"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire.
Besides, Heinlein is overrated, eternally stuck in the 1950ies and had a strange obsession with slide rules.

That is a different story altogether, of course and it is true, that knowing Russian is very helpful with other languages since there are many things that are common with other Slavic languages. I have a Serbian colleague and we both have learned Russian at school (I am more fluent than her, though). I understand her Serbian quite well, especially after also learning some Czech. We still converse in German because it is easier.

On the other hand, Russian is indeed a special case for many reasons
1) Russian had several language reforms that changed the language quite a bit making it less comprehensive for other Slavic speakers
2) Russian has a really fucked up word stress system. Even native speakers easily get the stress wrong if they read a previously unknown word. Although the Serbo-Croatian one is even worse due to additionally being pitch and length based.
3) Russian mostly lost auxiliary verbs "to be" and "to have", while they are still present in most other Slavic languages
4) The previously mentioned heavy influence of Church Slavonic (basically old Bulgarian) which is a South Slavic language leading to some unpleasant irregularities.

All this makes Russian especially difficult for other Slavs. A Russian speaker, on the other hand, especially one is well-versed in old texts and understands old Russian, can understand other Slavic languages quite well after learning some basic rules about those missing auxiliary verbs (very important for Czech, because it tends to drop personal pronouns instead).

"Douchebag", by the way, is a very American vulgarity. I am not even sure it works the same way for Brits or Aussies. Translating it literally to any other language would completely lose its meaning.

Well, you can try this

der Schloss = castle
die Burg = fortress
die Festung = stronghold

English seldom uses this distinction, but it is still there. A stronghold is a fort that is not used as living quarters, while a fortress is also used for living. A castle is a fortress that is also a residence of a noble, not necessarily fortified in later days, being more of a palace really (e.g. Schloss Neuschwanstein). This differentiation is modern language, however. In the older German they just used one word for all of these, but, depending on the century, a different one. Therefore "Veste Coburg", for example, that uses both "Burg" and "Festung".

Yes, understanding Bulgarian is easy. Speaking Bulgarian, on the other hand, is something else entirely, because of the strange grammar. All other Slavic languages share a very similar grammar so building sentences using rules from one Slavic language in another one is usually successful, even if it might sound somewhat stilted.

Old Russian is not based on Church Slavonic since it is an East Slavic language, but old Russian had a lot of influence from Church Slavonic, thus even in modern Russian there are many word pairs that mean the same or a closely related thing, one is from old Russian, the other is from Church Slavonic. Modern Bulgarian is really very different from either.

You have a point about Polish being more widespread, but the reason why I've suggested Slovak is that it is right in between Polish and Czech, but sounds better than either and is more Slavic. Polish has far too much German and Latin influence, a very difficult orthography (it is like when they had a choice how to adjust the Latin script to a Slavic language, they chose the most intricate solution every time) and also difficult phonetics. Czech and Slovak are simpler and generally use more common Slavic words, even though German influence is still there. Basically, learning Polish for studying Slavic languages is almost like learning English for studying Germanic languages.

Learning both Ukrainian and Russian is a waste of time because they are so close that they used to be just two dialects of the same languages a few centuries ago. It is better to learn two Slavic languages that are as far apart as it gets, this will help you understand all the other Slavic languages in between.

Say, Ukrainian and Slovene, or Russian and Czech.
The best combination is probably Russian, Slovak, Croatian. This way every other Slavic language except Bulgarian is inside the continuum and even Bulgarian will feel mostly understandable, although very strange (mostly because it is indeed strange, Bulgarian has changed a lot, probably due to the Ottoman influence. Old Bulgarian, on the other hand, feels almost like Russian).

It is the previously mentioned Natural 4000. I use the same one. It is pretty good, but bulky and the "leather" on the hand rest wears after a few years.

Well, some people aren't goldfish.

how the hell do you pronounce "thrythswyth"?!

Not using a Pentium 4, I guess.
My core i5-3350p has passive cooling.

More like invading Mexico and then annexing Texas. Sounds familiar?

USD is high against the EUR not because USD is strong, but because the European Central Bank is printing money like there is no tomorrow - for some very strange reason their current president is convinced that the Eurozone has a huge deflation problem.

Not so in central Europe, over here there is more than enough water. I don't think farmers actually ever water their crops where I live.

This is Deus Ex we are talking about so the gameplay is good by definition. Even the shitty Invisible War was better than most of other similar games of the period.

What regression are you talking about? Compared to Yeltsin even Putin looks good.