Some bits it glosses over :

Puppet dictatorship is basically a description of every US and Soviet backed b-list nation on earth back then. The fact that it's a puppet state shouldn't be used to imply anything.
For example, the U.S.S.R. had modernization programs for its satellite states, building power plants, roads, hospitals, universities, etc, in an attempt to fast forward development and catch up with the west asap. They also did this while spouting secular rhetoric.
In a general attempt to undermine soviet efforts (*both sides tried to contain each other's influence world wide), the U.S. looked for any groups within the U.S.S.R. satellite nations that would be an 'in' for U.S. power/influence. For Afghanistan, this was the people most offended by the U.S.S.R.'s [secular] agenda, and most likely to make good on foreign anti-soviet backing - the religious Jihadists. Everyone knew very well what it would mean for the local people if Jihadists took over Afghanistan - but at the time, the soviets were considered a bigger problem than Jihadists (possibility of nuclear annihilation), so better to have Jihadists in power than soviets.

Also, Assad's release of prisoners was officially part of an amnesty for political prisoners - something the people and foreign groups were asking for.
Saying that Assad tolerated AQ or Isis is misleading. These groups gained power during the Arab spring, when a large portion of the civilian population wanted a new government, but lacked the military power to force change. Militants stepped into the situation by /graciously/ offering their military strength, in exchange for economic/resource/political support to help make it happen. After a short while, these groups coopted the entire effort against Assad. Once they were established, they simply put the people under their boot, effectively replacing Assad with something even worse within the regions they held. Assad lacked/lacks the military power and support to expel the militant groups, so they fight to a stalemate. But a stalemate is by no means tolerance.
One similarity that Syria has to Afghanistan, is that the anti-government kernel within the population that birthed the revolt, did so for anti-secular reasons. In Syria's case, it was in large part people from the region that had earlier attempted an Islamist uprising during Assad's father's reign (which was put down by the government, culminating in the 'hama massacre', leaving some intense anti-government sentiment in the region).
In any case, the available choices for power in Syria are 'political dictatorship' or 'religious dictatorship'. Whoever wins, regular people lose. It's not as if regular people have the arms necessary to force anyone to listen to them. Anyone with any brains or initiative knows that their best option is neither, so they leave (hence all the refugees).

The video also omits the ambiguous alliances in the region. Early on, you had the UAE, Saudis, and Turks supporting ISIS - because an enemy of your enemy is your friend. It wasn't until ISIS started to encroach on them that they tempered their support. Turkey remains ambiguous, by some accounts being the gateway/laundromat for ISIS oil sales... because ISIS is a solution to the 'Kurdish problem' for Turkey.
If you watch some of the VICE documentaries, you can see interviews where locals on the Turkish border say that militants and arms cross form Turkey into Syria to join ISIS every night.
Then you have countries like Iran and Syria fighting ISIS, but by official accounts these countries are the west's enemy. Recently, French leadership (after the Paris bombings) has stated that they are done playing politics, and just want to get rid of ISIS in the most practical manner possible, and are willing to work with Russia and Assad to do it.

It's worth noting that ISIS' main enemy/target is 'non Sunni Islam'. U.S./Europe tend to only mention ISIS attacks on their persons/places, and it leaves western people thinking that ISIS is against the west - but in fact the west is merely an afterthought for ISIS. For every one attack on a western asset/person, there are countless attacks on Shia, etc.

-scheherazade

While the Blue Origin vertical landing is difficult and an accomplishment in its own right comparing it to Spacex is a little unbalanced:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-spacex-rocket-landing-jeff-bezos-elon-musk

Twice the speed, twice the height, more burns, a more complex flight path and a much larger, thinner vehicle to name a few differences.

You may want to watch this video on what Spacex has planned for the remaining stages of its stack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE

To be fair that stack has the Dragon capsule on top and not a satellite delivery bus but the goal to return multi stages is part of the Spacex vision.

