So let's just assume for the sake of argument that Israel wasn't surrounded by hostile neighbors and did not require its present defense budget. In that case it would neither require nor receive US aid. The Israeli technology sector would still exist as it is (except perhaps the weapons industry, which is not the subject here), but the US aid is now out of the equation. What would you then claim is the sinister "other factor" fueling Israeli tech?

I keep hearing this argument. It's annoying. The US gives Israel billions of dollars' worth in equipment for the military, not money. So the Israeli army uses American jets, ammunition and Microsoft software (yay for the NSA) on its computers. If you think this somehow translates to other money being freed to be invested in high tech, well, if that were the case we wouldn't have companies preferring to set up shop in Cyprus (such as Viber) due to better economic incentives. Finally if American dollars translate into technology development you'd expect the Egyptians to have flying cars by now, which isn't quite the case.

Why is it so hard for some people to accept that there are a lot of smart, creative, entrepreneurial, out-of-the-box thinking people in Israel?

Well, in my experience this kind of thing doesn't happen every 5 seconds; but if it does for you, the little lightning bolt offers a drop down menu in which you may permanently turn off that particular kind of auto-correct, so not all is doom and gloom.

Ctrl-Z is your friend.

It's for your car, not your cat, dude.

I believe a far more interesting story about Waze has eluded Slashdot:

Two Technion students reverse-engineered Waze's method for detecting a traffic jam, then created a network of fake clients that reported traffic patterns that caused Waze to mark as jammed what was in reality a perfectly empty road.

Sources: Jerusalem Post, Wired.

Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/05/25

Cool of you for finding the original link! I actually remember this being exhibited at the HUJI Open Day fair in 1999, and (as a prospective student) had a chat with Yael who explained a bit about how it worked. I'm happy to see that this little project has progressed.

Your criticism however seems out of place; if Yael is a Disney Research employee then this is a Disney Research invention, it is not "somebody else's". I'm quite sure that the team has not been sitting idly these past 14 years, and that the breakthrough in question is not what was shown back then but the fact that the technology is closer to being an actual product.

Flowers By Irene, man. Have you learned nothing?

Most people have seen spoon bending on TV or in stage acts - I've seen it done right before my eyes, in a completely improvised setting, with an ordinary spoon taken from the kitchen. There was no sleight of hand involved - the spoon was bending while in this man's hand, being visible all of the time. The handle remained rigid in his hand while the spoon's bowl actually rotated with no apparent force being exerted on it, so that the spoon basically twisted by about 120 degrees. (I've kept the spoon as a souvenir. It remains twisted, not cracked, and will not bend in any direction with any amount of force I can apply with my hands.)

My question to you is: if this is no more than a magic trick, how was it done? The various trick methods described here could not have been employed.

That shouldn't be an obstacle, as current refrigeration technology doesn't directly cool the air in your fridge/home/office either. It would be possible to cool some object using the laser then use the low temperature of the now cold object to cool the surrounding air. However as long as the efficiency is indeed 1.2-2% as mentioned in an adjacent comment this is no replacement for current A/C tech.

Under the 1947 partition plan, the proposed Israeli side would have contained more Jews than Arabs. As for the "ethnic cleansing" you speak of, it wasn't very thorough as there are about 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel today.

Israel has offered the Golan in return for peace several times, only to be turned down. Perhaps some day an agreement with Syria can be reached, but until that day Israelis can and do live on that land.

I don't know what a "computer assisted sniper" is, and even if such a thing existed, how exactly do you spread military equipment in enemy territory without the enemy destroying it once it's left there unattended?

And back to reality, what do you do when the enemy is shooting rockets from within schools and city rooftops? How do you "take them out" while guaranteeing the safety of the civilians they are hiding behind?