You're 53 years old, posting as AC, and feel the need to announce that you're a transsexual and dare anyone to have a problem with you? FWIW, I don't think it's the world that has a problem with you--it seems like you have a problem with the world.

The yield doesn't have anything to do with how deliverable the weapon(s) are. You said that North Korea's nukes are WW2 sized in a comment about missile technology. I'm curious what you based on that assumption on? Or perhaps you were speaking about yield all along, rather than deliverablity, though in that instance I'd wonder why it came up in a discussion about missiles. In any case, a 7kt weapon is enough to kill tens of thousands of people in an urban area. Even a fizzle might manage to do that, via prompt radiation. North Korea's nukes can't be casually dismissed....

Do we actually have evidence of that or are you just making assumptions? North Korea is known to have exchanged nuclear technology with Pakistan and Pakistan does have warheads small enough to be mounted to missiles.

This has already happened, sadly.

No, I didn't claim anything of the sort. I only asked how you didn't know that was the case, which is something else entirely. You need new reading glasses. Or remedial reading classes. Or something.

Now all we need is for Anonymous to hack Sony again, replace Sony.com with The Pirate Bay, and put up a torrent of the movie. Then the lulz will be complete.

Nah, that's no good -- we can't have Sony actually do something good; it'd be too out of character.

No, what really needs to happen is that Anonymous should hack Sony a second time, replace the Sony.com website with a copy of The Pirate Bay, and release a torrent of the movie there.

But to not show it because some third-world dictator pitched a fit is a different thing. That truly offends me. We should be showing it precisely because it pisses him off.

Exactly. But since the theaters dun goofed and Sony compounded their incompetence with a double-helping of cowardice, we need to compensate. Clearly, what needs to happen now is for Anonymous to hack Sony again and release the movie to Bittorrent.

MS had an after-tax income of over 21 billion dollars in 2013. No idea where you're coming up with a $32B loss. Ballmer was a horrible CEO, but the biggest problem was that MS continued to make money--LOTS of money--while he was destroying the company's value, which made him look absolutely great on paper.

Indiana will simply legislate that all superconductors are performance-invariant.

Problem solved. See how easy that is?

You don't know if they've solved (the last part of) Kryptos. You just know the public hasn't.

The difference between what you think you know, and what you actually know, is often quite significant.

As for the "magic" straw man, not worthy of a response.

Yes. Dropping bombs on a sovereign nation is considered an Act of War under any definition of the phrase. Bonus points for not being bothered to get Congressional approval for the measure.

There are a multitude of different "real" unemployment rates that one can quote; I've never heard of one that includes people who willingly decline to participate in the workforce (i.e., students and homemakers) The traditional definition includes people who desire work but whom have abandoned all hope of finding it. In any case, if you actually believe the <8% number I have a bridge in the Sahara that you might be interested in...

Just so you know, I'm not one of "them." I had very high hopes for BHO, voted for him in 2008 (primary and general), and even campaigned for him against HRC in the primaries. It would require thousands of words to tell you all the reasons why I'm disappointed with him; rather than subject you to that I'll just say that my biggest takeaway from BHO was the loss of all optimism towards politics with resulting massive increase in my cynicism level.

I made no comments about tax policy. As a point in fact I do believe that we need to do something about wealth inequality but that has fuck all to do with the fact that the real unemployment rate is considerably higher than the <8% number being touted by BHO supporters.

Frankly I don't know enough about Cuba to give you an informed opinion on the quality or lack thereof of their healthcare. There are two things I'm sure of though:

1) Fidel Castro leaving the country for treatment actually happened, which is very obviously an option not available to the vast majority of Cubans, hence my quote from Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
2) They could have the best healthcare system in the World and I still wouldn't want to live there. Nor would most people who value freedom and liberty...

While starting completely new ones. Hooray!

*cough* bullshit *cough*

Hooray though, we added 300,000 jobs in the last quarter. The economy did that in most years of the 1960s, when the population of the United States was significantly less than today. Success!