The idea is that your backups should be far enough apart that they won't be caught in the same natural disaster. As an example, I live in Southern California, just north of Los Angeles. If I had data that I really needed to protect, I'd have two off-site backups. One would be far enough away from home that a flood, tsunami (My home is about 170 feet above sea level and within a few miles of the coast.) or wildfire wouldn't get both of them. The other one would be far enough away that I'd not have to worry about it after the next big quake, possibly in the mid-west. Simple common prudence, no need for paranoia.

Kind of makes me wonder what happened to that "land of the free" part of the national charactor.

Well, at least we can still claim to be the "home of the brave." Of course, that just leaves us on a par with Freedonia.

You're probably not old enough, but there used to be something called the 80 column mind. This was something that affected programmers who had learned how to use computers back in the days when the punched card was king, and were still writing programs that expected all input and output to fit into that medium's 80 character restrictions. I worked for JPL for a few years in the mid-80's, and even then many of their newer programs used what were called "cardimages:" computer records that were designed to mimic a punched card either because they received input from a program that was a legacy from the old punched card days or who's output would be fed to one. And, of course, sometimes both were that way. I'm sure that they've moved past that by now, for the most part, but I know that their main space probe navigation system was written with cardimages in mind and I doubt that they've ever gone to the expense of having something that works so well re-written.

Yes, there has been rapid heating over the last 150 years, as the Earth recovered from the effects of The Little Ice Age. Nothing particularly unusual or exiting about it, because the one thing that's known for sure about the Earth's climate is that it's always changing.

And because President Kennedy died in 1963 (before he could completely back away from the commitment)...

Do you have any evidence that he intended to do that, or are you just looking for an excuse to blame everything on LBJ and Nixon?

Rob Ford? Wasn't he the dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard and laid poor Jesse in his grave?

So what you're saying is, NYC is deep in the heart of taxes.

Of course no female mates want to marry me (still never had a date and a virgin).

Maybe if you got outside once in a while and learned how to interact with the rest of society this problem would take care of itself.

My understanding is that what's stockpiled is raw cocoa beans, still in the shell. As long as you keep it dry and away from insects, it's about as perishable as wheat, which is to say, not very. You can keep it for several years before you have to worry about it deteriorating, so that when there's a good year, you can stock up the excess to sell later. Now, the demand is up and production is down, so we're using it up faster than we're replacing it.

Back when I was in the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club in '72, our ship carried a 5"/54 gun, which was aimed using a mechanical analog computer. I know that the Iowa Class Battleships all used mechanical fire control both because it was more than accurate enough for the job and because it was specifically designed to ignore the shocks caused by firing the main battery, as well as the bigger shocks caused by incoming shells, bombs and torpedoes.

My guess is CIA/Mossad.

Just out of curiosity, what would Mossad have to gain from something like this? I could see them trying to give Al Queda or ISIL some bad press, but what would they have to gain from making Ukraine look bad?

And if that's not enough, there's always OADS for when you really want to be sure, but don't want to worry about fallout.

I get my medical care from the VA and am very happy with it. My current Primary Caregiver got his medical education at a university in Egypt, and I'm perfectly satisfied with his abilities. Among other things, I like the fact that when he didn't like the way my Type II diabetes was reacting to my current medications, he referred me to Endocrinology because he knew his limits and didn't find anything wrong with asking for help when he needed it. I'd much rather put my health in his hands than in somebody who went to a more "western" medical school who wasn't willing to admit that he didn't know everything.

Exams generally try to determine how you have memorized some subject, not how you can adapt what you've learned.

Really? Let's say that you're taking the final exam for a course in Trig that consists in nothing but solving problems (and showing your work) that aren't in the text book. If all you've done is memorize the material but haven't learned how to use it, how are you going to pass the test?

I'm sure that there are many people who'd be much happier if you were, "Not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead."