True enough. There were, in fact, two probes (Mars and Phobos), but both weren't able to leave the LEO.

You know what?
Fuck you and the horse you rode on in.
You lack reading comprehension, you have no experience in life, you are myopic, haven't seen different countries, don't speak different languages and only know what your school books have told you. You are grandstanding about sovereignty, but in your eyes sovereignty is only important when it is about oh so evil Russia. Other countries may invade at their will, because it is apparently a different sovereignty.

Talking about Czechoslovakia and Austria, but have you been there? Do you speak their language? I've been there and I bloody do. Have you ever seen what a civil war is like? I have.

And here you are telling me that I am not your equal? Well, guess what, I am not. I am better. I have seen more, I have known more. You are a disappointment, really. Now bugger off my lawn.

i stopped reading there

And this is a part of the problem. Saying "la la la I can't hear you" doesn't change the facts. Kindly read completely, then respond.

russia meddled in an *internal* georgian dispute that occurred within the internationally recognized borders of georgia. then it divided the country into a "new" bullshit country abkhazia

Abkhazia is not a new bullshit country, it is, in fact, a very old one, but it is a different history lesson. Russia meddled in an internal Georgian dispute because, among the civilians in Tskhinvali, their peace keeping forces stationed there were also shelled. That is the official reason.

is it ok if the usa invades the mexican district of sonora and announces that it is a new country? why can the usa do this? uhhh... drug smuggling. yeah, that's our reason. perfectly good reason, totally understandable, right moron?

Was it okay that USA has bombed Serbia - a sovereign country - into submission and divided the country during the civil war, recognising a new independent country there? Even though Kosovo has been a part of Serbia for almost a thousand years? This has set a dangerous precedent. Meddling on other civil wars (Lybia and Syria quickly come to mind) hasn't helped the argument about internal affairs of a sovereign country either.

can the american fbi go into canada and arrest people? no? why not. can the us army occupy ontario? why not? because canada is a sovereign country, you dumb fuck

In fact they can. CIA routinely abducted people, torturing them in secret prisons (some of them were on Poland's soil, and these bastards call themselves Europeans). Guantanamo bay is full of them.

no country, anywhere in the world, does what russia did to georgia and ukraine without consequences.

Well, apparently this is not the case. See my example above with Serbia. Invading sovereign countries and topple governments, meddling in civil wars, bringing suffering to civilians is a favourite past time of NATO countries. USA, UK, Germany, France, Turkey, Poland, Australia and many more.

By the way, Georgia and Ukraine also took part in the Iraq invasion. For them it was just normal and fine, because their big brother USA has asked.

if you do, continue speaking on this topic. but if you continue to assert russia invading and dividing georgia and ukraine is "reasonable" then you do not understand what the fuck sovereignty means and are therefore announcing yourself as a complete moron or a propagandized idiot on this topic and you should shut up

Sovereignty doesn't mean much really if a strong enough country decides a military action is in order. That is what we in Germany call "die Realpolitik". I am personally not happy about this at all, but, unfortunately, when it comes to international relations, might makes right.

And speaking of internal problems, since Russia is the legal successor of USSR and the breakup of it was processed... well, let us say, not exactly constitutional way, one could, being a devil's advocate, argue, that it is an internal problem of Russia and all these countries are just illegal separatists. Somewhat far fetched, but the breakup was really handled bad, leading to several wars (The aforementioned civil war in Georgia, then Transnistria, the Armenia-Azerbayjan war, Tajik civil war, wars in Chechenia and Ingushetia, the current situation in Ukraine, which was bound to happen sooner or later and so on). This is why I can only sadly laugh when I see people here on Slashdot say that the breakup was peaceful.

I speak Russian fluently, although, obviously, with a German accent, and have visited several former Soviet republics (going to Ukraine in two weeks BTW) and east European countries, this - and being born on the other side of the Iron Curtain - gives me a somewhat different perspective on all that.

P.S. there was really no need for insults there. We both are grown-ups and can hold a polite discussion.

