I'm wondering about that for a longer time: what do you mean by rebooting a lot? I know no one that leaves their pc on 24x7. Maybe because I'm from Europe and our energy costs are a lot higher but we all shutdown our pc and laptop (and various other equipment, standby is not used when you're not planning on using it soon) when we're done with them. And I don't mind the 20 seconds extra wait when cold booting. So, is it an "American" thing or am I missing something here?

Marissa Meyer is easy on the eyes, and that is relevant. Right? Right?

War is peace, duh.

As a citizen of the US, I agree with you. Sadly, most of our populace is happy eating Mcdonalds and watching Snooki, so they're too apathetic to voice any opinions to our congress critters. At this point, I fear the military industrial complex is turning the cogs.

Pretty much this. My parents were super liberal, but always taught me that until told otherwise you maintain strict courtesy until told not to. So, it's always, "Yes sir, Yes ma'am." This works out great considering a LOT of the folks I work with, who are my seniors, are ex-military.

I agree with you, AC (first time I think I've ever said that). But I have a feeling we'll be hearing tons of excuses for this whole thing until the warhawks get their way.

I really wish that was true. There were videos coming out of Syria last year of a supposed chemical weapon attack that didn't show up in the media at all, and received no response (at least not publicly). There was also a reported incident earlier this year (in March I believe) that was reported in the media, but nothing came out of it other than some pondering about the action the US would take. This time we actually are paying attention. 3rd time is the charm I guess?

Technically, we already have a reason to attack, and we did the second one of their missiles hit our ally, Turkey. This is just casus belli.

For having a higher amount of melanin in his skin, and for not being George Bush.

You know, that's the first time I've seen someone raise this point, and it is a very good one. The sad thing is, the security council is pretty much, well, a stopping point for any effectiveness of the UN. It'd only get worse if we didn't keep ourselves there - at least we (theoretically) can push for our voice there to say something (if the people of the US could stop watching Miley Cyrus' twerking and stuffing their faces for the 2 minutes it takes to call their congress critters). To my knowledge, China doesn't offer that. And I won't say I have enough knowledge of Russia's civic system to venture a guess one way or the other.

Error, infinite loop detected.

I want to shake my fist in frustration over the quality control here but I find myself thinking "damn, how did I go this long without knowing that?".

So thanks and all but...damn. Someone go build a Beowulf cluster out of gameboys so we can get some good news back.

That was something that always fascinated me. It seems like nearly all religions are organized against it. Even the normally super-tolerant Jains and Buddhists are anti-homosexual. Almost all cite it as "unnatural," and yet it's incredibly common in the natural world which completely guts that argument. So far as I know, the only older religions I've read about which were accepting of homosexuality were held by the Greeks and Romans, and some Native American tribes. Now, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of religions I'm unaware of, so there could be more. It just always seemed weird.

What say I? I say spend 2 months in the UAE, Qatar, or Bahrain. Not every place is what your caricature of the Middle East describes.