Hard to feel sorry for a country whose PM publicly threatened to wipe my country (and several of our allies) off the map.

Not to mention denying the holocaust.

Not to mention killing my neighbor's dad and running one of my friends (now a Ph.D at Boeing) out of their country.

But I do feel sorry for the people who live there.

Ashton Kutcher found something inspiring (both in his film portrayal but moreso at the Nickelodeon awards) about someone who might not have seemed that way to those in his life.

What austerity program?

When was the last year Greece spent LESS money than the previous year.

I agree. I'm having a hard time seeing how "narcissism" hurts anyone.
Should we ban mirrors too?

Interesting ... I guess I was going a bit on hearsay there.

??

If slavery was legal in the North up to and during the Civil War, then why was there so much ado over Dredd Scott?

In terms of the law, they would have just sent him back, but the abolitionists thought they had a case because slavery was illegal in the North.

And furthermore, what was the Missouri Compromise all about? I thought that was where the Northern states couldn't own slaves?

When I grew up people told me jack o' laterns are symbols of the occult and child sacrifice.

It's true that people who sacrifice children are into the jack o' latern stuff (and YES they do exist, please don't dismiss that under the guise of /. "enlightened thinking" or whatever), but most people who carve pumpkins are not intending to promote the devil.

Or at least insofar as they are cutting a pumpkin.

They also have a concept of the 60 hour work week.

Don't get me wrong ... there is a lot the West can learn from them.

7 years of Qt development here.

Gave up on finding Qt work in the RTP area and started over in C#.

After 3 years I'm making more money, but I had to take a pay cut for a while.

The LibreOffice spreadsheets crash on me all the time.

I'm not going near that stuff anymore ... helps that I have an MSDN subscription, though.

The Europeans are responsible for a lot of stupidity.

When Russian armored units pour into Germany, France, and Italy, the Europeans will not be glad they spent billions on collecting comet data.

You did hear president Obama (not a war hawk president by any measure) is sending armored reinforcements to Europe?

If it wasn't for NATO, Russia would have done it sooner. That essentially means the EU countries are relying on the US for a military while they send up these wake up / go back to bed space probes.

You're reinforcing his point.

If the government is dropping money from our pockets into ALL these energy providers, it doesn't really say much about which one is the most viable.

Also, I'm not sure what business you have telling people what emotions to feel.

I don't credit people for believing in God, but you certainly have a sordid way to pat yourself on the back there, sir.

Believe it or not, in Atheism Land (i.e. the USSR), 20 million people were killed by the government during WWII (and 6 million in Ukraine alone over a 2 year period) for political reasons.

But why has the government failed so spectacularly when it comes to fusion research compared to private efforts?

No one is even close to Lockheed. This other company is doing pretty well too.