I am hoping that this drug does work. If it does, then because of U.S. drug patents it will be relatively expensive for the foreseeable future. It has the potential to be the next Viagra, a drug that has to be taken frequently and is very common. Which, would be a sincere reason to celebrate for the executives of the company that brought it to market, no conspiracy/craziness required.

Yes, but gold also fluctuates with respect to the CPI.
http://www.macrotrends.net/134...

Yes, there are many sayings about both corner cases and not fixing what isn't broken. Do you honestly think we can improve on a rate of 6-9's? Do you honestly believe the routine humiliation and violations are worth it?

How effective does it need to be for you? 1%, 10%, 90%? There aren't numbers on how effective the screening is, but there are numbers on flights and bombings (and that's all bombs, not just shoe bombs of which there was one). Roughly 0.00005% (about 10 in 19 million) of all flights (where part of the flight lands in the US) are at risk of bombing annually.

The linked source agrees with me, 50g would not be enough to do serious damage, you need to have 100g to do serious damage to a car, which (for explosives as opposed to impact) is not much stronger than an airplane fuselage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/854...

Being required to check your own bag is OK. Although some of the searches bags are subject to is questionable, but that's a slightly different topic.

Shoe screening has never been acceptable, especially because it's ineffective.

If the measures were actually successful, the TSA should be tooting it's own horn. From what I can tell all of the bombing plots in the 2000s were avoided by either misfires or security measures in place since the mid 90s. Also 50g of PETN in a shoe bomb would have been ineffective even if it had detonated.

None of the regulations you cited are actually reasonable. The vanishingly small amount of security we gained is not worth the large amount of freedom we've given up for it.

Yes, but that peanut butter isn't cheap.

Sorry for the reply to myself, but that number conflicts with the estimate for the formation of the sun given in Wikipedia (4.567 billion years, but looking at the references that estimate seems to be indirect).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
About 4,533 million years. So I'm guessing the new estimate would push it to ~4,593 million years.

OK, I think I misread. A different way to read it would be that even after a species is extinct, they continue to hold both a) and b) records until a new species evolves that beats them. I'm not sure what to make of the argument, though.

I think you mean or, it is possible for a species to go extinct that satisfied both a) and b), leaving the second place finisher to satisfy a), but not b).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

So, maybe.

Actually that varies by state. The California law explicitly states "Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits". https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vc...

Shopping on the Internet is quick and convenient, and international. Using a credit card, charges appear as if you had made a purchase from wherever their merchant account lists as their address. In general, your location (as provided by your IP address) is not taken into account. This has already caused me problems with an overzealous bank that doesn't believe I would be shopping in Germany or Japan. Now if they can see that I'm obviously still in the US (via my cellphone), well then.