Peter Grynch asked:

“I’m guessing that you are a Carter supporter?”

I’m a second generation Californian and a Reagan hater. I did vote for Carter but now regret it. If I could do it over again I would have abstained. I still believe that Carter is a good man (he’d make a great Bapitst preacher) but freely admit that he was a terrible President. Perhaps one of the reasons why I’m so deeply distrustful of B. Hussein is because I once supported Jimmy Carter (been there, done that). I did vote for G.W. Bush and would do so again. I believe my earlier error of supporting Carter has been cancelled out by my supporting G.W. Bush. I will vote for McCain and have already sent in my campaign contribution.

Whitehall said:

“I did work on a fission fragment laser in college in the 70’s. We got maybe 4 coherent photons out of it.”

There’s a book about the guys behind the X-ray laser titled:

“Star Warriors, A penetrating look into the lives of the young scientist behind our space Age Weaponry” by William J. Broad, ISBN: 0-671-54566-3.

I believe(?) the book was written before the follow-on tests showed the X-ray laser didn’t work. At one time, the book was fashionable to read at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where the work was actually done.

I vaguely remember the Livermore X-ray laser was a bundle of thin copper wires. I have no clue how one would get something like that to lase. I’m a bit surprised that no one has figured out how to make a gamma ray laser.