And then there's what he was saying during the whole shoe-banging episode. Theories abound:
"When I was at hotel, I put shoes out to be shined, and one of the shoes was stolen. What kind of man steals only one shoe?"
"Why can't I get good radio reception in this thing?"

Also, Julius Caesar was enough of a hero to some Christians a few centuries later that 2 out of the 3 people that Dante places in the jaws of Lucifer himself were the guys who led the conspiracy against him (the third was Judas).

There's another aspect of it too: The masses by all appearances love seeing talking heads yelling at each other, and that's some of the cheapest television to produce. They don't like it when there's a real debate between people who know what they're talking about trying to determine the real truth of a matter, because that's not exciting.

Want proof? It's real simple: Compare the ratings for Fox News (mostly talking heads yelling) and MSNBC (mostly talking heads yelling) with the ratings for PBS Newshour (mostly sober factual reporting and discussion).

Poe's Law in action.

Actually, there's a compromise there, but it's evil - you can in fact make Emacs act like vi!

There are at least 2 valid legal defenses for Snowden if he were actually in a courtroom:
1. The Espionage Act prohibits releasing information that could be used to injure the United States. That requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the information could in fact injure the United States, not just the current administrators of the NSA or a particular program of the NSA. Since the NSA has yet to point to a single instance in which any of the intercepted information from the program that Snowden exposed has done anything to protect the United States, they're going to have a hard time proving this point.

2. The competing harms doctrine says that criminal acts done to prevent a larger crime are not criminal (e.g. if you see a guy flashing a gun and running out of a bank with a large bag of cash, you're not committing assault if you tackle him and pin him until the cops arrive.) Snowden violated the Espionage Act (maximum penalty: life imprisonment or execution), but in doing so he provided evidence of at least 300 million violations of wiretapping law (total maximum penalty: 1.5 billion years imprisonment and a $75 trillion fine). One could reasonably argue that Congress believed when it wrote the relevant law that the crime Snowden committed was significantly less serious than the crimes that Keith Alexander committed.

Yes, I know that Snowden's chance of getting a fair trial are practically nil, but if the law were operating properly both those arguments would be in play and there's a decent change Snowden would get a not guilty verdict. The only bad outcome I can think of is that if US agencies commit crimes, low-level employees will either refuse to follow orders and commit the crimes, or will publicize it. Neither of those seem like a bad outcome.

In at least a few cases, they may have tried to pick them up, and realized they couldn't because only virgins can touch unicorns.

Unfortunately, the advice on skidding is only half-right. The basic physics here are that the rear of the car is moving forward faster than the front of the car, and picked a direction (left or right) to move to get around the front of the car which is blocking its way.

So:
1. Steering into the skid is always correct (provided you can safely move that direction), because it puts the front of the car in front of where the back is trying to go, which slows down the back.
2. Never hit the brakes in a skid if you can at all help it. (I've had to once because I went round a curve and discovered that the highway had gone from moving about 75km/h to stopped with no time to slow down, luckily I didn't hit anybody when I ended up in the next lane over)
3. In a RWD car, decelerating will help, because it will slow down the rear of the car, allowing the front to move forward faster relative to the back (think of the effect of attaching a string with a weight to the back of a toy car).
4. In a FWD car, accelerating slightly will help, because it will pull the front forward faster. Again, if you want the model car version of this, it's like pulling on the front end of the car with a string. Skids are also a lot less likely because the FWD is pulling the front forward rather than pushing the back forward. Of course, decelerate again as soon as you're on more solid surface.
5. In a 4WD car, my understanding is that skids are both unusual and pretty easy to correct, but I think there are techniques involving switching into FWD mode or only braking the back wheels.

But you'd be very surprised how many people live in snowy parts of the country and also don't know anything about handling skids. They're usually pretty easy to spot, since they're driving about 15 km/h when road conditions warrant closer to 50 km/h. My general view on driving in winter conditions is that the flakes I'm worried about aren't the ones falling from the sky, but the ones behind the wheels of other vehicles!

