Just add explosives, attach somewhat higher.

Nice kitty, but there's still a rule against self-linking, right?

That was a bit of a rant you went off on, there... But, this bit reminds me of what most puzzles me about certain beliefs - How can something interact with the physical world without being, itself, physical? I see no way, logically, to have a being not constrained by the laws of the physical world and still able influence anything in it. If you can't have that, surely omnipotence, at least, goes out the window?

Gluten free, yum!

How about "we don't know yet"? We're ignorant on many things, and many of the ideas we have about the universe will probably turn out to be false in light of further research. Maybe some of the questions we're asking will turn out to be pointless. That doesn't mean faith-based explanations are correct. It just means we don't know yet.

Science is about making educated guesses, rejecting theories once proven false, coming up with new ones fitting empirical data and above all, having a reasonable process for deciding what explanations for phenomena seem most likely at any given time. Where is that ability for self-correction in religion? How would you decide which religion is most likely to be correct - if any are?

It's like they say - common sense is what tells you the earth is flat.

Looks nice, but... Space battles at a proximity of what can't be more than a couple of hundred meters? Really?

Brand wrote a piece about this as well, quite worth reading in my opinion:
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/sep/13/russell-brand-gq-awards-hugo-boss

You make a good point, but what's included in the budget figures? World wide gross ticket sales (assuming that's what the figures represent) don't all end up being credited to the studio.

Funny, I saw someone playing just this in Helsinki last weekend. I guess it was likely the same guy, seeing as the instrument is supposedly rare.

I'm not sure the "not wanting to go to war" bit applies when you're already at war. At that point in the war, I suspect all parties still active in WW2 had serious regrets about getting involved in the first place. But that's spilt milk.

This kind of speaks to the time-specific nature of what kinds of judgements it's possible to make. It's easy to say, now, what would have been the best course of action for any player, but we all understand ours is not the perspective Truman or Hirohito had at the time.

Similarly, they would have had different perspectives before the war than in the middle of it. Japan was a willing participant in WW2 at the start, no question about that. The question is, once they were in it, and losing, what would it have taken to get them to surrender, and did anyone have the ability to know?

That's great, your reflexes are in line with survivability.

That said... I used to spend time with people learning to do handstands, and I've seen people do a lot of *very* weird things when they start to fall over from. I've done some stupid stuff myself in that situation. Once, I think I fell onto my shoulders, then rebounded via a kind of backflip onto my feet. I think it's one of those things some people learn readily, and others have a hard time wrapping their head around. Hilarity may ensue.

Anyway, going further off-topic: if you want to learn to do a handstand, my recommendation is to start with learning how to fall from one!

The alternative, as far as I am familiar with the counterargument to this viewpoint, would have been to loosen the requirement of "unconditional surrender" of Japan, and possibly to demonstrate the bomb by dropping it on an unpopulated area. Inviting Japanese scientists to a staging ground for a controlled demonstration was also on the books.

Now, assuming the US top brass were convinced Japan was not going to surrender, the argument presented here is quite valid. Bombing a live target certainly had the most shock value, and the bombs were likely in quite limited supply. (I confess, I don't know how many there were at the time.) A continued conventional war would have been horrendous.

But... Were the Japanese really unwilling to surrender, and if so, why? According to what I've read... Well, let me just quote the story, I've seen this in a number of texts:

"At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill held a press conference. Roosevelt said that he and Churchill…

…were determined to accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Germany, Japan, and Italy…

Churchill said later that he was surprised by this statement. Churchill adds that he was told by Harry Hopkins that the President said to him:

…then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it; and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/04/jonathan-goodwin/roosevelt-demands-unconditionalsurrender/

It was Jonathan Glover who I first read giving this account of events, but I don't remember what his source was. The argument he and others make, though, is that the Japanese did signal their willingness to surrender, but were not willing to do so unconditionally. This is because they feared the emperor might have been deposed and put to trial, which was simply unthinkable to them. If this is true, then dropping the bombs may have been unnecessary and even before the bombs, the war effort in the Pacific could have been ended through diplomatic means.

All this does leave one with some disconcerting questions. Would Allied leaders really have refused to reconsider their demands of Japan simply due to prestige and the need to show resolve? Was there no diplomatic backchannel? Certainly the fog of war must have played a part in the decisions made. I haven't been able to find a source beyond hearsay for what, exactly, the Japanese diplomatic position on surrender was. Considering this debate still goes on, no such source is likely to surface.

What stands out here, to me, as the saddest thing is: it seems countless lives were lost for lack of solid information and communication between enemies. Had Japan and the Allies been able to negotiate further, had the allies dared show their nuclear hand, had they made it possible for the emperor (while not a nice guy by any means) to be protected, how many lives could have been saved? Unfortunately, no-one has the benefit of hindsight when it's most needed.

I can't help but think of the Cuban missile crisis - what would have happened, had a similar failure to communicate occurred at that time? It was very close...

@oritteropo

I'm hoping it really is mainly procedural means the NSA have. Already before this, I've been operating under the assumption anything I haven't personally encrypted using keys controlled only by me is not secure. Used to be I only went the whole mile when I felt it was necessary, now I'm starting to move as much of my net presence into the dark as I can, out of principle more than any immediate need. But if strong crypto is compromised, as some now worry... Things get ugly.

Official ad, right?