The saber rattling is not about cruise missiles that can be shot down by R2D2. The saber rattling is about ballistic missiles, 15-ton kinetic energy penetrators that are repurposed ICBMs and reach Mach 10 or so. Even in the unlikely case that a Phalanx or countermissile can hit it directly and destroy it, that will only mean that you now have 15 tons of supersonic tungsten/depleted uranium shrapnel incoming...

The Economic Sciences price is awarded by the same institution as the science prices. Maybe you thought of the Literature price?

Zuck's success came entirely and exclusively from his access to the Harvard student community. If you have any familiarity with the spread of Facebook across the networkers of the world, the fact that the early adopters were high status Harvard friends of Zuck rather than random high school students from Armpit, Nebraska was the main factor for the fast spread and wide geographic adoption.

Well, you do some menial work for me that Watson can't automate, and I'll dream up your house for you. Depending on your personal dystopia that work is sex work, or playing a musical instrument, or being my valet...

Lieberman is no democrat. He sabotaged the public option for the republicans by joining the threatened filibuster. Thus no majority. Thus your point is moot, coward.

Yes, quite a few, starting from 40 years ago. Interestingly, the train drivers' unions managed to keep staff on many of these trains - even if the train drives automatically, there often is a person who checks tickets or pushes the door-close buttons even if it is entirely unnecessary.

Well, it would eliminate some traffic police, traffic lawyer and prison industry positions. But that would be small fry compared to the amount of taxi drivers and truckers that would be out of jobs.

In the end, whether you see it as utopia or dystopia depends on your confidence level in human nature -- whether you think society can find useful ways of make-work or self-actualization for all the unemployed people made obsolete by progress.

If you can ferry one 7am commuter and one 9am commuter with one car, you already halved the cost. If you allow automatic carpooling with 3 people for each of these rides, you're down to less than 20% of the cost of having your own car.

Another way of doing it is to have a light rail system like BART and combine it with short robot-taxi shuttles from the home to the station and from the station to work. This also allows the robot-taxi to pick up 4-6 rides per rush-hour period.

Don't be a horse, then, and mention the real number... Of course, the real number is 97.4%, and still supports his point.

Anderegg, William R L; James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider (2010). " Expert credibility in climate change". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107 (27)

Doran, Peter T.; Maggie Kendall Zimmerman (2009). "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change". EOS 90 (3): 22–23

Yes, but to do that they rely on the phone's built-in IMEI code.

Since many manufacturer have the IMEI in the firmware rather than a hardware ROM for cost reasons (including JesusPhone inc.), it is rather easy to change it, and rebadge the phone... Just google for "imei changer".

If you zoom in, there's more monuments in London: Big Ben Clocktower, Buckingham Palace, and the One Canada Square tower in Canary Wharf...

So you're saying you prefer collective punishment of all the taxpayers in the entire county/state (including the victim) to collective punishment of just the offender's police department?

Hectares are common everywhere. Scientists and engineers everywhere use hectopascal. In quite a few languages you order 30 deca(grammes) of ham just as you would order 10 ounces in the US at the butcher's till, or 5 deci(litres) of wine in a restaurant.

Ergo: speak for yourself.

SWIFT is an interchange and netting network owned by the financial institutions that do the interchange and netting. If SWIFT (and similar networks) were not in place, they'd do the same transactions via 1-to-1 agreements.

The real abuses of power come not from SWIFT's shareholders but by the EU and US government putting pressure on it to use it for their goals. This would be not better but a lot worse if SWIFT were a government agency...

The Swiss Army has a company-strength "navy" of lake patrol boats (Motorbootkompanie 10). As an army company, it is not led by an admiral.

I know better than to whoosh you, but to be a good pedant, you'd need to be technically correct...