreement. But in those cases where the predictions were different, the expectation survey was right 76 percent of the time, while the traditional intention survey was right only 24 percent of the time.

Rothschild said the strength of expectation polls may lie in the fact that investors can absorb information from other sources to come up with a consensus that reflects the wisdom of crowds. "Asking people about expectations is equivalent to as if people went out to 10 random voters and reported the binary result," he said.

Based on the prediction markets, it's as if Obama is the favored team in the seventh game of the World Series. The betting odds have been in his favor for the past year — even though there have been ups and downs, such as his slump in the first presidential debate. Now that all the debates are done, most of the uncertainty has been wrung out of the campaign.

"There's one more unexpected event: this hurricane," Rothschild said.

After the storm
Lots of prognosticators have pointed to the uncertainties raised by Hurricane Sandy. The conventional wisdom was that Romney would benefit from a long-recognized anti-incumbent effect in late pre-election polling, as well as a race-tightening effect. However, Sandy changes the calculus.

"Generally, natural disasters benefit incumbents," Rothschild said. There's a tendency to put politics aside, rally 'round the flag and let the president look presidential. (That effect can go negative if the disaster response doesn't go well, as President George W. Bush found out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.) Even before the storm hit, Scarborough said Romney's momentum could stall in Sandy's aftermath. "It changes everything with a week to go," he said.

There's already some evidence that the rally effect has kicked in: For example, today New Jersey's Republican governor, Chris Christie, said hat Obama's response to the storm crisis was "outstanding" and that he didn't "give a damn about Election Day." Christie is due to tour devastated areas with the president on Wednesday.

The catastrophic aftermath of the storm may affect early voting as well as the Election Day turnout in places like New York and New Jersey. That could cut into the Democratic vote. Research has shown that obstacles to voting tend to hit Democrats harder than Republicans. But in Sandy's case, that statistical effect may not be critical because those states are relatively safe for Obama.

Sandy's effect may be more crucial hundreds of miles from the worst of the storm, in Ohio. For the past year, Ohio has been the "flip state" in Rothschild's calculations. Neither candidate has a clear path to victory unless he wins Ohio's electoral votes, Rothschild said. That's one reason why Romney was the headliner for a storm-relief rally in Ohio today — and why Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton are canvassing the state while Obama tours the hurricane zone.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney reacts as he accepts a food donation from a supporter during a storm-relief event in Kettering, Ohio.

How will it all turn out? There are lots of statistical models floating around, and no matter which way it turns out, some will score a home run while others will strike out. In addition to the political prediction markets we've been talking about, here are a few more forecasts to watch:

• University of Illinois' Election Analytics favors Obama in the electoral vote.
• Moody's Analytics favors Obama in the electoral vote.
• Yale economist Ray Fair's Vote-Share Equations indicate that the election is too close to call.
• University of Colorado's election model, developed by political scientists Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry, favors Romney in popular and electoral vote.
• IHS Global Insights' Nigel Gault's model favors Romney, based on a formula that combines five economic indicators.

We'll be talking about the scientific angles to the political campaign at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday on "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong talk show airing on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world. My guest will be Shawn Lawrence Otto, a founder of ScienceDebate.org and author of "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America."

Turn to NBC Politics for the full story about the final week of the presidential campaign, and keep a watch on our coverage of Hurricane Sandy's aftermath as well.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor and vice president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, which presented the New Horizons in Science symposium. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun's view that the theories of evolution and the big bang are "lies straight from the pit of Hell" is getting more exposure than he might have expected, thanks to a video that was made at a church-sponsored banquet in Georgia and distributed by a progressive political watchdog group.

The Georgia Republican is already well-known as an outspoken conservative Christian, due in part to his unsuccessful campaign to have 2010 declared "the Year of the Bible." But the latest comments have taken on an extra dab of controversy because Broun, a medical doctor, calls himself a scientist in the video and chairs the House Science Committee's panel on investigations and oversight.

The video clip, distributed by the Bridge Project, was taken from a longer version recorded on Sept. 27 during the 2012 Sportsman's Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Ga. Here's a transcript of the Bridge Project's snippet:

"God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says.

"And what I've come to learn is that it's the manufacturer's handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I'll continue to do that."

Broun's comments were greeted with applause, and they probably reflect how a lot of his constituents feel about the same issues. He's assured of re-election in any case, due to the fact that he has no Democratic Party challenger in next month's election. But how will Broun's latest pronouncements play out on a national stage? Will they have any effect on the presidential campaign? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 11:35 p.m. ET Oct. 6: The Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald said Meredith Griffanti, a spokeswoman for Broun, referred to the video in this brief, emailed statement: "Dr. Broun was speaking off the record to a large church group about his personal beliefs regarding religious issues." 

