What the US does or does not do is irrelevant to my point, in that I made no claims about it, nor about why Iranians might feel the way they do about Americans. You are raising a straw man argument. In what way is American propaganda, assuming arguendo that you are even right about it existing in the sense you mean, necessary to explain American attitudes towards Iran? Why is it that historical events, in particular the 1979 hostage crisis, are insufficient in explaining those attitudes?

"Stable" is not a synonym for "desirable." I made no moral evaluations or claims. I merely note that a stable Persian Gulf region (including Iran) is in our and the Iranian people's interests, and that Iran was stable between the early 1950s and the late 1970s, as was the Persian Gulf region more generally. So how is that a "rosy" view, and how does it have anything to do with the moral quality of how that stability was acquired and maintained?

I don't prefer to get my history education from the movies, thanks. I don't really know much about the 1953 coup. I don't know why the US and Britain wanted Mossadegh overthrown, or if it was or was not a good decision to work with Tudeh and the other party whose name I forget (that was formerly associated with Mossadegh) and the Shah and the other coup plotters. Undoubtedly, it has become an anti-US rallying cry in Iran, regardless of any of the merits or demerits, since the Shah's rule started becoming unpopular in the mid 1970s. None of that, however, speaks to my point, which is that propaganda is not a necessary or sufficient explanation for why Americans feel the way that they do about Iran. How Iranians feel about Americans, and why, is a different topic.

One side note: the whole US exploitation of oil thing really puzzles me. Since most oil from the Middle East has always got to Europe and Asia, it hardly seems credible to assert oil "was pumped in []our direction" as a reason for US actions. Certainly, the US has acted to maintain a stable oil supply, to the extent that we could, and especially since the oil crises of the 1970s. Doing so is pretty vital to maintaining economic growth, as energy and growth are inextricably linked. Yet somehow, the various "wars for oil" have always ended up with other countries getting both the oil and the contracts to extract it. As an explanation of US motives, it's rather lacking. Certainly, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few decades, as the US is poised to become the planet's largest energy producer and exporter in the wake of fracking and price-competitive methods for getting oil out of oil sands and oil shales. (With Canada not far behind, for that matter.) Somehow, I suspect that the same people deriding the US for being involved in the Middle East to stabilize oil supplies, will also deride the US for pulling out of the Middle East once we no longer need to stabilize Middle Eastern oil supplies.

You might be misunderstanding. Persians and Americans are actually natural allies: we both want a stable Persian Gulf region, and together could provide it, as we did prior to 1979. But the Ayatollahs running Iran at the moment, since 1979, want an unstable Persian Gulf region, because that gives them openings to advance their religious interests. So even though there is a natural underlying affinity on a national level, on a political level there can be only conflict. The hostage crisis, where Iranian thugs took captive American embassy staff for well over a year, has not been forgotten in the US, and it colors our perceptions of Iran, and specifically of their leadership, to this day. On top of that, you have the Iranians committing acts of war against the US in Iraq (not only supplying and training our enemies, but planning and sometimes participating directly in attacks) and in Saudi Arabia (Khobar Towers), as well as apparently developing a nuclear weapons program aimed directly at destroying a key US ally, Israel, and really, after all of that, does there need to be "propaganda" to explain why American attitudes towards the Iranian government are what they are?

All that said, yes, I generally despise theocrats I've never met, autocrats I've never met, dictators I've never met, and monarchs (other than titular only) that I've never met. I despise the enemies of human liberty generally. Is that really very amazing? And do you not also despise the enemies of liberty? Yet, why does that mean that I, or anyone else, is clamoring for war? It is possible to despise an ideology, and to attempt strenuously to oppose and in all ways limit that ideology, without clamoring for war. War is only necessary when irreconcilable differences over non-trivial differences exist. But just because we might not want war, does not mean we must start accepting those who would kill us if only they could.

Is "dinosaur" a misnomer? That is, are theropods and sauropods actually any more closely related than, say, birds and lizards?

Youth always discounts experience.

What are the current big, unanswered questions in mesozoic paleontology? That is, what are the questions we have, but do not yet have more than guessed answers for?

People try to maximize their well being. People respond to incentives. If you give them perverse incentives, they respond perversely. Companies, in that respect, act like people, except that it's the executives and board of directors working to maximize their and their shareholders' well being. So who is surprised when companies respond perversely to perverse incentives? If you want companies to act sanely about money, you have to stop forcing them to comply with insane rules. (The several suggestions in this comment section to add more insane rules would just result in a different insane corporate behavior.)

