Not only did reddit blow up Aydens video, reddit members also came through with a few new flags for Ayden.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

After this movie, they started blowing up all the damn Enterprises. All over the place. All shows, all movies. Sometimes it was left esplodeded, other times time hiccups saved it.

It sure did blow up good....Real good.

I like how he starts waving people to go around about 20 seconds before it explodes again.

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

I was waiting for the car to blow up seconds after they got the guy out. Clearly, movies have lied to me.

I hate hearing people try to sell me on the speech at the end of the Fountainhead.

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, we call people who blow up buildings terrorists.

@ChaosEngine @Buck

My dad was in the Air Force. He was chosen for a particular program -- to be a Range Safety Officer on launches.

Once he got his Masters in Engineering at MIT on the government's dime, he was stationed at Cape Canaveral.

His job was to have his hand on the key that would blow up a missile when it went off course. The course was set so that if it went bad, the pieces would fall safely into the ocean. If it started to veer off course, you had to blow it up quick.

He was stationed at Cape Canaveral from something like 1958 to 1966. About that time frame. Early days, when they didn't know quite how to do a successful launch -- and he blew up a lot.

More than any other person -- and no one will catch up with his record, because it is no longer early days.

He got a Saturn. He blew up a Titan. He blew up a lot of Missilemen missiles.

He mostly worked on the unmanned launches. Only one launch (that I know of) was manned -- and he almost had to blow it up. He was sweating that one -- because of the stakes of blowing early or blowing late and no good result if you make the wrong choice. There was a wobble ... and he waited ... and it corrected.

But yeah. A Saturn.

After Cape Canaveral, he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, NW of Santa Barbara. The west coast equivalent of the Cape.

PM me your email, and I'll send you a SERIOUSLY cool cartoon that was a gift when he left the Cape. Sitting astride a rocket that has obviously been launched from Florida, with silhouettes of all the missiles he blew up -- with HASHMARKS for how many of each.

It is seriously cool.

I was kinda hoping the mac would blow up *ftw

Do I have to watch it? This vid, I mean?

Star Wars is about rebels fighting a powerful empire that governs the galaxy. It glorifies taking down the establishment by a group of (well funded) gun-toting terrorists.

I suppose you could draw a parallel to the American war of independence against the British...

But in a modern context this would be like a group of domestic insurgents blowing up an aircraft carrier ("Death Star") while staging an armed rebellion against the US government (now a subsidiarity of "Gov-co," a joint venture of the Disney, Viacom, Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan Chase, and Koch Bros. companies).

Simply put, that's just not going to happen.

--------------------------

edit: Okay I just watched the above clip. That guy made even less sense than the BS that I just made up.

Before you blow up my comment feed, watch the entire video.

But how different is telling a drone "kill the person with this face" to telling a missile "fly here and blow up". The video seems to show ez-assassination technology (tm) being used by "the wrong" humans, not AI going rogue and deciding who lives and who dies on its own.

To me, the video is scary not because of AI, but because of how easy and inconsequential it portrays murder. It makes you wonder if that isn't sort of the end goal of advanced warfare technology - the more surgical it becomes the further it deviates from our idea of what war is - this is drone warfare and it's nebulous legality taken to the very extreme.

What I perhaps find unsettling in myself is that I find this somehow worse than open warfare - as if its not the loss of life that bothers me, but the sinister efficiency of it. Is that really a valid criticism? Why is it "more ok" to fly a plane to drop a bomb on some foreigner than for a drone to do it - is it because it simply costs/risks us more, that technology like this cheapens human life?

The AI takin over is scary too. I just hope they work out in time that the only winning move is not to play.

Why is there an alarm to let people know there's an earthquake happening? Don't people realize when the ground under their feet starts moving, that's an earthquake?

"Dude, the ground under my feet's moving -- is that a tornado?"

"Nope"

"Hurricane?"

"Nope."

"Donald Trump's and Roger Waters's egos just collided and made a super-ego that's blowing up ids everywhere?!"

"Bingo."