More about science and politics:

• Doctors appalled by candidate's comments on rape
• Presidential science quiz rekindles climate debate
• Is the scientific perspective like political poison?
• More campaign news from NBC Politics

Tip o' the Log to Talking Points Memo and Scientific American Observations.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Files / AFP - Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have answered 14 questions on science and technology issues.

President Barack Obama and his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, have sent in their answers to the political campaign's highest-profile science quiz — the 14 questions on science and technology issues posed by Science Debate 2012 — and Romney's answer to the climate question is already stirring up some buzz.

The answers distill the candidates' stands on topics ranging from ocean health, to the federal support for innovative research, to the process for developing science policy, to the proper way to plan for a potential pandemic. The territory covered by the questions has shifted somewhat since 2008: For example, stem cell research appears to have become a non-issue, while Internet policy gets its own question this time around.

But it's Romney's response to the question about climate change that has drawn the most attention.

For months, Romney has been criticized for going back and forth on the issue of what to do about global warming. He generally acknowledges that greenhouse-gas emissions have had an effect on climate, but he's backed away from policy responses such as carbon cap-and-trade markets.

Starting with last week's Republican National Convention, Romney has been turning Obama's environmental policy into a punch line: "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans, and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family." (Romney has used the "heal the planet" line at campaign stops since then.)

In his response to Science Debate's climate change question, Romney said it looked as if the world was warming, and human activity was contributing to that trend. But he opposed a cap-and-trade scheme and spoke against "economy-suppressing regulation." Instead he said he favored "robust government funding" for research into low-emission, high-efficiency industrial technologies. Here's the full question as well as the answers from Romney and Obama:

Climate change: The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change — and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?

Mitt Romney: "I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences. However, there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue — on the extent of the warming, the extent of the human contribution, and the severity of the risk — and I believe we must support continued debate and investigation within the scientific community.

"Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response. President Obama has taken the view that if global warming is occurring, the American response must be to slash carbon dioxide emissions by imposing enormous costs on the U.S. economy. First he tried a massive cap-and-trade bill that would have devastated U.S. industry. When that approach was rejected by Congress, he declared his intention to pursue the same course on his own and proceeded through his EPA to impose rules that will bankrupt the coal industry.

"Nowhere along the way has the president indicated what actual results his approach would achieve — and with good reason. The reality is that the problem is called Global Warming, not America Warming. China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Developed world emissions have leveled off while developing world emissions continue to grow rapidly, and developing nations have no interest in accepting economic constraints to change that dynamic. In this context, the primary effect of unilateral action by the U.S. to impose costs on its own emissions will be to shift industrial activity overseas to nations whose industrial processes are more emissions-intensive and less environmentally friendly. That result may make environmentalists feel better, but it will not better the environment.

"So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy and drive manufacturing jobs away, all without actually addressing the underlying problem. Economic growth and technological innovation, not economy-suppressing regulation, is the key to environmental protection in the long run. So I believe we should pursue what I call a 'No Regrets' policy — steps that will lead to lower emissions, but that will benefit America regardless of whether the risks of global warming materialize and regardless of whether other nations take effective action.

"For instance, I support robust government funding for research on efficient, low-emissions technologies that will maintain American leadership in emerging industries. And I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies, including a new wave of investment in nuclear power. These steps will strengthen American industry, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and produce the economically-attractive technologies that developing nations must have access to if they are to achieve the reductions in their own emissions that will be necessary to address what is a global issue."

Barack Obama: "Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this generation, and we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits. Since taking office I have established historic standards limiting greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles for the first time in history. My administration has made unprecedented investments in clean energy, proposed the first-ever carbon pollution limits for new fossil-fuel-fired power plants and reduced carbon emissions within the federal government. Since I took office, the U.S. is importing an average of 3 million fewer barrels of oil every day, and our dependence on foreign oil is at a 20-year low. We are also showing international leadership on climate change, reaching historic agreements to set emission limits in unison with all major developed and developing nations. There is still more to be done to address this global problem. I will continue efforts to reduce our dependence on oil and lower our greenhouse gas emissions while creating an economy built to last."

