This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., an HIV research scientist and aspiring policy wonk, who recently moved to D.C. to get a taste of the action Well, today Chris is somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. For those who aren't aware, he is on the Center for Inquiry Travel Club Cruise with the likes of Joyce Salisbury, Lawrence Krauss and Phil Plait. I can only imagine the discussions they are having as they travel across seas that were once the battlegrounds for control of ideas and thought in the world. Most often those conflicts occurred between religious and scientific views, which in many cases is not very different from what is occurring today. The cruise will be visiting ports of call in Italy and the Greek Islands, places where no man or woman can visit without reflecting on the scientific history that began there.