"If" Spacex can get the "heavy" version of their vehicle up and running with stage return they will be a force unequalled in launch across the entire industry. That is if they can turn around their stages without compromise to structural integrity.

Surprised he didn't mention Satellite Reign, the spiritual successor to Syndicate.

This is on a late night satellite TV pay channel called BSスカパー. BS = Broadcast Satellite; スカパー = Scupper (?).

The show's title is 徳井義実のチャックおろさせて～や, which roughly translates to "Make Tokui Yoshimi's (the host's?) zipper come down!"

It is probably most akin to the soft core porn that airs late night on Cinemax or other pay channels in the U.S. (anyone remember HBO's "Real Sex" series?).

Nothing this raunchy is ever shown on broadcast TV anymore. 20 years ago it was a completely different story though... man that was a great faptastic time to be a teenage boy in Japan!

BTW, this show won BS Scupper's 2015 Adult Show Award.

EDIT: Turns out Scupper is actually an abbrieviation of the channel's orginal title: Sky Perfect. I guess the proper way to write it would be SkyPer.

OK
#1. Your study quote which said no mechanism had been discovered.
#2. "but the drivers, magnitude, timing and location of methane consumption rates in High Arctic ecosystems are unclear."...LOCATION UNCLEAR MEANS NOT FOUND.
#3...this does not make sense, "this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks" is self contradictory, since many terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks are NOT moderate...depending on the definition of "moderate". If less than 10 deg C is moderate, then they're right.
#4. You can tell them 98%+ of scientists in the field of climatology say side effects of industry/technology will cause "X" at a minimum in 100 years, and it has already caused "Y" (warming, weather changes, ocean acidification, environmental pollution, rising cancer rates, water shortages, other indisputable factors), send him back with proof of those effects, and I think same result..."no thanks".

I misunderstood I guess. If you did that, he would just be in a rubber room for claiming to be a time traveler, not seen as a visionary. ;-) If he could offer proof of the time travel, the state of the planet, and the environmental trends showing every issue is seemingly getting worse leading to cluster f*ck, it would not be a hard sell in the least, IMO. At least not to people with an IQ over 90. You don't have to abandon all those things (coal, yes), you would just have to design them better. Electric cars were often the norm before Ford in towns. Planes might be electric dirigibles, and satellites might be put in orbit by rail guns.
If you don't think 1/3 of the planet's population (a reasonable guess if water shortages continue the current trend) being migrant doesn't warrant 'panic' (which I never suggested, I will say it warrants concern even by those in the '1st' world) then I don't know what to tell you.
Citations:
#1. It may be unfishable in 15-20 years (I was off by 5 years) at current acidification rates.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/climate-change-threatens-crucial-marine-algae/
"By 2040, most of the Arctic Ocean will be too acidic for shell- forming species including most plankton. Significant areas of the Antarctic Ocean will be similarly affected, oceanographer Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK previously told IPS."

#2. by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/interesting-water-facts/
"Unless we change our ways, two-thirds of the world’s population will face water scarcity by 2025"

#3. Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/interesting-water-facts/
"Rapid melting will reduce the Tibetan glaciers by 50 percent every decade, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences
More than two-thirds of Chinese cities face water shortages"

@newtboy,

How about great big citation needed. Your making a lot of assertions and about zero references to back anything, your just one step shy of claiming because I say so as your proof.

The rotting material creates exponentially more methane than any mechanism could trap.
Citation required.

your study quote did not say that "they've identified regions up north where the soil absorbs more methane the warmer it gets
The abstract is only a paragraph and the charliem gave the link up thread, just go and read it already, they did numerical estimates AFTER going in and directly measuring the actual affects. And I must additionally add, it's not MY link but was instead the ONLY claimed evidence in thread of your catastrophic methane release.

Let me start us off, the IPCC once again summarizes your problem as follows:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

There are caveats prior to the above quote about unknowns and uncertainty and the possibility the affects will be less or more, but the consensus is, don't panic. Like I said.

