And yet, even though social pressure is frequently negative, social pressure does have a positive impact (laws against murder, for example). Without collaboration, it is easy to end up with problems (especially when shopping). This is what makes the modern "recommendation" systems helpful. Amazon's system of recommending books is based off of millions of people buying millions of objects. With user input as to what is liked and what is not liked out of a recommendation list, the system can grow smarter and give better crowd-sourced advice to the buyer while avoiding (for the most part) the negative problems of fake reviews (or poorly written/thought out ones).

We recently moved into a neighborhood where the average electric bill during our own 8 months of summer is in the 200+ range and usually in the ~$300/mo. range. As part of the move, we replaced the air conditioners with the cheapest ones on the government's list of central ACs that you get credit for (also the most expensive that would fit in the space available :(). Our highest bill was $177, and this with single pane windows and poor sealing. Our last bill (November) was for $43 in an all electric neighborhood (I suspect it will be higher this month as we have used the heat a bit).

Comparing our costs with our neighbors (who have what we would have had without replacement), we are looking at a three and third years to fully recoup the cost of the installation. Any chance something similar could help diminish your bill?

at least the turrets aren't mobile and have to be resupplied by human agents.

Robots need power... land mines don't. If it is on a cable, the cable can be shut off and the robot then taken down. If it is on battery, run a mobile robot around it until it runs out of juice. If it is on solar + battery, it is detectable and can be taken out remotely.

Taking your two examples--chemical weapons designed to create fear among survivors could diminish potential resistance bloodshed in a situation where the invader was committed to winning and had the resources to do so but chose an easier path. This could, then, be seen as a lesser evil (to bombing a nationalist resistance movement into the ground before entering an area). Biological weapons (yes, I know you are likely referring to the "bad kind") could be used to give everyone debilitating weakness ... thirst, you name it, in order to allow for an easier invasion (just make sure the invading troops are inoculated). Some would die from complications in all likelihood but less than if bombing / tanks / etc. had to be used.

In both my above examples, I am positing a set of weapons that cause no long term harm to the populace yet still fall into your categories. Even if there is long term harm (perhaps no one in the invaded country can handle a jack hammer for ten years or something), we still have an improvement over widespread bloodshed (but this does present the issue of what "improvement" is). If we are talking a serious weapon that causes permanent nerve damage or wipes out an entire population like a type of weaponized small pox might, this is still going to prevent infrastructure damage and allow for a faster local recovery among survivors / immigrants. Hiroshima was bad as was the more widespread bombing of Japan by conventional weapons. If Hiroshima had been left standing but all the people who died killed directly (still horrible, but we are talking about war), then the recovery could have been accomplished in a matter of weeks instead of years.

Some of the above may be distasteful--I wouldn't want to go to the lengths indicated, but the tools are simply tools. The weapons aren't evil--their application by human agents could be depending on the situation and the strength of dose, etc. It still boils down to humans standing at the root of the problem, not the mechanisms. Blaming machines (which is what it could lead to) will only exacerbate existing problems.

yep.

I got into the iphone 'craze' (or whatever) because of my wife's macbook pro... she needed a smartphone for work and her options were blackberry (did slot machines with her contact info and took a while to fix even with time machine helping out) and the iphone at the time. She switched to the iphone and, as a teacher, I switched from windows mobile the next day because it was better than anything available at the time for what was needed.

Why do I still use a completely closed system? Investment (paid apps--none of which are games) and it still works for what it needs to do. I don't need tethering (wifi is pretty ubiquitous) and I don't need root access--I simply need a phone that happens to have most of the functions of a small computer.

amazing - someone who had mod points could have modded the parent informative and instead chose to waste points making you redundant. He'll probably come back and do the same to me (or else mark me flame bait). Hurrah.

formatted the tag wrongly... sigh:

Child development

In many of my conversations with Europeans on the subject of distances between places (and this covers hundreds of conversations over my twice yearly trips over the past decade), there is some confusion over the actual distances involved in the US. Just as Americans might typically exaggerate distances between, say, Madrid and Paris (and I know several who do) because they are in different countries (and the US is large), many in the Europe seem to do the opposite (shrinking distances because the US is only one country). I am talking about educated adults in both countries who know how to use a map but simply don't actively think about the measured distances between points.

So perhaps "several near national [sic] wide powerouts" refers to the GP's perception of distance. On top of this, if you've seen news in Europe, America regularly suffers from horrifying national catastrophes on a regular basis (hurricanes putting millions at risk, tornadoes impacting whole regions of the country, earthquakes being felt across areas the size of Spain, etc.). Just like news in America sensationalizes, so does its European set of counterparts.

development of fine motor skills comes later--four years olds are still working on gross motor skills (large movements with even the fingers). This alone is reason to encourage continued outdoor activity as without it, there might never be appropriate development for the kid and it could affect a variety of areas in his life.

insanely enough, "toiletry" aerosols are now allowed again.

um... not just thanks to the Supreme Court--this was a reasonable interpretation of Amendment 14 (the "Equal Protection Clause," specifically).

If your friend really had a disruptor pistol, I think he could have gotten on the plane just fine without breaking it down. All he'd have to do would be to wave his hands and say, "There is no pistol" to the TSA agents.

Maybe this explains the news last week about a gamma ray halo around the galaxy - though honestly, science news is so often old hat, there's probably been an explanation for it for years (like the recent "discovery" of a new language that has been in the database for the last decade).