Not sure where you are from, but I remember my servers being inaccessible for days by a major state wide power problem in the 3rd world area named California only a few years ago

A great blog to read about the ongoing research and in depth particle physics articles is Matt Strassler's website: http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/06/27/this-sites-background-articles-on-the-higgs/

If they just switch off the gas pipes to Western Europe say byebye to the German economy and US cheap gas

Religion should be considered to be for adults only. We don't allow children to be involved with drugs, alcohol, voting, sex and so on legally before they've grown up to teenagers, why should brainwashing with a single particular religion be any different?

But how do you pull up a cable from the ocean floor when it has all kinds of other cables crossing it?

They're all on Google+ I guess :)

But did you request that change? :-)

Huh, doesn't the US have like 200 million eligable voters x $120 per vote = $ 24 billion spent on the last election according to your numbers?

If you want to let Ms. Stover know how you think about her article, she can be found on dawnstover

If you spray this material on the inside of cans and bottles, does it allow for cost effective recycling still? I can imagine this might be an issue increasing the cost of packaging more then is being saved by the contents.

Source?

Well if power is simply equivalent with guns, how do you explain the revolts in South African, India, Egypt and Tunesia?

Ethics plays a role as well, and killing machines without any concept of ethics seem to be an extremely dangerous path to follow

Just the systematic purging of Arabs in Jerusalem (by refusing permits to Arabs to modify or build new houses) though is not something you would expect to find in any true developed democracy conscious of it's minorities.

You can wonder if a democracy can operate properly at all if it's main issues are related to security

The fact that most of Israel's neighbours are fucked up countries as well (although Jordan doesn't seem bad imho and we can hopefully see positive things developing in Egypt) doesn't plead in any way that Israel is a democratic country. It'd be like comparing the US to Mexico and conclude that the US doesn't seem to have a lot of gun fights

I consider these 'toys' much more dangerous then a machinegun. Why? Because while a nut with a machinegun can actually kill people, you cannot hide the fact that you are doing it. With a laser gun like this it is easy to blind people for life without anybody knowing who did it.

Often people wonder whether we will be able to support a population of 7 or 10 or whatever billion people. I don't find that interesting, I'm sure we can have many billions more on just this planet alone. The real question is what will be left of nature with 10 billion western style living people? Will we as a species be able to preserve any significant amount of wildlife, ecosystems and natural beauty for our children?