What Russia did to Georgia in 2008 is a continuation of what Georgia did to itself in the early nineties. It was the same story as in the Balkans. Besides, as funny as it may sound, Russians were sort of the good ones in 2008. The then-president of Georgia saw his popularity dwindling and wanted to boost it - especially within the nationalist circles - with a little war on the break-off population which was de-facto independent for 15 years.

what's actually important is the fucking borders of a fucking sovereign nation, and that modern states respect that

You are very funny. Even Germany here has been bombing several foreign countries in the past 20 years, forgetting the "never again war" concept as soon as USA called. Any respect for borders of a sovereign nation only exists when it is politically convenient.

Not just nuclear. They have sold almost all of their conventional weapons as well, back in the 1990ies, to every tin pot dictator with spare cash.

Even so Russia invades Ukraine just now, and it took a coup to do that. I think you are vastly oversimplifying things.

Ukraine willingly gave up (as in "sold") most of its arsenal period. They didn't do ot because they were nice people (only Poles are less friendly), but because they couldn't afford the maintenance and needed money to steal. It has been one of most corrupt countries in the world for over 20 years - since they became an actual state.

Really? I thing you really should take a good look at linguistics and reconsider. You also forget that the scientific method was "invented" by a philosopher. Science hasn't really used the scientific method before, preferring positivism instead. Thus by your own very definition science has not existed before Karl Popper.

That is why I've stopped watching after season 5.
But it was indeed awesome at first.

But there are indeed sciences that are liberal arts. Linguistics, sport science, history, archaeology, anthropology and similar.

It is a far too simple classification for sciences. It would be more exact to describe a science on two axes
One axis is the origin of the science, and the other is the method.
The origin would be either natural (like chemistry), social (which analyse the social entity), humanities (which analyses the culture) or abstract (just needs to be internally consistent).
The other axis - the method - is a gradient between exact and descriptive.

And then you'll have a much more exact description.

Psychology is humanitarian more or less descriptive.
Math is abstract exact.
Philosophy is abstract descriptive.
Sociology is social descriptive.
Linguistic is humanities exact.
Anthropology is humanities descriptive, but physical anthropology is humanities exact.
Chemistry is natural exact.
Law is social exact.

Two actually. Turkey used to be secular as well.

My views aren't really a tiny minority as you can see from the comments here, many if not most of them are saying "good riddance" to American soldiers.

And as for Poles - I say let them be scared. It is the very least they deserve for the CIA torture prisons.

The thing is, if something exists, there will be some Germans that would protest against it. That the current chancellor is brownnosing the US is also not news at all.

As for me, I personally also wish your troops would go to Poland and never come back. It would be a win-win situation - no foreign troops on our soil and the constant Polish whining would finally be over. If it would bring them to leave the EU - even better.

. When the US "threatens" to reduce the number of troops stationed in Germany, the Germans protest.

Some Germans protest. Others would prefer the yankees to finally go home.

"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire.
Besides, Heinlein is overrated, eternally stuck in the 1950ies and had a strange obsession with slide rules.

That is a different story altogether, of course and it is true, that knowing Russian is very helpful with other languages since there are many things that are common with other Slavic languages. I have a Serbian colleague and we both have learned Russian at school (I am more fluent than her, though). I understand her Serbian quite well, especially after also learning some Czech. We still converse in German because it is easier.

On the other hand, Russian is indeed a special case for many reasons
1) Russian had several language reforms that changed the language quite a bit making it less comprehensive for other Slavic speakers
2) Russian has a really fucked up word stress system. Even native speakers easily get the stress wrong if they read a previously unknown word. Although the Serbo-Croatian one is even worse due to additionally being pitch and length based.
3) Russian mostly lost auxiliary verbs "to be" and "to have", while they are still present in most other Slavic languages
4) The previously mentioned heavy influence of Church Slavonic (basically old Bulgarian) which is a South Slavic language leading to some unpleasant irregularities.

All this makes Russian especially difficult for other Slavs. A Russian speaker, on the other hand, especially one is well-versed in old texts and understands old Russian, can understand other Slavic languages quite well after learning some basic rules about those missing auxiliary verbs (very important for Czech, because it tends to drop personal pronouns instead).