Romney devotes a lot more space on his answer, but he has a more complex case to make — a case that accepts the idea that industrial activity is changing the climate, but that the right kind of industrial activity can solve the problem. "This is what I call the technology trap, where clean energy technology is used to delay action, rather than to foster action, on climate change," Joe Romm writes on the Climate Progress blog, which has been reliably critical of Romney in the past.

What do you think? Feel free to register your opinion in our admitted unscientific online poll, as well as in your comments below. And be sure to take a look at all 14 questions and answers, either on the Science Debate website or at Scientific American.

Extra credit: The other question that was close to my heart was the one on space policy: Obama sticks to his game plan for sending humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s — that is, long after the end of his second term. Meanwhile, Romney complains that America's leadership in space is "eroding" and vows to "bring together all the stakeholders" in the space effort to develop a fresh plan to rebuild NASA. He also says "a strong and successful NASA does not require more funding, it needs clearer priorities." Reminder: NASA receives about 0.5 percent of the federal budget (less than $18 billion in 2012), and some outside observers (including astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson) say that funding level should be doubled.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

In today's congratulatory phone call to the team behind NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, President Barack Obama made sure that if the mission discovers Martians, he'll be one of the first to know.

"If in fact you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away," Obama said during the call, which was placed from Air Force One to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "I've got a lot of things on my plate, but I expect that that will go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes, it will be pretty exciting."

Obama also said he was impressed by the attention that's been paid to flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, the "Mohawk Guy" whose star-spangled haircut and warmhearted demeanor during Curiosity's Aug. 5 landing won him Internet fame.

"I, in the past, thought about getting a Mohawk myself," Obama joked. "But my team keeps on discouraging me. And now that he's received marriage proposals and thousands of new Twitter followers, I think I'm going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense."

The congratulatory phone call is a tradition for the White House, marking events ranging from sports prowess to his rivals' political achievements. But it was clear that Obama particularly enjoyed congratulating the scientists and engineers behind the amazingly successful landing of NASA's newest Mars probe.

Obama gushed over the technological triumph, which required the successful sequential firing of 79 explosive devices, the unfurling of a monster parachute at supersonic speeds, and the seemingly crazy use of a rocket-powered sky crane that lowered the 1-ton, car-sized rover to the Martian surface.

"Due to your dedicated efforts, Curiosity stuck her landing and captured the attention and imagination of millions of people, not just across our country but people all around the world," he said.

Shout-outs to the team
Obama gave shout-outs to JPL Director Charles Elachi, who took the call in the company of the team at the lab's mission control area; as well as descent team leader Adam Steltzner; mission managers Peter Theisinger and Richard Cook; project scientist John Grotzinger; and John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science.

"You guys should be remarkably proud," the president said. "Really, what makes us best as a species is this curiosity that we have, and this yearning to discover and know more, and push the boundaries of knowledge. You are perfect examples of that, and we couldn't be more grateful to you."

He said the achievement embodied the American spirit, and he gave his "personal commitment to protect these critical investments in science and technology." 

"This is the kind of thing that inspires kids across the country," he said. "They’re telling their moms and dads they want to be part of a Mars mission, maybe even the first person to walk on Mars. And that kind of inspiration is the byproduct of work of the sort that you guys have done."

'Well-deserved rest'
Obama noted that many of the Curiosity team's members are getting some "well-deserved rest" after the first week of operations on Mars. The rover is currently being reprogrammed for its two-year science mission — a four-day-long engineering task that is giving scientists a break to think about the work ahead.

Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission focuses on studying billions of years' worth of geology on Mars and determining whether the planet was ever potentially habitable. The mission is not specifically designed to detect life, even on the scale of microbes, but it could point the way for future life-detection experiments.

By then, it just might be possible for Obama to sport the Mohawk he's always wanted. And even if he doesn't go with that hair style, the tone being set by the Curiosity mission — and by today's lighthearted phone call — just might reflect a new style for the space effort.

"It does sound like NASA's come a long way from the white shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and the pocket protectors, you know?" Obama noted. "You guys are a little cooler than you used to be."

Update for 1:10 p.m. ET: Obama with a Mohawk? A tweeter named Darth has given the president his desired 'do, thanks to image-processing magic. (Tip o' the log to Discovery News' Ian O'Neill.)

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Bigelow Aerospace / msnbc.com

A scale model shows Bigelow Aerospace's proposed lunar colony, prefabricated using inflatable modules, with lunar landers in the background.

For 45 years, an international treaty has barred countries from laying claim to the moon and other celestial bodies — but some policy analysts say private ventures might be able to stake their claims, and they want Congress to create a legal framework that takes advantage of the "loophole."