Some of those prizes were to people or organizations who really deserved it: Jane Addams (no relation to Gomez or Morticia, you silly people), The International Red Cross (a couple of times), American Friends Service Committee (for humanitarian relief efforts during and after WWII), Linus Pauling, Martin Luther King, Amnesty International, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela / F.W. de Klerk, Doctors Without Borders, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf all did a great deal in the service of peace and humanity, and many took great risks to do so.

That kind of litany makes awards to people like Henry Kissinger even more of a travesty.

Nothing, really, since the bank will eat the costs of the fraud. It's annoying, yes, and it's a bit of a hassle, but generally you aren't buying much of value for that $3.

On the other hand, they have universal health care, near universal literacy, and usually enough to eat. (I know people who've been to the non-touristy areas of Cuba, and talked to Cubans from those same areas who came over to the US. And no, those people didn't have government spies hanging around when they did so.) Their lives are actually a heck of a lot better than most of the other residents of the Carribean.

This is still stupid policy towards Afghanistan. It's understandable, but wouldn't we be better off with young Afghans thinking of the US as "Country that's helping me get some education" rather than "Evil empire raining drone strikes at weddings"?

The US has a faction that's being either monumentally stupid with regards to Iran as well. When your enemy picks a leader that says "Let's just try doing what the US has asked us to do", then goes to the US and says "We're willing to do what you guys are asking us to do, but we need to get something in return to appease our hardliners back home", the last thing you want to do is say "Oh, well, that's very nice, but we're going to punish you more for doing this." The reason that's monumentally stupid is obvious: It leaves Iran with no choice but to get some nukes and aim them at Israel or India or whatever other US allies they can, or they will face the same fate as Iraq. (Alternately, this faction is made up of evil bastards who want another war in the Middle East, killing thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iranians just to make 'em feel better. I'm going with "stupid" based solely on Hanlon's Razor.)

The impression I get from a lot of US policymakers is that they don't want to use the "soft power" of actually improving the lives of other country's citizens because they won't feel manly enough if they do it, or feel a need to use up resources building what are ultimately useless military toys. But it's actually the best defense imaginable against terrorist groups: "Join the cause! Fight America, the great Satan!" "No way! America saved my sister's family from a tsunami, gave my son the skills he needed to get his great job, and gave us the village water supply!"

It is. Also, if you don't answer questions the way Congress wants you to, you can get yourself into serious trouble, as the (now) late Pete Seeger found out.

More to the point, the market has very good reason to have faith in dollars and very little in Bitcoin: Dollars are quite stable, and backed by one of the largest organizations of any kind on the planet. Bitcoins are extremely volatile, and backed by nobody. Which would you pick?

(I'm almost positive you're either of white or Asian descent from your posts. If that's incorrect, please correct me)

- How many times have you been roughed up and searched by the police for the crime of walking down the street?
- How often have you been tailed by security and police when you had just gone into a store to buy something?
- If you applied for a mortgage, did the bank try to push you towards a subprime mortgage broker instead?
- How often have you been turned down for jobs because you weren't "a good cultural fit for our organization"? How often have you been passed over for promotion while being the most experienced and highest performing employee?
- How often have you been pulled over while driving less than 5 mph over the speed limit (or when committing no traffic offense at all)?
- When you get pulled over, how often are you ordered out of your vehicle?
- If you go to visit the neighborhood where you grew up, do you and/or your friends use different pronunciations and grammar than you do at work?
- How many of your elementary school friends have been murdered? How many have been shot by the police?
- How often have you ever spent more than an hour waiting in line to vote?
- Have you ever been arrested trying to break into your own house?

My guess is that you have no clue what it's like to be black in America. I'm white, so I'm no expert on it, but both my black friends (who are educated and employed) and numerous academic studies and government statistics say that all of those things that I mentioned are part of being a black person in America right now. Not 40 years ago, not 50 years ago, right now.