"Japan wanted the oil in the Philippines"

uh, wut? Japan wanted the Philippines to protect their southern flank and for agricultural purposes....they wanted Indonesia for oil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

But you are correct.....Afgahnistan does not have oil, and the U.S. gets very little of its overall oil from Iraq.

http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_b...
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/...

It seems ironic that he would find the wiping out of another 100,000 people by atom bomb too horrible when the conventional bombing of Tokyo killed that many during Operation Meetinghouse on March 9-10 1945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

People sometimes get pictures of the conventional Tokyo bombings confused with those of Hiroshima.

"They aren't completely brain-dead."

I'm pretty sure that somebody willing to blow himself up on the premise that he'll receive 72 non-existing virgins in a place that doesn't exists ruled by a made-up deity fits of the definition of brain-dead pretty well.

"All they taught me in high school was how to write a check."

Seems like this is what is needing to be taught more nowadays....along with balancing it, and how APR and interest rates work.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought it would fit the definition since some of the stories contained the same characters.

Don't forget Burning Chrome. Shouldn't it be on the Wikipedia list for Fix-Ups?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

If this were true, I'd expect the suicide rate in countries such as Japan (or many other countries) to be much lower than the U.S......unless of course the Japanese diet is worse than that in the U.S. But Of course, as you say, "we can't say it's ALL nutrition".

Yep, that's why I said "Of course not all of that money makes it down to the common populace" ;-)

And yes, if we want peace in the middle east, the first place to start is with regime change in Saudi Arabia......not easy to accomplish but shouldn't be done militarily.

"Fix the Middle-East's economy".

I'm pretty sure that lack of money isn't a problem for most of the Middle East economies. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait are pretty well off. Of course not all of that money makes it down to the common populace, thanks to their dictator/royal governments. I can't think of an easy way to change their form of governments without massive upheaval, just like we're seeing in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

"Build schools, staff them - an educated populace won't fall for the simple rhetoric of the mob-leader."

This will work, but will probably take well over 100 years. Again, you can't implement this with the type of social system and governments they currently have in place. Religion and tradition are so ingrained in their culture that the ideas of democracy and free speech are not only alien to them, but down-right heresy.

"Build infrastructure so they can actually communicate with the rest of the world"

Well ISIS is using Twitter, so they are communicating with the rest of the world, just not in the way we would like. All of the infrastructure, evidence, and knowledge in the world will do no good if you choose not to believe in it (hell, look at how much evidence we have for global warming and evolution that gets ignored in the U.S.).

The only solution I can see is to get away from middle-eastern oil as soon as possible. Their sources of funding will dry up, and the royal families/dictators currently in place will have no choice but to open up their society in order to build an economy that isn't based on oil.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or confusing Ridley Scott with the director (right there in the summary):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

FWIW, I haven't seen any of his movies.

Back in 2007, Anderson Cooper asked a pediatrician if PlumpyNut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut) was affecting people in developing countries suffering from malnutrition with peanut allergies. The Dr. said "We just don't see it. In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries." Sounds like this study backs up that claim.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-...

"people are getting better coverage cheaper than before"

a lot of people are making this claim too......can you back it up? :-)

"Now your ability to get health insurance is not tied to your continued employment"

Help me out here, because I really don't understand how it works....but how are you supposed to pay for private health insurance if you lose employment?

Or how about Linux 2015? And if another release comes out mid-year we can go with Linux 2015 R2?

Stallman, is that you? ;-)