The concept was unveiled last week by Rand Simberg, an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it aims to take advantage of the same market incentives that drove the settlement of the American frontier. The way Simberg sees it, the lack of property rights in space "partially explains why we have not developed the next and, in a sense, last frontier — space."

The inability to claim sovereignty over other worlds goes back to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. A hundred countries, including the United States and all the other spacefaring nations, are parties to that treaty.

Yet another treaty, drawn up in 1979, bars private ownership of extraterrestrial property in the solar system — but that pact, known as the Moon Treaty, has not been ratified by any of the world's spacefaring nations. The differences between the two treaties suggest that it's possible to have private ownership without national sovereignty, and that's the loophole that Simberg wants to take advantage of.

Multibillion-dollar incentive?
Backers of the proposed legislation, known as the Space Settlement Prize Act, say it could create, "at no cost to taxpayers, a multibillion-dollar incentive for private companies to finance and build permanent settlements on the moon and/or Mars."

The proposal would set up a process for the U.S. government to recognize ownership of extraterrestrial territory if a private venture establishes a permanently inhabited settlement on another world. For example, the first venture to establish a moonbase could lay claim to up to 600,000 square miles of the lunar surface. Having the first Mars base would entitle the operators to up to 3.6 million square miles of the Red Planet. Putting a permanent base on an asteroid could be rewarded by with up to 1 million square miles of surface area, depending on how big the asteroid was.

The owners would have to guarantee that anyone could buy a ticket to travel to the territory. Each succeeding settlement group would be allotted 15 percent less land than their predecessor. And if two potential claimants couldn't resolve a land dispute, U.S. courts could step in.

But doesn't that sound like sovereignty?

"In some sense, it gives the imprimatur of the U.S. government," Simberg said. "But it doesn't make it a sovereignty question. It's a recognition, not an appropriation." He said the first commercial moon colonies could well be headquartered in different countries. In that case, the United States would be recognizing the property rights of non-U.S. ventures on another world.

What would the U.S. do?
Simberg emphasized that the federal government wouldn't be obligated to take any action to defend extraterrestrial property owners. "How the U.S. government would respond to future claims and conflicts of claims on the moon would be entirely a political decision," he said.

Some legal experts say the loophole doesn't really exist. They point to a section of the Outer Space Treaty that holds national governments responsible for the space settlement activities of their citizens, and say that would preclude any effort to uphold property claims.

"Even if the United States withdrew from the treaty in order to implement such land grants, what would stop the Chinese from adopting domestic legislation that went further?" Berin Szoka and James Dunstan asked in an essay published by Wired. "What if the first time a Chinese probe lands on the moon, the moon could be claimed by the 'Great Wall Company,' owned by the People’s Liberation Army? The United States would then be left to argue that our law should be followed, but the Chinese law shouldn’t. That’s precisely the kind of territorial jockeying the Outer Space Treaty was intended to prevent."

Simberg said a lunar land grab would almost certainly not play out that way. If Chinese leaders really wanted to take over the moon — a scenario that billionaire Robert Bigelow laid out last year — all they'd have to do is withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty and do what they will. "They wouldn't try to play this legislative game," Simberg said.

Why go to the trouble?
The bigger question is, why would anyone go to the trouble of claiming the moon, or Mars, or an asteroid? Right now, there's nothing out there that's worth the hundreds of billions of dollars it would take for a commercial venture to set up its own space program and establish a beachhead beyond Earth. But Simberg and his colleagues say that situation could change if the cost of spaceflight goes down and the perceived value of extraterrestrial resources (helium-3? rare earth elements?) goes up.

Simberg acknowledged that he's thinking about the long-term future of beyond-Earth settlement rather than short-term campaign issues. "Nothing like this is going to pass this year," he said. What he'd love to see is a new international process that takes the place of the Outer Space Treaty and provides a jump-start for private-sector space colonies.

"The treaty's outdated," he said. "It just doesn't work. I don't think anyone back then could conceive of a private launch system based on the Isle of Man, launching somebody into orbit who would then be transferred to L1 [an Earth-moon transfer point] on a tug that was run out of Dubai, and then to a lander operated by somebody in Australia."

Does all this sound like science fiction, or future science fact? Feel free to register your vote in the poll above, or share your opinion as a comment below.

More about space settlement:

• Could lunar real estate spark a future war?
• Colonies on the moon? It's not a loony idea
• Russia wants to build moon colonies
• Synthetic life could help humans colonize Mars

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Via Camille Flammarion

A seeker of truth breaks through the vault of the heavens to discover a metaphysical realm in an engraving from Camille Flammarion's 1888 book "The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology."

Religious holidays such as Easter and Passover usually spark a spate of stories about the intersection of science and religion, and that's especially the case during this presidential election year. Some folks seem to assume that the scientific and spiritual ways of looking at the world are fundamentally at odds, but a new poll commissioned by ScienceDebate.org suggests that scientific issues are hugely important to religious believers as well as non-believers.

The online survey of 1,005 likely U.S. voters, conducted last month by JZ Analytics, found that 84 percent of the respondents ranked policy issues relating to science, innovation and health as important themes for presidential debates. That puts the science agenda right behind economic policy and national security policy, and ahead of environmental policy and faith and values.

The added twist is that science was ranked in the same order by the survey's Christian subgroups. Eighty-two percent of Catholics and 83 percent of Protestants saw science issues as important, while 49 percent and 59 percent of those respective groupings thought the candidates' views on faith and values were important to debate.

"Even though we often hear of faith opposing science in the political arena, these findings show that the perception isn't necessarily true," Shawn Lawrence Otto, co-founder of ScienceDebate.org, said in a news release about the study.

For Otto and his colleagues, the bottom line is that science policy views should take precedence over the candidates' religious beliefs in the political debates to come. But the findings also suggest that there's plenty of room for dialogue between science-minded and spirituallly minded thinkers. You don't need a public opinion survey to figure that out — just look at the dozens upon dozens of books that address questions of science and religion.

This year, there's plenty to choose from, whether you're of the godly or the godless persuasion. Here are seven recently published books to get your brain working, organized alphabetically and covering a range of perspectives on science and religion:

"Born Believers: The Science of Children's Religious Belief," by Justin Barrett. One of the common views about religious formation is that kids are merely taught to believe what their parents believe. Barrett, a psychologist and anthropologist who's associated with the Fuller Seminary, takes another tack, citing research that suggests children have an innate inclination toward the "God idea." Based on those findings, Barrett comes up with checklists for becoming a confident atheist (step 2 is "do not have children") as well as for encouraging a child's religious development.

"Free Will," by Sam Harris. The well-known atheist addresses the well-known paradox of free will vs. determinism in this slim 96-page paperback. Harris cuts through quantum claptrap to argue that free will is an illusion, but he also argues that causes and consequences, intentions and actions provide a basis for morality. 

"God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion," by Victor Stenger. This latest volume from philosopher-physicist Victor Stenger argues that Christianity held back the progress of science for a millennium, and that the current perspectives provided by science and religion on the origins of the universe, complexity and consciousness are incompatible.  Stenger also decries the negative influence of organized religion on global issues such as overpopulation and environmental degradation.

"The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. A social psychologist focuses on why people of different ideological stripes find it so hard to get along, and suggests that it goes back to our evolutionary tendency toward "groupishness." Religion and politics provide ways to define in-groups and out-groups, and conservatives turn out to be better than liberals at taking advantage of those natural tendencies. Haidt also lays out some strategies to break the us-vs.-them impasse that has made American politics so uncivil. (Check out the strategies at CivilPolitics.org.)

"The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience," by Kevin Nelson. Near-death experiences, out-of-body sensations, battles with the devil, religious ecstasy and psychotropic drugs all figure in this exploration of the neurological basis for altered states. I like the fact that Nelson doesn't pass judgment: "No matter if we could know how every single brain molecule makes spiritual experience, why the brain is spiritual will remain for many of us our most treasured mystery," he writes. "There is room in the brain for faith."

"Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism," by Alvin Plantinga. This book is something of a counterweight to Stenger's book, arguing that the seeming conflicts between science and religion are due to the scientific method's, um, methodology. Notre Dame philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga puts a lot of weight on the seemingly "fine-tuned" nature of the universe, which is definitely open to debate. And speaking of debate, there's an earlier book on this topic, titled "Science and Religion: Are They Compatible," which features a back-and-forth between Plantinga and atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett.

"Why Religion is Natural and Science Is Not," by Robert McCauley. This book draws upon findings in cognitive science and evolutionary biology to make the case that the human brain is naturally more suited to religious belief than to scientific inquiry. McCauley's conclusion is that the scientific perspective poses no real threat to religion, "while the unnaturalness of science puts it in a surprisingly precarious position."

More readings in science and religion:

• Gospels of science
• Stephen Hawking says God's not needed
• How to get a cosmos from nothing
• Richard Dawkins puts 'Magic' on a tablet

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.