than let people imagine the worst.

I'm pretty sure juries only decide guilt or non-guilt. Punishments are decided by legislators who write the laws and the governors who enact them. Sentencing is determined by the judge. If anything, the legislators and governor should pull the trigger. Even the entire voting public is collectively more culpable than the jury.

The American Slashdotters actually seem to me more objective than their European counterparts. If you would look at the history of political discussion on this site, self-criticism is far far more likely to come from an American than from a European. You will also find that whataboutism is heavily relied upon in comments to articles about non-US countries, especially concerning Europe, whereas for stories about the US that sort of excuse-making is hardly ever seen. It leaves the sense that Americans actually care, whereas Europeans are more fond of judging and deflecting.

The good behavior of Chinese government, as perceived by European Slashdotters for instance, is more a reflection of the current limits of China's geopolitical reach. If you were to ask people in Southeast Asia which country meddles more in their nation's affairs, China may very well edge out the USA. This is reflected by the enthusiasm in welcoming the US into ASEAN dialogue by China's neighbors. In fact, I'm quite sure if the question were posed to Filipinos, Singaporeans, Burmese, etc, you would find an answer that is just the opposite of johanw's.

The Presidential election goes by state, and is winner takes all, so only battleground states can tilt the election. Deeply blue or deeply red states will stay their colors with or without HUGE numbers of voters. Even if a million Democrats (~9% of 2012 turnout) in California voted 3rd party, that state would remain blue by a healthy margin and still go to the Democratic Presidential candidate. Likewise, even if 100k Republicans (~9% of 2012 turnout) in Kansas voted 3rd party, that state would remain red by a healthy margin and still go to the Republican Presidential candidate.

Consider that a 3rd party is empowered by federal funding and ballot access that is based on the aggregate popular vote -- which is entirely different from the way electoral votes are won -- and you will see that victory for a 3rd party is not synonymous with defeat for any mainstream party. And a 3rd party doesn't even need 9%+ of the popular vote in every state, it only needs to reach 5% to get funding and access. For the Libertarians, that's means another 4% average per state on top of what they have of the popular vote, for Greens it's another 4.5%. That's well within margin, especially for a country that is more and more composed of deeply blue and deeply red states.

Of course you can't blame it on Obama. But, you have to admit that only a Democratic President could preside over things like massive fracking, the arming of Syrian rebels, an individual insurance mandate that was viewed with great suspicion by liberals decades ago, bank and industry bailouts, drone program, and so on and so forth without great public resistance. Were it a Republican President, there would be many more marches and protests against those same things.

So maybe the charming donkey is the better figurehead, as it can pacify the idealists while still doing the pragmatic things.

Alliances arise out of necessity and mutual benefit, not from mutual like or some playground friendship mentality. As much as the governments of US allies may publicly denounce US actions for the sake of their own domestic image, they still collude with the US on geopolitics. For example, Merkel and parliamentarians may denounce PRISM and make public overtures of "overview" and "investigation", if only to keep their parties in favorable light with the public, but the BND's data-sharing will nonetheless continue because they need US data as much as the US needs theirs, if not more so.

Robots probably cost a lot less in the long run. Think of the industrial horse farms that would be needed to supply the military. A small assembly line could crank out thousands of these a month.

Funny thing is, on Solidot, GP anon would be rated 5, and jbolden would be rated -1.
The common sentiment on Chinese social media would also corroborate those ratings.

A little comparing your own underbelly with other's best faces, plus some cultural ignorance, and you get comedy like this on both sides of the ocean.

I think this is more likely to be for rapid replacement of GPS & other military satellites in response to other countries developing/having anti-satellite technology. Net-centric warfare is where everyone is going, yet the network part remains the most vulnerable.

with 2 'N's
Same company that developes QQ

Average Twitter celebrity = Charles Xue
Bradley/Chelsea Manning = ???Chinese military whistle blower???

Average Twitter celebrity: still tweeting; Charles Xue: arrested, made to confess on TV
Bradley/Chelsea Manning: 35 years in jail; ???Chinese military whistle blower???: the world will never know this man or his fate

It's probably more about culture than about the object itself. I would guess because it was central to the huge media coverage, it has come represents the moment when the public consciousness expanded to the (preexisting) accessibility of homemade firearms. It marked a "holy shit I didn't realize that" moment for the general population.

I wonder if this will alter the metrics used by college ranking organizations. IIRC, US News ranking system considers the number of tenured professors teaching undergrad as one of their measures of success, which has been offered as an explanation of why Princeton has been shooting up the ranks in the past years (and actually edging out Harvard this year).

While I think that's true for real disease in the biological sense, strange disease-like phenomena can arise from a confluence of seemingly unrelated factors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

And it raises the question if these phenomena spread like disease and harm like disease, should they be viewed any differently?