Japanese Riot Police

I stumbled across photos of riot police deploying in Japan, a far cry from the nice police that help you find your way in Tokyo!
As with most things Japanese, technology is being used in full force. Check out the uber cool radio packs and helmets. Now thats cool… BTW, notice whats missing? That’s right, guns. Not an MP5 or Glock in sight. Sure, they have them but I’d bet they are used as an absolute last resort. I’ll say it again, I’d like to live in Japan…
Riot police

Good news for causality, bad news for sci fi fans!

PhysicsWeb – News – Good news for causality (November 2004)
“… plotted counts against the time-of-arrival of the photons (see figure). Using this graph, they calculated a mean group velocity that was 1.76 times the speed of light in vacuum. More importantly, they measured the signal velocity for the first time and showed that the increase in the group velocity does not increase the speed at which information travels.”

Sad news for sci-fi fans who might have misunderstood the implications of “faster than light” physics experiments.

-Greg

U.S. Airborne Laser Advances to ‘First Light’

I’m not sure how good the lasers are for the intended purpose, but they’ve got to be impressive. Gas dynamic lasers essentially deliver a fraction of the energy of a rocket engine as a directed energy beam. Very Death-Star-ish.

“…It includes breakthrough optics designed to focus a basketball-sized spot of heat on a missile’s skin to rupture it up to hundreds of miles away.”

Airborne Anti Missile Laser

-Greg