"I think that anecdote points to a broader, American Exceptionalism-based difficulty: we regularly hold peaceful revolutions at the ballot box. While the rest of the world, and Russians are arguably among the more egregious cases, have much greater policy time horizons, the U.S. has trouble remembering anything."

Too much truth to that, but it does not mean we should not try to do better.

"The State Department should provide a more "traditional" geo-political interface, but then you come to the question of to what degree agreements with the U.S.S.R. hold any sway. One might be tempted to pretend something like the referenced agreement never happened. Fine. But you really don't want the Russians weaponizing space, as we agreed to eschew in the Outer Space Treaty, do you?"

Exactly.

Now with that thought in mind think back on how the US government has in fact treated Russia since the Soviet Union dissolved. Is it just me or does it seem like our government as a whole actually WANTS to provoke them into something drastic like that? First off, why expand, instead of disband, NATO if we are not planning to attack Russia? And why pour all this 'democracy promotion' money into the likes of Svoboda if we are not actively scheming against Russia? I have no trouble believing this has been on the Russians minds all this time because it has certainly been on mine, and I cannot come up with another credible answer.

The Europeans were involved at first and they were thinking of expanding the EU to the Ukraine (which was probably a bad idea from the get-go given their economic woes) but they have since backed off quite a bit. Less because of their economic woes and more because of the sheer unsavoriness of the new regime.  You could see street protests bring down several EU governments if they even get close to admitting a country where the likes of Svoboda is in government, and I've started seeing admissions that there is no way in hell Ukraine will be invited to the EU for the foreseeable future.

"While I understand that paranoia is the Russian national sport, I still thing BHO was a complete fool for, inter alia, abandoning the missile shield in Poland."

Really?

What value would it have been?

I mean in general I think interceptors are a great idea, but there? Whose missiles would it ever have a chance to intercept, if not the Russians? The Iranians never had missiles with that range and are unlikely to develop them, and still less likely to actually use them. Turkey is a member of NATO after all, and who else outside of Europe has the range to hit that area? Seems like a damn short list.

It does not seem paranoid to me for them to worry that a missile site ostensibly aimed at Iran, yet not in range of Iran, but nicely in range of them, might actually be intended for use against them. Combine that with the color revolutions, the expansion of Nato, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the recent events in Libya (Russia agreed to a resolution with strict limitations only to see the limitations ignored basically from day one, and a regime friendly to them eliminated as a result,) and Syria (where the Russians have refused to agree to even a token resolution because after Libya they simply do not trust us not to do the same thing again) - I do not think it's paranoid for the Russians to feel a bit persecuted.

That's without even mentioning some of the cruder anti-russian propaganda that you can be sure is being rebroadcast for them with captions.

You've basically just made a "my dad can beat up your dad" argument. I'm leaving this dick-waving discussion.

I would expect that 50 years of one-party rule would show progress. No, clearly it is getting worse every day. So how many decades before you think it will get better? Maybe another 50 will do it? If what we're doing isn't working, just try more of it?

Maybe you should stop expecting people to congratulate you for being gay.

its the fact they have no zoning laws

Slashdot, why is this modded insightful? Really-- why? HOUSTON is notable for having no zoning laws. Apparently, the town of West doesn't either, because it appears to be the town with the exploding fertilizer plant that alen is referring to. Zoning is not generally the duty of the state, but of the local governments. Do you really want the state telling you how your town must be laid out? Why do you, as a citizen, want some bureaucrats far away making blind decisions instead of being able to go to a town meeting and actually influence the decisions?

LJIIs probably smell like that because their corona wires are quite exposed to dust. Have to love being able to open the unit like a clamshell and see most of the guts right there.

My Realistic (Radio Shack) clock radio, with battery backup, vinyl "wood" and aluminum trim, has been working for 30 years. I carried it with me back and forth to college and through multiple moves. It works perfectly and only has a small crack on the plastic covering the radio dial to show for it.

By providing one, I would refute myself. :p

This is the problem at the heart of climate science. The key details for models are not published, and (despite being largely paid for by our money), not even available apparently under FOIA to "avoid competitive harm".

That sounds very much like commercial software development and very little like reproducible science, or even open source! WTF, guys? You wonder why so much of the public has a hard time taking climate science seriously? This shit is why.

Good science defeats skeptics through openness. "Look, here's the experiment, do it yourself if you don't trust me." Heck, even experiments on vastly expensive particle accelerators eventually become reproducible through cleverness or technological advance at other universities.

Openness, and beyond openness: the willingness to explain clearly, in detail, and in layman's terms led to the talk.origins FAQ, which takes seriously and answers seriously every common popular question and dispute about evolution, and likely led to the shift from old-school creationism to ID (which at least is progress). This is severely lacking in climate science.

Not if you got a first generation, the first ones had a design flaw that caused the wires to wear out where they came into the case (hard 90 degree bend). MS to their credit had the design fixed (Logitech was the ODM) and covered replacements for like 5 years even without proof of purchase, you just needed a first generation serial number.

The 4 series was built fairly well, but it was nothing compared to the beast that was the LJ 3 series. I once was called out to repair an ~15 year old LJ3 with just under 1M pages (at ~3PPM!). The reason it needed repair? The single sacrificial plastic gear had grown brittle with age, everything else in that beast was metal.

The Mustang is a heck of a car these days, if you can get past the horrid cheap interior. I'd imagine it will do well.

Somehow you managed to either misunderstand or get wrong nearly all the important points you tried to make.

The A & B example I showed wasn't an illustration of terrorism but of the effect of different levels of information and how they could influence choices of action. How did you both miss and misuse that?

The information about terrorist groups changing communications methods has been in the news on multiple occasions. It wasn't "made up on the spot," you are simply uninformed. And for some reason the logic does not occur to you than when the media says the intelligence agencies watch X that terrorists and others might avoid X. I don't see how you can do that.

What we know from reliable sources is that only the highest levels of the terrorist hierarchy, the senior commanders, that provide high level guidance have generally been protected by the more advanced and labor intensive methods, but the lower levels that actually have to get things done according to some sort of schedule not so much. The lower levels have been much more vulnerable to having their communications intercepted, but Snowden has been tutoring them through the media on the things to avoid.

Snowden's leaks only show technical capability for intercepting communications, what they don't show is the machinery of repression and mass active monitoring that 1984 would require.

My Sony alarm clock has been my most robust piece of gear (I recently had to replace my Logitech gaming mouse, so that's off the list). The Sony clock is particularly ironic.

The Japanese use the phrase SOny timer for planned obsolescence, both in a general sense and a specific assertion that all Sony products have such a timer to kill the device one day after the warrantee is up (except the PS, because they need to sell the games). Funny that the clocks are the only Sony product without the "Sony timer".

I'll be direct: there is nothing wrong with Dallas, it is a fine city. This is about your choice and personal values, not about Dallas.