Yes this is entirely the case. I would expect that the number of photons produced to fall off as a steeply falling power law. There will be vastly more UV photons than x-rays and vastly more x-rays than gammas. Until one gets to really high energies where the photon is showering and the shower is producing lots of additional ionizing particles, it is a good approximation that a single photon will damage only one atom or bond.

If there were a significant flux of x-rays that would already be pretty bad and it wouldn't really matter how many gammas were also there, because the x-rays are already ionizing radiation and they could possibly significantly elevate risks for affected persons. So while a single gamma might not be devastating, if that were accompanied by a large flux of x-rays, bad things would still happen.

I'm sorry but that is untrue. The film badge is effective for measuring doses from x-ray sources, used in medical and dental offices and research labs of all types. If there are lots of x-ray and gamma ray photons produced in the dark lightning then the film badge will provide an accurate measure of the dose. The number density of the produced products will likely fall in energy as a power law and so you would have tremendously more x-rays where you have good measurement than the number of gammas where you have more energy. What is more if the photons have an energy that is a good deal larger than 1 MeV then there is a very non negligible chance that they will pair convert in the air and then you have electrons for which as you point out the film badge works very well. The bulk of the dose is most likely to be at an energy where standard and common dosimeters are well suited to measure it.

There are dosimeters on board. I have completed several radiation safety courses during my work and radiation levels for airline crew are monitored and tracked just like they are for workers in nuclear and other research fields. Frequent fliers are not monitored and tracked. I work at CERN and I know exactly how much ionizing and neutron dose I receive during my work, but I also have to travel between my home at Fermilab and CERN and I have no idea how much dose I receive on my trans-Atlantic flights. The pilot of the plane is monitored and his dose is tracked. That pilot should also have access to his personal dose, but I don't know what the level of transparency is in the airline industry. So if there were a significant likelihood, the data is there.

Speaking from a physics point of view, a huge acceleration is need to produce x-ray and gamma rays. And they aren't hard to detect. It would seem that a balloon experiment flying some CsI or other crystals in some thunderstorms would quickly detect this phenomena even if it is 1/1000 or even 1/10000.

Maybe it is the determination and habits of individual learners that is important and not what is in his or her genetic makeup.

If you want better education, then you need to have it be a funding priority. Right now it is a talking point priority, but when it comes to putting real money into education it will usually lose out to inmates in prison. When the states fall on hard times, education always suffers. When times are good schools are the last thing that gets in on it. Becoming a teacher is not the path to fame, fortune and wealth. Typically becoming an educator means sacrifice.

There is the saying:
Those who can do; those who can't teach.

That is part of the problem with education. If you want people who know what they are about you will have to pay for it.

If teaching could compete in the marketplace for top talent, maybe they wouldn't get the brightest because I don't think education is ever going to pay "that" well. But they could get and retain kind, competent and knowledgeable educators who know their stuff and have the respect of parents and the community. That would go a lot farther than any computer software of fancy electronics.

Let's get things straightened out. About a month ago the CDF experiment at the Tevatron at Fermilab found a "bump" in their data. It was statistically significant and was unexplained. This "bump" cannot be the Higgs boson from The Standard Model because it has the completely wrong cross-section. This was a fully public result from the CDF experiment.

About the same time there was a "leaked" abstract from an internal note from the ATLAS experiment at the LHC which claimed to have a signal for a Higgs boson. This was never a public or published result.

Now today we have an announcement from the D0 experiment at the Tevatron that they looked into the CDF bump and see nothing. This isn't a set back for the Higgs since it was never about the Higgs. The ATLAS leaked abstract has never been confirmed even by ATLAS so lets not get our underpants in a knot. Lets also not conflate the two since they don't have anything to do with each other.

I have an x200 and I absolutely love it. My previous laptop was an HP which got ~2.5 hours when it was brand new but was down to about 10 minutes after a year. My x200 gets about 10 hours of battery life with the wireless on. I have the solid state drive and the large battery. I use it all day in meetings for work without plugging it in. Granted its new right now, it's an portable type laptop while my HP wasn't so the comparison isn't completely fair, but I'm hoping that the battery keeps it up.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm not so naive that I think it isn't going to affect me. If we let the markets work it out then it will affect me. I will have a hard time buying (not be able to buy) a home for many more years. The job market will dry up just as I am graduating. It will be tough. However I still think that the government should leave it all alone. They are welcome to try to stimulate the economy by spending money on things that the government ought to like infrastructure, education, etc, but they should stay out of the private financial markets. If it hits the regular people like myself hard then so be it. I think things will work their way out in the end.