Not at all true. Places without right to work end up with a few detrimental characteristics for workers. High wages plus union lock in plus deliberate work slowdowns, for example, mean that there are fewer jobs to go around (companies can't afford to hire more people), so it's great for those few employed, but it's terrible for the many you can't see who would have a job if they existed (which they would if the companies had to pay less for them). In addition, having been a contractor in both right to work and non-right to work states, I find that employers in right to work states are much more relaxed about working conditions. There is a lot more schedule and work condition flexibility in right to work states. Finally, as a general rule, companies in right to work states tend to pay higher rates for non-union job types (including IT, my field), because they have less personnel overhead in the categories that would be forced-union in a non-right to work state. So yeah, it's anecdotal, but my experience over 20 years has been that right to work is good for everyone except for a relatively small number of union workers.

Militias were common in the early US. Their roles were eventually subsumed by police forces and the National Guard. But most of the units in the early Civil War were, for example, mobilized state militia units. The laws on the books still make every able-bodied adult male within a certain age range legally members of the unorganized militia, with a duty to uphold the law and defend their local areas against invasion until the Army can get there. The only state that I know of which still maintains a separate organized militia that regularly musters is Texas (the State Guard), but there may be others.

Notably, there also hadn't been one before, either.

We have a Roku and an AppleTV connected to a shiny new dumb (but big and with a pretty picture) TV. The Roku gives us Amazon prime video and a USB connection so we can burn stuff we already own. The AppleTV gives us YouTube, and iTMS for renting or buying movies, and access to our music in the cloud so we don't need a radio tuner. If all of these were in one device it would be great, but ...

it still would not really do what is needed. What is needed is a TV that will show you what you want when you want, with you only paying for that. In other words, either Hulu+ with ALL the episodes of ALL the shows, plus Netflix with ALL the movies, or some service with all the shows and movies on an a la carte basis. It doesn't exist because the content companies won't license it to anyone that way. They only want to license with 50 crap shows and one that someone would pay for. They don't want to be disintermediated like the music companies are being; they'd rather fail like newspapers.

The thing is, if they would license a la carte, they could quickly figure out where profit lies and charge more for that and less for other stuff. Anything then not making money could go away. Their business model would be better and their portfolio going forward more profitable. But they are too scared, which means that in a few years, they will start being undercut and replaced by things like Dr Horrible and The Guild, and more mainstream versions of the same idea, which will kill them entirely.

Apple cares about making as much money for its shareholders as possible. Period.

That is the purpose — the only purpose — of a business.

Apple signed it, along with most other mobile device equipment vendors, then reneged on their promise and released the Lightning connector anyway.

Wrong. The agreement does not require that the micro-USB be integrated to the device. An adapter (which Apple provides) is sufficient.

Apple does not care about the environment,

Wrong. Apple is a leader in making electronic devices greener, reusing and recycling them, and making its own facilities more environmentally friendly. That sounds like shilling, and it sounds like a press release, but it's nonetheless true. Not high on my list of concerns, personally, but I do hate inaccurate criticism of all kinds.

it does not care about standards,

It seems Apple cares about some standards, but not others. In particular, Apple cares about those standards that advance its business by making its customers' lives easier/better when using Apple devices, and not otherwise. And this makes them different from any other company how, exactly?

it does not care about FRAND licensing of its patents,

Based on what evidence. As far as I know, Apple patents that have been incorporated into standards have been FRAND licensed. It's just that most of Apple's patents don't get incorporated into industry standards.

and it sure as hell doesn't care about its customers.

Actually, I'd argue that Apple cares about its customers deeply. That they continue their astonishing sales and profit growth indicates that their customers agree. I assume you are not one of them, in which case Apple probably only cares about you if it could win you over without losing more of its current or prospective customers. Their performance since about 1998 indicates that they are pretty good judges of that.

Why are people so eager to allow tyranny over everyone to save "ONE kid"? I mean, if these people are so dangerous, kill them or keep them incarcerated forever or exile them. If they are not dangerous enough to do one of those things to them, then at some point the punishment has to end.

Prevent guns from being used in criminal acts.

Ah, so you're one of those people who believes that someone who would commit mass murder (already illegal) will refuse to break laws against illegal gun possession? Are you a moron?

I didn't know drugs were illegal.

And question answered.