But with sandworms comes spice and He who controls the Spice controls the universe. I'd like to rent some goats please.

Yes, it's very strange should require "emergency repairs". It should have undergone regular maintenance a decade ago, and a decade before that, and the decade before that. A pre-war bridge should be inspected regularly because it requires maintenance. The fact that it's closed due to emergency repairs is because it has either been passed by for regular repairs, or has been completely ignored.

Still, one has to wonder about the accuracy of reporting on the 'weapon'. It could easily be interpreted to read: "The device projects a narrow beam of extremely annoying sound, at levels that can reach 151 decibels, (right in front the device, with an effective range of) over a distance of a mile or more."

Well, that's the problem. (IANAL, but I had this thoroughly explained by one) See, as a group, they're only guilty of "marching without permit", but individuals in the group may be tossing bricks, disturbing the order, causing damage, looting, etc. etc. The problem is, unless you can identify said individuals, you can't do anything about it. You can't arrest them all for looting, because some of them are not. You can't arrest everyone in the group for burning down cars, because most of them are not. The difference between a protester and a rioter is that protesters don't toss bricks. The problem is getting rid of the rioters while not harming the protesters. So what can you do to stop some of them from causing damage? You can get them all to leave. If you have a better suggestion that does not involve single policemen and women walking through a potentially dangerous crowd to stop individuals, I'd love to hear it. Until then, it's a case of a few bad apples.

That makes no sense... Getting up there isn't all that hard, but as it happens, there's a lot of sky that doesn't contain airships. Getting up there with a payload and a guidance system that will actually lock on to the blimp is the hard part. An AIM-92 Stinger missile has only a range of 8km, (which I assume means distance, not height) against stationary targets. That's about the best you can do for shoulder launched weapons. If you want to hit that blimp, you're going to need a really big missile. Think several meters long, a thousand kilograms, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, specialized launchers, etc. etc. Nothing to hard to get for a real army, but not something your average goatherd with a rifle is likely to have.

UK libel laws work exactly opposite to those in most other countries. In this case, Singh said that chiropractic was bogus, and is getting sued by the BCA. Now, in any sane country, the BCA would have to prove that A - BCA has to prove that Singh is wrong and and chiropractic is perfectly supported B - BCA has to prove that That Singh's statement caused damage. But, in with the UK's libel laws, you're basically guilty until proven innocent. In this case, when the BCA sued Singh, Singh has to prove either A - Singh has to prove that his statement was true B - Singh has to prove no damage was caused. Now, again, in a sane country, both A and B are impossible, the BCA would lose the lawsuit without Singh even getting a lawyer. But, in the UK, Singh needs his lawyers badly, because damage was caused, his only chance to win is to show that chiropractic is crap. A piece of cake if you're in a room with scientists, but when you're surrounded by lawyers and convincing a judge, it's not so east.

heh, us desk people work in carefully planned deathtraps as well. At least a factory has a potential exits (emergency exit, normal exit, window) and office on the 12th floor, however, has an emergency escape (good luck running down 11 stairs in 15 secs) and elevators (DON'T!) we had a fire drill where the first X people outside were paid a certain ammount of money. Normally we have a 75 second complete evac time, for a 6 floor building. With people actaully pushing and shoving to get down, it got up to a whooping 180 seconds. And that's not counting the time for a full sweep of every floor, or with actaul smoke.