As for bringing that person from 1915 in today, you don't get to tell them the environment will be destroyed 100 years from 2015 in the year 2100 as a result. You have to prove that first, which you have merely asserted, not proven. On the other hand, my evidence was bringing our visitor from the past showing them the year 2015, and the consequences of rising global temperatures by 0.8C since his time in 1915. Then I say we ask him if abandoning coal power, airplanes, satellites, and cars to prevent that warming is a better alternate future he should go back and sell the people of 1915 on. I'm thinking that's gonna be a hard sell. I'm additionally pointing out that the IPCC projections for the next 100 years is 1.5C warmer than today, so we'll be going up by 1.5 instead of the 0.8 our visitor from the past had to choose. The trick is, I don't see how you can claim that panic should be the natural and clear response. You need a lot more evidence, which as stated above you've failed to provide, and more over what you've posited is contrary to the science as presented by researchers like those at the IPCC.

It may be unfishable in 15-20 years at current acidification rates.
citation needed.

by 2025 it's estimated that 2/3 of people worldwide will live in a water shortage.
citation needed, and you need to tie it to human CO2 and not human guns and violence creating the misery.

Northern India/Southern China is nearly 100% dependent on glacial melt water, glaciers that have lost 50% in the last decade
citation needed

The downvote was not for your opinion, it was for your dangerously mistaken estimations and conclusions...
, says you. If you don't use any evidence to refute me it's still called your opinion...

They're not there to spy. Satellites can do that just better.

As far as I can tell, It's a bit of a chest thumping exercise. China apparently wants to expand their "official" air and sea space into international space through the addition of these islands. The US sends these planes in to test the Chinese reaction and show they won't be intimidated and maybe force China into officially claiming the new space so they can be challenged in an international court.

I don't really have a problem with a weaponized robot. It's no different to a tank or a fighter plane really. The question of "robots" is largely irrelevant. Robots are just another tool that has been weaponized, something that humans have done with everything.

We took knives and made swords.
We took cars and made tanks.
We took planes and made bombers.
And we've almost certainly got some killer satellites.
So putting a gun on a robot isn't really any different than giving one to a soldier, except it can be more easily repaired.

The question is about AI. Once you get an AI and put it in control of a machine, it can probably use that machine to kill you. OTOH, once you put a human in control of a machine, the human can probably use that machine to kill you.

But we're going to develop robots and we're going to develop AI and sooner or later, someone is going to put the two together. You can't ban innovation (well, you can, but it won't stop it). So I'd much rather we build and understand the technology. That's how we learn.

Fundamentally, it's how we use these weapons that will determine our fate, and right now, we're not using them very well.

It was pretty much completely overcast here in the UK...somewhat ironically the best view I got was from checking the weather using a weather satellite that also picked up the shadow moving across Europe.

*dead since http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/satellite/satelliteEmbedPlayer.swf is gone.

There is zero evidence the universe has an edge.

There is zero evidence that anything exists outside of the universe..or,,that there is an outside of the universe.
All current data highly suggests the universe Is infinite ,homogeneous, and isotropic .
The data from wmap and cobe satellites ..show the universe is flat Euclidean space...along with the model of an an isotropic and homogeneous universe, highly suggest the universe is infinite.

Yes, see the second link I put in later.

This might be a corner of it here in streetview - https://goo.gl/maps/6oNs3

Also, keep following that road in streetview.

The satellite maps are probably too old to show it though... it looks like the roofing of the old buildings that they knocked down to build the crumpled paper bag building.

I was trying to use the satellite map to find that building. Couldn't figure it out. Any ideas?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's primarily an anti-satellite missile system. They've built those before, but if it's the launcher itself they're putting into LEO, from there maybe it can fire sub-munitions that can hit something useful like geostationary satellites.

Enhances communication for US forces on the moon?! Did I hear the commentator's description of the satellite correctly?