Nobody seriously thinks that Russia did this, per se. Do many of us think that they armed separatists who did it? Yes. Really, you're going to play the "But what would they have to gain?" card? It's not about gain, it's about incompetence. It's generally thought that the separatists thought it was a Ukrainian military plane. As far the old "Ukraine has done it before" charge goes, I talked about this one last week, you are referring to the Siberian Airlines flight 1812 shootdown of Oct. 2001, no doubt. Well, at first Ukraine sort of admitted it, sort of denied it. There's still talk in some circles that President Kuchma, a buddy of sorts of Putin, agreed to take the heat on this one in exchange for some sort of future favor, although I have no idea what he got out of it. Ukraine played up their hillbilly role by basically saying "We think a reflection off the water caused this terrible accident. We so stupid! Not know what we do! Duh!" Well, it's certainly possible that their military did it, but I can't rule out that they just took the blame to save Putin's face. I've been to Ukraine and in those days, there was a lot of scraping and bowing in the direction of Mother Russia so I certainly think it's possible that Ukraine just claimed to do it to make Russia look good.

There's not some mythic unattainable "truth" surrounded by complete lies.

Every statement is a mixture of truth and lies, the goal of decent people it to not only call out the lies in every statement, but to still recognize that an imperfect statement can still contain a great deal of truth.

Right now Russia is telling egregious lies. The proper action isn't to stand back and act like it's fine because everybody lies, it's to drag them out and discredit them so that they have a reason to start telling the truth.

And when someone else lies you should drag them out and discredit them, but to brush off misdeeds as something that's normal is how Russia became the joke it is today.

No it doesn't.

The evidence points to Russian special forces and regular army being responsible for the annexation of Crimea.

In the war in Eastern Ukraine the evidence points to Russian paramilitary organizations operating with the backing of the Russian government and some level of direction. But there's no evidence of actual Russian soldiers in East Ukraine. To be honest they'd be dumb to send any. There's more than enough Cossacks and Chechen militias they can direct over unofficially. No point in sending over official soldiers who could be killed, identified, and drag Putin into an actual war he doesn't want.

Putin still bears full culpability for every death that's occurred, but he's keeping official Russian soldiers out of it.

Honestly I'm not entirely sure what to call them, but terrorists isn't it (though the Ukrainian government has called them that all along).

Generally I call them rebels or separatists, but that doesn't really apply. To be a rebel or a separatist it's implied that you're fighting your own government, but in this case many, if not most, are Russian citizens motivated by a combination of nationalism, adventurism, and wealth. Guerrillas maybe? What do you call a paramilitary organization that invades another country to try to steal some of its territory?

I agree with your post in general, but I want to point out a couple of exceptions. In English you're supposed to say "Ukraine" and not "the Ukraine" since Ukraine is an independent country and not a part of the USSR. The only people who know the difference and insist on "the Ukraine" are Russian sympathizers, so you're actually picking a side you may not wish to pick by saying "the Ukraine". Rules for languages other than English may be different. Don't agree with me? Then go to a website for a Ukrainian embassy in an English speaking country and you will see that they only say Ukraine and not "the Ukraine". I've been to Ukraine. I know.

Right now there's no evidence that any US citizens were on the plane, so the US seems to have not lost anyone in the crash. As far as what the Netherlands will do, well, to me they are sort of the kings of wussies in Europe so while citizens are going to be upset, based on posts here I get the distinct impression that Dutch people or at least the ones on Slashdot always pick the wrong side in a dispute. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dutch in particular view Russia as the aggrieved party in their dispute with Ukraine and start to push for the explanation that Ukraine did it and won't admit it.

There was also Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001. Rumors have existed in certain circles that incompetent Russian soldiers shot it down by accident and Ukrainian President Kuchma agreed for Ukraine to take the blame in exchange for some sort of favor from Putin. Ukraine officially denied responsibility but they did offer compensation to the victim's families which is the usual legal dodge of not officially admitting guilt in case you get sued. My money in this case today is that Russia shot the Malaysian Airlines plane down. I expect US aviation experts to come to that conclusion and for Russia to deny it and insist that it's all part of the standard "Blame Russia" theme the West is currently playing.

Don't worry, they all came away just as convinced and reassured as to the irrefutability of their conclusions.

He also left Obama a healthy economy and a basket of puppies!

If I were Christian I don't think I'd care about anyone's portrayal because Christianity is so strong that people would know my beliefs regardless. But if I felt Norse mythology was a part of my heritage I'd be pretty concerned about what Marvel did because that would be the major exposure a lot of people got to my heritage.

