Your confusing the micro and macro views.

Your post can be reduction ad absurdum'd to "Well, our murder count for the year is low, so let's let this murderer go free".

From a marco view, I agree. 17 lives lost for 50 years of space exploration is not too bad. Comparing it with pioneering days is a bit apples and oranges, but overall I would say NASA is decidedly more risk-averse than the English Gov't was wrt their explorers in the 1500's.

From a micro view, i.e. viewing the Challenger disaster in a vacuum, it was the result of mismanagement and arrogance. It had avoidable errors and the mgmt mentality that led to this should be guarded against.

Newt's President of the Moon,
He carries a harpoon.
But there ain't no whales
so he tells tall tales
and sings his colonizin' tune

The problem with the RIAA and MPAA is that their terms aren't reasonable. These two organizations and their member orgs have been dragged kicking and screaming into the new millennium. Their failure to offer reasonably priced compelling legitimate options is what makes the piracy faction so large and so gleeful.

You know what kills piracy? Netflix and Spotify, not SOPA.

Whereas the number of chinese and european expats in the US is so small?

It's also seen as less powerful because it's more confusing (dynamically types and the wacky cross-browser implementations being the main sources of this in my experience). Some of that is also legacy leftover of javascript as a scripting language being conflated with "that script you use to do rollovers" in the ie-netscape days.

As you say, javascript as a language is plenty powerful, see what can be done in unity and flex for examples.

...so I get a mug?

Actually, scrolling on tablets is dead fucking simple and ridiculously intuitive.

What problem is Opera even fixing?

Agreed, sorta.

If you play brinksmanship with the company, you poison the relationship.

I was in a similar situation though the other offer was lot more money but a slightly worse working condition. I approached my boss, told him about it, that I was conflicted, and pointed to some problems in the company. The company was a startup and not yet flush with cash so I told them upfront I didn't expect them to match the pay, and I just wanted to make an informed decision. I got a smallish salary bump, but some organizational issues got resolved and my boss had the ammo to say "our key guy is gonna split if we don't address this". In the end the company got better and I got most of what I wanted. More money would have been nice, but the company is a much improved place to work at, I'm happier for it, and have additional trust in my boss.

The lesson I took from this is as follows: if you trust your boss, lay it out for them, including what you want. Don't play the "do this or I'll leave" card, or you may as well leave. Give them your POV and make it a discussion, not a negotiation. This hinges on you trusting your boss and being prepared to make compromises. If you aren't prepared to make compromise (which is fine), just leave. If you don't trust your boss enough to do this, just leave.

Bearing in mind that I'm not a physicist, if one goes from higher binding energy to lower binding energy wouldn't that release energy?

What if there are monkeys with tacks on the clouds?