Yes, I assume you've read about the recent creation of NaCl3, NaCl7, Na3Cl2, Na2Cl, and Na3Cl at high pressures, compounds not possible in standard chemistry.

‘Impossible’ Sodium Chlorides Challenge Foundation of Chemistry

Do you confront anyone who sits across from you on the subway and has the back of his phone pointed in your general direction while he surfs the web or plays Angry Birds? How about the people who are engrossed in texting as they walk down the street and wind up point their phones at you briefly? The people at the gym using their iPhone to listen to watch a movie while they work out and wind up with the camera waving about as they walk from machine to machine? Do you think that every iPhone suction-cupped on someone's car window to is actually recording you and not just there for GPS?

No? Congratulations. You understand that an iPhone is not a recording device; it's a general-purpose device that happens to have the ability to record. Now, why is it so hard to understand the same about Google Glass?

As others have mentioned... eliminating the camera eliminates any possible augmented-reality applications. That is very far from ideal.

What I think Google needs to do, is quit being coy with the invites and the "why I want to be allowed to buy Glass" nonsense; and get the technology into as many regular prescription frames as they can as quickly as possible. Then what are the anti-Glass types going to do, have a contact-lens only policy? Forbid anyone from entering who's wearing any kind of glasses? It simply won't be tenable. And if they try, eventually they'll do it to someone whose eyesight is bad enough that their antics will bring the ADA into play. That will result in a massive and well-deserved lawsuit that the businesses *will* lose.

And no, I don't want to follow strangers around and surreptitiously record and upload them. I barely think to pull out my iPhone and record the interesting bits of my own life; and I've no interest in yours. I want the augmented-reality aspects. And the sooner the luddite brigade is slapped down, the sooner I can get my frikkin-terminator-vision.

According to this document linked to from your page world production of gold has increased by a factor of almost 7 over the last century, which is a significant increase, especially since as you say, price has not changed really at all (ignoring the large increase in the last five years, the price/ton in 1900 was the same as in 2005). This seems to indicate price is set by the demand side; also it seems to show consumption has increased by a similar factor, so more gold mined means more gold used.

The last few years however show a huge increase in price without any increase in production or usage, which does indicate to me that speculation was driving the price - the recent crash supports this.

It surprised me to be honest - here is the page I saw, and it's 1967, not 1969.This article backs up the data and discusses the gold supply in general - it does seem as though most people assume that gold mining is much less prevalent than it actually is.

Half of all of the gold in the world was mined after 1969. I wouldn't be surprised if it was similar for silver. And while that obviously hasn't affected the price massively, the supply of gold is increasing rapidly - which I would say indicates the price has nothing to do with supply or utility.

When institutions no less esteemed than the BBC and the New York Times have done "reviews" of Tesla that were somewhere between contrived and falsified (Depending on how polite you care to be.) to make the cars look as bad as possible, I think one can forgive Musk for getting a bit defensive and even coming out swinging when under attack.

Yes, they *are* out to get him (Or at least TSLA.).

> Given this is the first arrest, you have to wonder how
> the courts might view a law making it a felony to alter
> a person's own property for reasons that have
> nothing to do with actual public safety.

Some fairly massive parts of the vehicle and traffic codes have nothing at all to do with public safety; and are often even counterproductive to public safety and even the environment (Window tint laws, for example.). They're just there to give the cops a way to raise revenue by writing tickets or as an excuse to pull you over if they decide they don't like the looks of you.

You're missing the fact that the tech industry does not have the political clout in Washington that outfits like Wall Street and the UAW do. It shoulders its own risk and doesn't get bailouts like the more bribery-aware industries do. If it did, we'd still be ordering our pet food online from a sock puppet.

Actually according to Wikipedia the average purity of crystal is 62%, so it would be a bit short of the world's population. It would cover the adult population though :)

Not far off! According to this page the density is 1.2 g/cm3. So 200 gallons is approximately 1000kg, which is about 10 billion 100ug doses.

Yes, it's true both by absolute value and percentage, there's any number of sources available but this BBC article has a good summary of various figures.

Chart one on the police report you linked to shows there were fewer crimes where firearms were used in 2011 than in 1997, the year the handgun ban went into effect. That's despite the fact that

The method used for counting the number of firearms offences in England and Wales was changed on 1 April 1998 and, as a result, the reported number of offences has been seen to increase across some categories of offence.

If you look at the second chart then you can even see that the "big increase" of firearm use in 2003 was nothing to do with handguns anyway, it was mostly from air guns.

With the other half being "the government has been corrupted by companies: we need more companies!"

> with a camera sitting there pointing at everyone,
> drawing suspicion about what is being recorded

I still find it insane that people think that surreptitious picture taking is the primary selling point of Google Glass. When I heard about the thing, my thought was not: "Ah ha, I can use this to secretly record people without their permission.". It was more like: "Cool... Frikkn' Terminator vision!!!"

Granted, the camera is a necessary part in generating the sort of informational overlays that I'm imagining. But the ability to record is completely tangental to how I'd want to use the thing.