I think black Thor is tacky, objecting has nothing to do with being racist but the fact they're screwing with other people's mythology. Now if they made Spiderman a gay black man? Or Professor X a female? Now those are changes I could endorse and the resulting changes would make the character's fundamental characteristics more compelling.

As for this case I'd say Marvel is the one being misogynist. The basic implication of this stunt is that the only way they can see to make a flagship female character is by taking a male flagship character and turning them female.

A woman shouldn't have to piggyback on a man to gain fame.

The previous changes were necessary to integrate Thor into the Marvel universe.

This change unnecessarily alters a core characteristic of who Thor is.

It would be the same thing if they turned Thor into a telepath or a pacifist, if you're going to change a core characteristic of Thor then don't call it Thor. Or if you do do it then you should have a proper motive such as an artistic twist as opposed to pandering.

And why is it Norse Mythology they're screwing with anyways? It's one thing to base a character off of a Norse god, but screwing with that bit of heritage for blatant pandering? That strikes me as disrespectful.

If Marvel really wanted to be bold and challenge readers they should have made a female Professor X. A woman in a position of intellectual authority? Now that's a change I could respect.

Not necessarily, there's a real question whether ./ got paid or suckered.

While the linked to article, a US TV station news site, does call it a "draft notice", I suppose I should explain to the non-US people here that this is not technically correct. There has been no draft in the US since the end of the Vietnam War. For roughly 40 years now, the US has had an all volunteer army. What Selective Service is required to do is to contact US citizen males on their 18th birthday and advise them that for the next 10 years they need to let Selective Service know their new address every time they move because in theory, in a national emergency Congress could pass a law reinstating the military draft and Selective Service is required to maintain accurate records of those who might theoretically be subject to such a draft. Whether such a draft would ever be done again is a great question, given how Congress currently seems incapable of passing anything non-controversial, let alone something as controversial as reinstating the draft. A crackpot Congressman or two has tried to get the draft reinstated and it's never had enough support to even get a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. Whatever this is, technically speaking it's not a "draft notice".

Not to digress, but for those who don't know, the draft was very controversial during the Vietnam War, with the rich and powerful were able to get their sons exceptions to the draft or get them plum assignments in the National Guard that wouldn't require them to actually go to Vietnam. Listen to Credence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son", which was written about the practice. There was so much animosity about the unfairness of the draft and the compulsion to fight in a war that nobody but a small number of politicians seemed to want that the US switched to a voluntary system, but one of the deals cut to move to this system was that Selective Service had to know where to get young men should the draft ever get reinstated. And yes, female US citizens are not subject to this at all.

How do you know that they didn't? The only thing we saw in Slashdot a few days ago was some article without any sources that seemed to claim that US agents were going buck wild in Maldives and made the arrest themselves. I, and others, pointed out in that thread that the article was likely a very badly written summary and I was sure that the Maldives made any arrest and only after a valid arrest warrant came through. Yes, I told (some of) you so.

I disagree with your conclusions about computer chess, although you are quite right that it seems unlikely that if chess is ever "solved" (this is the correct term for what you talk about) so that the white player can always force a win that humans will be capable of remembering the data required to always force a win. And chess is a theoretically solvable game.

Computer chess at the highest levels like Deep Blue is little more than a highly specialized data base lookup. The laws of chess require you to have to make a move within time constraints, so if the program can't pick between equally good choices, it would have to rely on some kind of random choice that the programmer would have allowed for (ie. use a random number generator or pick the line likely to result in more exchange of material, etc.). In the early days of computing it was thought that for computers to get really good at chess, they would have to be able to use some kind of AI, but damn IBM for realizing that they could cheat and simply throw massive amounts of processors, computer memory and massive databases of moves at the problem rather than having to actually do real AI work for computers to beat humans at it. That Deep Thought is just a variation on Deep Blue where it's really good at searching through databases of stored information rather than being able to actually do any real kind of AI work. Basically Deep Blue and Deep Thought are brute forcing a solution through technology rather than actually breaking any kind of AI ground, although they may have some really cool and nifty search algorithms to do the job that others lack.

Yes, it's certainly possible for any chess game to get "out of book" and get a sequence of moves where the outcome isn't known, but that can easily by handled by programming approaches that have existed for decades. For example, a program may look to see if the opponent has left a piece undefended by mistake and simply grab it if it doesn't seem to be a deliberate sacrifice (ie. "If I take piece A, will that leave me vulnerable to a next move attack by a different piece?"), you can try to simply exchange material, evaluate positional strength and play to that (ie. "I'm strong on the king side and my opponent is weak there, so I'll push for a king side attack") and so on. These kinds of approaches have been in the best computer chess programs for decades now and there's nothing novel about them.