Isn't the majority of air-to-air combat strategy now just to fire an active radar AIM-120 AMRAAM from a bajillion miles away anyway?

Still incomparable:

a) Kosovo doesn't share a border with the United States

b) Crimea had an ethnic cleansing attempt by the Russians - you can't argue that Kosovo had all sorts of Americans move to Kosovo to make a majority American population so they can vote to be annexed by America....

c) Kosovo is recognized by 108 UN member states. Crimea ... I think only by Russia so far.

d) Kosovo, another "autonomous region" was part of a country that was falling apart. Funny how Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomous status triggering the breakup of Yugoslavia to further his "Greater Serbia" agenda.

e) If you want to compare Puerto Rico, I guess lets go back to the 19th century and compare things:
The Imperial census of Crimea in 1897 found that the population of the governorate consisted of 1,447,790, with 762,804 male and 684,986 female.
Language Number Percentage (%)
Ukrainian (Little Russian) 611,121 42.21
Russian (Great Russian) 404,463 27.94
Belarusian (White Russian) 9,726 0.67

By this standard Crimea belongs to Ukraine.

It is grossly undemocratic and unethical to hold a referendum in Crimea when:

1) the Parliament of the so called "autonomous region of Crimea" was raided by Russian paramilitaries

2) the federal government which the "autonomous region of Crimea" lies within: Ukraine, is under civil strife and is holding elections in a few months.

3) Russia itself conducts massive military exercises near the border, in addition to holding a port they lease from the Ukrainian government while having their own forces step off the base and surround Ukrainian military bases.

For the above reasons no one at the UN should recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, and no referendum result should be observed until Ukrainian federal elections are held under international supervision until international observers agree on the election result. All of this is bullshit otherwise.

"Russian self defence forces" - what a fucking joke.

However, Kosovo didn't join the United States, nor was that ever the goal.

If you want to register a vehicle that you've purchased out of state in NJ, you have to pay sales tax on it, unless it was previously registered at your former address in the state where it was purchased. So basically, if you live in NJ and want a Tesla, you have to pay sales tax (and possibly registration fees) in the state you purchase it, and then pay sales tax AGAIN in order to register it in NJ.

That's true in most states. I got lucky in that I'd bought my car ~7 months before moving from New York City to Chicago...had I bought it 2 months later, I would have been stuck with sales tax in both states.

That said, as egregious as this is, it is nothing compared to the bullshit New York City and New York State inflict upon their residents. When I moved out of the state, I had to pay a punitive tax for having the audacity of leaving New York state. I kid you not. At around $3k, it's enough to hurt, but just under the amount that would make a lawsuit overturning this doubtlessly unconsitituional tax financially worthwile. That said, after this experience I will never willingly live in New York state again.

It wouldn't surprise me if some existing refineries have been upgraded to higher capacity though.

This happens.

The recent big example was when Motiva completed the expansion of their Port Arthur refinery. They added 325,000 barrels/day of capacity. If that were built as its own refinery, it would have been the tenth largest in the US. Since it added to an existing refinery, it bumped the refinery up to the largest in the country.

I've never seen microwave popcorn burned by accident. It's always been intentional to cover up the smell of smoking pot.

They aren't hitting one guy. They are contracting with the city to guarantee that there will be at least one cop in the specified area 24/7. That actually works out to 4 or 5 cops once you figure in shifts, days off, etc.

This. FBX is terrible. The best I can say about it is that it's not quite as bad as Microsoft's OpenXML formats.

Depends on the industry. I do know a few people who only develop for the web, but that's because they work in web development. As a tools dev contractor in the game industry I have never been asked to write anything web based. Not even by my clients who are developing web games.

iRobot has no product-lines of humanoid robots, so of course they need to shit talk it.

It's as simple as that.

Could you be any more pedantic?

OP said:
"the Higgs Boson is one of the century's biggest discoveries"

It's how unions work in the USA, too. GP is an idiot, and has obviously learned everything he "knows" about unions from Libertarian ideologues.

I think other authors have done a better job with postulating advances in technology. A few examples:

Charles Stross - Accelerando - One of the more believable and compelling projections of computer tech that I've read in a long time.

Linda Nagata - Vast - Similar projections for computer tech as above, plus genetic engineering. This was a recent random find in a used book store for me, and apparently the fourth book in a series called The Nanotech Succession. I will definitely be looking for more of her stuff.

Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl - Definitely the best I've seen for projection in biotech, and it hit me in a similar way as the first time I read Neuromancer a few decades ago. Definitely not for children, though. Pump Six And Other Stories is a collection of short stories set in the same world, but I don't know how well they would hold up on their own without the deeper context that TWG provides.

There's plenty of discussion about how we need more men in nursing and K-6 education, it's just happening on forums you aren't paying attention too. Perhaps you could pull your head out of your ass and google yourself up a bit of education on those topics. I can't speak to therapists, but then all of the relatively few therapists I've met are men.