I don't know what kind of bars you have where you live, but around here bars are public places. In fact, they're usually called "pubs" (short for "public house", apparently). There's no more expectation of privacy at the bar than in a park or other public place.

With Google Glass, at least you see them recording; the cellphone that's on "record" two tables over is just lost in the clutter...

"Half a decade"? If you mean "half a century", you're about right.

Google "breeder reactor" and "thorium reactor".

Engineering-wise, nuclear waste is basically a solved problem. It's political and economical factors that are making it a problem still.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can really hurt me".

In the EU, if you're serving by the pint, you have to either have glasses with fill lines, or pumps that are certified as dispensing a pint of liquid per pull. It's actually illegal to do otherwise. See Pint glass

Sure, it's expanded by 41% in the last two years. What you fail to mention is that 2012 was a record low.

Guess that didn't fit into your "global warming scam" world-view?

http://xkcd.com/about/

I think this is the part you mistakenly think is easy.

There's roughly 2.4 million stones in the Great Pyramid of Giza, some of which weigh up to 80 tons. "Simply stacking" them is anything but.

Without any mod points today the next best thing I can do is to say "Bravo AC, bravo!" and hope someone with mod points mods you up.

It always amazes me that the McCarthy-era Red Scare still lives and breathes in 21st Century America.

Yeah, sure. But the thing here is that it's not a 1 in 4,000 chance of this asteroid hitting us every day; it's 1 in 4,000 that it'll hit us once. 800-odd years from now.

1 in 4,000 is a small enough chance to be a virtual certainty over a few hours for events happening once a second - does that mean anything at all to a 1 in 4,000 once-in-a-lifetime chance? No. And this event is not even a once-in-a-lifetime event; it's once-in-several-tens-of-lifetimes.

Or to put it another way: People suck at probability assessments.

1. "Taxpayers like me" include you, me, the other employees at said company, and everyone else that pays taxes - the company in question and all other companies as well. The money comes from taxes already paid.
2. The sums involved wouldn't make a noticeable difference to your taxes since it's split several million ways.
3. How is protecting the employees of a failing company "propping up" said company? Either it's bankrupt and is going down, or it can recover and then has to pay back the money the government spent on employee salaries.

On a side note, I find it quite amazing that the McCarthy-era "red scare" still lives and thrives in 21st century America...

Now where did I define "employee protection" as "employees working for free"?

Oh, that's right, I didn't. I even gave an example of how strong employee protection made sure I got paid even though my company couldn't pay me.

In the example I gave, the government paid our salaries while the company negotiated with its creditors; the company then had to pay that money back to the government. I never missed a paycheck; the employees were indeed protected.

Had the company failed in its negotiations with their creditors, it would have had to declare bankruptcy and the state would have covered our salaries during the bankruptcy proceedings. After that, we would be on our own.

Luckily for me, the company succeeded in reducing or cancelling their debts and made a full recovery (which was actually the whole point of the example, to answer the question "do companies recover from a situation where they're unable to pay salaries for a period of time" - yes they sometimes do).

The company of course.

Gah, that's what I get for not proof-reading. The company negotiated with their creditors, of course, to reduce or cancel the company's debts.

Also, I'd like to clarify that the money the government paid for our salaries wasn't a gift; it was a loan and had to be paid back (and has been).

In countries with stronger employee protection than the US, yes.
The company failing to provide pay is not an implicit termination of the employment contract, leaving or not working is.

Quite common where I'm from (EU). The company I'm currently working for had to go through reconstruction four years ago; for three months the government paid our salaries while the company negotiated with their debtors to cancel or reduce their debt. In the end we lost about 25% of our employees (some people left voluntarily, some were let go), but the company survived and have been in the black since. In fact, last year was a record year for us; best financial result in the company's history.