...listening to your gut.

We're not at war with Iran, and no sane person in the U.S. or in Iran wants a shooting war. IMHO, what we have here is more of a cold-war style cat and mouse game where each side tries to provoke the other and see how far they can go. Examples being Iran supplying arms to Shiite militias in Iraq, Iran being involved in proxy wars in Syria and Lebanon, taking Americans hostage, and developing a nuclear weapons capability. The U.S. responded with Stuxnet and probably a few other things that we don't know about. In the end it's really about gaining some sort of political bargaining advantage and to have a stronger bargaining position when the time for deal making comes.

Iran is also the regional heavy weight, and they're not a bunch of modern-day spearchuckers as the parent somehow implies. They do have a professional conventional military with semi-modern weapons systems. They also have the ability to maintain, develop and upgrade their weapons systems. The main difference between Iran and the U.S. is that Iran lacks the global logistical capabilities that America brings to the battle field, and the depth that the U.S. has in any fight. The Iranians would lose a conventional battle with the U.S. and both sides know this. Defeating the U.S. in a conventional battle probably isn't a factor in Iran's military planning. They're more focused on regional domination, especially if and when the U.S. pulls out of the middle east. Without the U.S. backing of the Gulf states, Iran would probably be able to defeat any of their neighbors in a conventional war, at least in theory. Without the U.S., the only country in the region that might defeat Iran would be India.

If somehow forced into a conventional fight with the U.S., Iran could, with the right leadership, inflict heavy damage before being defeated. But Iran is a very old country. IMHO, they're playing for time and will poke us at any chance they get. As Sun Tzu once said, "If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by." In more modern terms that is called, "strategic patience."

And those nineteen individuals all used toilet paper. In the name of fighting terrorism and saving the children, I recommend security checks for anyone purchasing toilet paper. We should limit the purchase of toilet paper to two rolls per person per week. We need to institute spot checks to make sure no one is storing more than a two-week supply of the stuff. Manufacturers of bathroom furniture need to change their designs to prevent storing more than three and a half rolls in a "storage appliance". We also need to start various technology projects to use backscatter, sniffing, etc. to be able to quickly check cars and persons for possession of toilet paper. We need a colored alarm system to warn us of anyone having too much toilet paper. Code white, is relatively safe. Code yellow means moderate danger. Code brown means impending attack. Lastly, we need a new federal agency of toilet paper control to coordinate all this stuff, keep us at a permanent code brown, and to think of more ways to keep us safe from ourselves and from the menace of toilet paper.

Not a troll, but a genuine question. If all these devices are connected to AC power, why not some simple protocol over power line? A lot of home automation used some form of RS-232 over power line to control lighting, etc.

Markets are anonymous and deal with money or things denominated in money. How could there not be fraud?

Best post of the day on this topic... When rents go up, people's incomes down, especially those living on a fixed income. Most people on the driving side of the market don't know what it's like to be on the wrong side of the deal. So when people have their lives uprooted and are forced from their homes, they chalk it up to class envy or some other overly simplistic assumptions to make them feel better about themselves.

Except that the Nazis were widely supported by the big industrialists at the time, such as the Krupp family, IG Farben, Ford, A.E.G., General Electric, Osram, Telefunken, etc. For multiple citations just search: "industrialists who supported Hitler" But Nazi propaganda that they were a party of the working man is one of the biggest, and best perpetuated lies in history. It seems to still be widely believed, so we still get ignorant people comparing economic populists with the Nazis.

Not quite true and overly simplistic. The Nazis were not bat-shit crazy, they were mostly normal, rational, people who knew how to manipulate society to achieve their ambitions.

After the First World War, a lot of Germans believed in a "stab in the back" myth for their defeat. The basic idea was that jews and other "unpatriotic" and or "alien elements" within German society caused social instability at home, resulting in the german capitulation in November 1918. Early Nazi propaganda associated Jews with the "stab in the back" and with bolshevism, even though it would make almost no sense for "rich jews" to be Bolshevists or to overthrow a monarchy that did a far better job of protecting their minority rights than any other country in Europe.

Nope, I meant the B-52. It depends on the type of CAS being employed. When CAS is mentioned, most people think of type-1 control, where the FAC visually sees the aircraft and the aircraft visually sees the target.

Most modern CAS is type 2 or type 3 control. The FAC may be located in a COC and not anywhere near the target. The FAC gives the aircraft grid coordinates for the target and ID's the target via video feed. A B-52 with a FLIR, data link and modern JDAM is unbeatable in that type of environment. It enables a single FAC to control a lot more area than traditional visual control and is not as dependent on good visual conditions.

Both the B-52 and the A-10 can carry modern GPS-guided precision bombs. As long as you have air superiority, a B-52 maxed out with JDAM and full tanks of gas, is really all you need to go on a bombing safari and is probably one of the best CAS platforms out there.

The reason both platforms have endured is that they are relatively easy to adapt and upgrade to carry newer weapons systems. Less-adaptable aircraft of the era, such as the F-111, aren't around anymore. Even if they were more technologically advanced in their time.

Even if it has to be "mined", Bitcoin is a fiat currency that is backed by absolutely nothing other than itself.

"He was the best clerk I ever had" - General Douglas Macarthur.

Economics stopped commercial Airship travel, not the Hindenburg disaster. Airplanes were simply less expensive, faster, and more reliable.

"In the future, everyone will have their own currency for 15 minutes."

That's like when somebody posts that there are animals in the Zoo, you call it speculation.