for soldiers one would expect long endurance would be a plus. Ultrarunning is something where men and women appear to compete on a somewhat even footing.

Women are nearly competitive with men at long-distance running only because of their lower weight. Once they are outfitted with 100lbs of gear (which firefighters and soldiers are), they suddenly and dramatically lose their parity with men.

Even if they did, and I were to agree to their EULA, I don't like lifting my finger up to touch the screen. Some things that are reasonable for tablet computers are only reasonable for tablet computers. This might be one of them, but I'm not even sure it's reasonable for tablets.

It's plausible, but not guaranteed. Another quite plausible scenario has the US collapsing economicly and everyone who can bailing out. There are other plausible scenarios.

OTOH, it does seem like most of the US govt. should be put in a home for the bewildered.

Why do you assume Science is the _only_ way to acquire knowledge?

Assuming that our DC sources of electricity are already somewhat efficient, why don't we just have other things that use that current be DC as well?

It's not AC vs DC. Somewhere along the way, your input voltage won't match your output voltage, and conversion is needed. That voltage conversion is where the expensive equipment and losses come in. Adding a DC to AC step in there, adds very nominal losses to above voltage conversion step.

Since the world standardized on AC power over a century ago, it's as good of an output option as any other.

resistance loss is a serious issue even for the short runs within a building - so you may still see 110V at the socket, even if it's supposed to be 120V.

Not true. You're vastly more likely to see 130V at a socket, than ever seeing one at or below 110V. That's the actual voltage delivered near the electrical box, dropping down to 125V or so, after it has been run across a building. Rough-service bulbs in the US are designed and rated for 130V instead of 120V for just this reason... A 120V incandescent light very near an electric box can have a rather short life-span.

Exactly. This human myopic assumptions are purely asinine at times. (Just like Scientists assume the Laws of Physics are constant for the universe based purely on visual data which has huge margins of error.)

Other stupid assumptions: Assuming life favors a single-star system when in reality it favors a twin-star system.

Earth is the anomaly here; NOT the norm.

It's a reasonable thing to worry about, but not to fixate on. As you pointed out there are worse problems.

OTOH, this is a plugin that directly manages communication over the net, so it's quite appropriate to be somewhat concerned.

I don't think you understand "trusting trust". If you have the binary, and you are verifying it. that's not the same process at all.

However, no, you can't trust it. It's not because you can't verify it, it's because you can't do it without violating their patents. Also because it's quite difficult to verify large code bases. But if I understand things correctly, even to translate the binary into assembler code would violate their patent.

P.S.: Trusting trust was about a compiler that compiled itself. And it showed that no source code inspection could reveal the inserted trojan, because the compiler binary would insert it even though it wasn't in the source code. That would be analogous if this were a code compiler that compiled itself.

OK, so the first LHC cost $9billion. How much would the second one cost? I'd bet a LOT less.

OTOH, this IS a new project, not a second LHC. That probably means that they'll run into new and unexpected problems. So the estimate is almost certainly wrong, and on the low end. (Not certainly. China's been doing some work with large 3D printers that print buildings, and, I believe, also tunnel construction machinery. And almost certainly on things I haven't heard about.)

But, yeah, my guess is that the price is lowballed. This is true for most construction projects, and is NOT something special to China. If they bring it in on or under budget, THAT will be special to China.

With a really large ring doesn't bremstrallung become less of a problem? And for protons that shouldn't be a problem at all.

IIRC, when the Stanford Linear Accelerator was built there were comments to the effect than a longer one would always be impractical. This is clearly incorrect, as if one were built in space there wouldn't be any curvature problems, but it may inidcate that there are severe problems with building a longer one in a strong gravitational field.

There are two major downsides to a one-party system centrally planned economy.
1) Sometimes the guy at the top makes mistakes, and nobody who knows better can call him on them. See "Great Leap Forwards".
2) Sometimes the guy at the top doesn't have the best interests of the country in mind, and nobody can make him.

Mind you, the US recently has been exhibiting those very same problems. In the US it's fairly clear that the problem has been that:
1) Corporations are not people. They should not have rights. (The stockholders should, as should the management AS CITIZENS. But not the corporation.)
2) Plurality wins voting is solidly broken. It is just about guaranteed to result in vastly increaded corruption at the upper levels of the political process. It should be replaced by some form of majority (i.e., 50% or more) wind voting. One plausible candidate is Instant Runoff Voting. Another is Condorcet voting.
2a) Multiple political parties, as currently exists in the US and Europe, is beneficial, but only in the context of a Majority Wins voting system. When combined with a Plurality Wins voting system they merely serve to disenfranchise those unhappy with the two major parties.
2)

Actually China *does* have a lot of corruption. So does the US. But they have corruption in different places. (I can't speak for the EU, and I'm not even sure it's the same from country to country.)

The question is "Does China have corruption in places that would grossly interfere with the construction of a large new particle accelerator? I don't know. The US did. The Supercollider proposed location was chosen because of corruption, and the project was cancelled because of corruption. OTOH, it would have been quite expensive, and very difficult. Corruption wasn't the only factor.