I'd like to point out that Iran's proxy in Lebanon did bomb Israeli Arab children and promptly declared them martyrs for the cause, extrapolate that as you will.
I've also wondered if a religious leader might stretch the concept of martyrdom to a place, i.e. Jerusalem.

Personally, being an Israeli, I'd be willing to bet my life on Iran not wanting to actually nuke anyone and just being interested in acquiring nuclear capability to be taken seriously, by the US and their neighbors.
And I don't think Netanyahu is irrational enough to think he can get away with an Operation Opera type strike without pulling Iran into an all out war and maybe some of their friends and is just bluffing to have the Americans do the work for him.

It's not about solving problems, it's about betting that you can find a bigger sucker than you appear to be.

Wow, that must be in the top three most awesome real person names ever.
I'd buy the comics based on the name alone!
I bet he fights arcane AIs with nothing but his trusty cyberspace deck and deep knowledge of neurolinguistics.

On the subject of overpopulation, there's also this recent TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html

I don't believe there's that much of a distinction between 'You shall observe these rules because I say so' and 'You shall observe these rules because you happen to be part of a group that I defined and I say so'.

Sure, it's quite different in Israel because although as a whole I get the general impression that it's a more secular state than the US, with the founding of Israel certain agreements were made with the religious so they control marriage, burial, not allowing public transportation on Sabbath in certain cities and the like.

And I too think that as long as it's opt-in they should knock themselves out, wear silly hats, put strings around their buildings (I'd probably put the line at spinning live chickens around their heads because that seems like unnecessary animal cruelty) and whatnot.
But it's not really opting in if you're defined as Jewish by the single fact that your mother was Jewish, no matter if you renounce the religion or convert to another one, and therefore fair game for them.

Well, living in Jerusalem my experience is rather different.
A while back they used to have these huge protest over the opening of a parking lot on Saturday, blocking off streets burning trash containers, a friend of mine told me that one day he was driving home they actually rolled a burning trash container onto the road and he almost hit it.
There was this whole thing about their treatment of women in the news a few months ago, exemplified by grown men spitting on a nine year old girl on her way to school because she wasn't dressed modestly enough for them.
A deli that I lived down the street from got vomit smeared on its doors because it sells non-kosher meat.
And the list goes on.

You might not hear of Jewish suicide bombers anytime soon but the fundamentalists around here certainly don't think their rules only apply to themselves.
And personally I'm planning to move somewhere else before they become the majority around here and start passing these things into law.

DNA is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

At least the devil would have enough integrity not to try to spin it as a charitable venture.

I don't want to sound like a shill but every time I see people complaining about laptop monitor glossiness and resolution I feel the urge to recommend a Thinkpad.
Probably not quite as solid as in the IBM days but still pretty good. (at least the T and W models)

So what you're saying is the whole thing is overblown?