It's a shame that Putin has to sit across the table with Petro "Puppet" Poroshenko

This puppet who should be rotting in a Russian dungeon is "negotiating" across the same table with Vladimir Putin. What a shame!

Update [26-Nov-18]: Noticed that this puppet always poses for photos giving an artificially-serious look, trying to look like a knowledgeable, tough and decisive leader - as if he's legitimate and presidential and not a lapdog installed by the West. It seems like he's simply trying to hide his weakness. On his inside he knows that he's a thug and a nobody and just a Western pawn, and that each day and each night he oils and sells his @$Shole to his Western masters.

Flash bashing is a cheap trick that idiot bloggers use to sound knowledgeable

For several months or maybe years, there's an ongoing trend on the Web - blasting of Adobe's Flash technology. Self-proclaimed technology "experts", "gurus" and "reviewers" [who are nothing more than random, useless bloggers] have continued to prolifically attack the Flash platform as if it is and has always been useless. It might have gotten dated, and some of Flash's features have now become native to Web browsers, and Flash does at times have issues related to memory [see screenshots at the end], performance and security, but in no way is Flash useless.

More importantly, these idiot bloggers have absolutely no idea of the invaluable contributions made by Macromedia Flash to the Web [others like Apple/Jobs, Facebook and Microsoft have their own business reasons to bash/hate Flash]. Flash brought those capabilities to the Web which browsers couldn't power in the early days - animations, games, animated ads, puzzles, audio/video, online applications, interactive educational content, forms inside ads, and so on - on low-bandwidth Internet connections. It made the early Web more exciting and more interactive. And to be honest, there are a lot of capabilities/features that Flash has that the Web of today just can't provide without  it.

Blasting Flash has become almost fashionable these days to the extent that random journalists use this cheap trick to make it look like these idiots are knowledgeable [just like random Western journalists routinely attack Russia/Iran/Syria in almost every article they pen in order to appease their neocon-funded and neocon-licking masters].

A search engine results page [SERP] can be thought of as a topic-specific custom webpage instantly built by computers

These days there's online discussion about use of artificial intelligence to write news articles. I like to think of a SERP as a topic-specific webpage - like a sort of article on a particular topic to be found on PC Magazine or CNET News website - except that it has been rapidly assembled from scratch, and it has been built by machines.

The screenshot below of Bing makes this thought somewhat clear. To a user, Bing instantly wrote a dedicated webpage for the query windows defender for windows 8. This custom-built webpage contained a lot of useful information related to the query. To be sure, this SERP certainly wasn't as lucid or thorough as a human-built webpage would be for this same query/topic, but that quality gap is only a matter of time. The core principle prevails and is time-independent - that SERPs are fundamentally custom-written articles/webpages in response to queries entered by users of Web search engines.

Smartphones of today emit a multitude of likely dangerous wireless radiation [COMPACTIDEA]

It isn't limited to just the mobile network signal now. New types of waves additionally burning your brain/heart/whatever include Bluetooth, GLONASS/GPS, Wi-Fi, etc. Dual SIM phones further increase the amount of phone network waves emitted.

Likely effects of Delhi's odd-even policy on related products, services and stakeholders

1. Second-hand car market will become more active, with some folks who have only one car wanting to keep another car [with the other type of registration number, to be used on alternate days].
2. Rise of car-pooling, resulting [incidentally] in increased real-life social interaction with colleagues, neighbors, etc.
3. Rise in use of public transport like buses, Delhi Metro, etc.
4. Newfound consideration about the registration number for the second car/vehicle people purchase, with people wanting to have both even- and odd-numbered cars in their homes.
5. Fall in sales at Delhi car dealerships, as Delhites prefer buying from outside Delhi/NCR for use inside Delhi [in case the odd-even rule doesn't apply to non-Delhi/non-NCR vehicles].
6. An opposite market force that will try to increase new vehicle is the desire/need of Delhites to own a second car to circumvent the odd-even rule. However, folks are likely to choose a small car as the second car. People likely won't want to spend on a big/expensive car just to circumvent the rule.
7. Increase in use of cab/taxi services such as Ola, Meru, Uber, etc.
8. Increase in the proportion of women drivers - in case Delhi creates an exemption for female drivers - as many men will prefer making their women do the driving on alternate days rather than buying a second car or using public transport or a two-wheeler.
9. Similarly, both sales and usage of two-wheelers are likely to rise, in case these are also exempt from the rule.

These points can be groups under different heads - what things will rise, what things will fall, etc.

Language barrier is a key reason why English-speaking Western nations don't empathize with non-English people such as Russians or Iranians

It's because Western lawmakers and the general public don't really get to know non-English people closely - they can't/don't watch Russian or Kazakh movies, they can't/don't see Iranian or Iraqi TV shows, they can't/don't read Syrian or Palestinian books, they can't/don't listen to Libyan or Lebanese music, they can't/don't understand what the people of Yemen or Afghanistan talk, and so on. The result is that these other people exist, but they're so far off that there's no emotional connection with them. The thought of bombing or killing these other people for own benefit doesn't hurt the hearts and minds of the Americans, the British, the Canadians, etc.

Language barrier is one of the reasons why wars are waged. How tragic!

It shouldn't be so difficult to call what America is - an empire

It's difficult for people the world over to accuse America of being an empire because of two reasons:

1. Fear of offending America.
2. The word empire brings up an image of horses, cannons, swords, etc., and the America of today doesn't fit into this mental image.

However, America of today is a full-fledged empire that obsessively invades and conquers and kills and destroys, just like the empires of previous centuries. It's just that because the world has advanced so much, we no longer use cannons or rifles or swords to fight, nor do military men ride horses in open fields, chasing other horses. America of today butchers people - including women and children - using remote-controlled drones and missiles, and we better quickly alter our mental perception of what constitutes an empire. Because the empires of the years gone by are not coming back ever again.

On unfair state subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, and the effect on the rest of the world

• This blog post uses Boeing as the subject, but the mechanism applies to other American defence companies too - Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc.
• For decades, Boeing has received and continues to receive very large sized defense/military contracts from the US government. Despite the "optics" fooling the American public that costs are being kept under control, all of these contracts are highly overpriced and "wasteful" [else why would Boeing "invest" hundreds of millions for campaign donations, lobbying, speeches, etc.], meaning that Boeing reaps rich rewards - billions in profits funded by the American public under the pretext of national security and America's global imperial wars. These huge profits ensure that Boeing is always awash in cash.
• Boeing can use and indeed redirects this financial power towards the development of its commercial aircraft - for example by undercutting Airbus on prices [effectively a cross-subsidy discount].
• The lucrative military contracts that Boeing regularly receives from US government ensure that Boeing is able to conduct cutting-edge R&D on materials/metallurgy, aerodynamics, engines/propulsion, wing designs, testing, manufacturing best practices, new processes, and other technologies, without any of these R&D expenses counting against its commercial aircraft segment.
• However, much or maybe all of this high-end R&D is usable and in all likelihood indeed gets used in Boeing's commercial airliners [for example the 787]. As Boeing probably saved billions by reusing the R&D knowledge from its military programs, it can undercut Airbus on prices and this is effectively a subsidy [though an opaque one].
• The American taxpayer thus subsidizes not only America's military projects, but also its passenger planes [R&D expenses and hence sale prices].
• Further, it's likely that several of the actual parts/components that Boeing develops for its military products get shared in its commercial aircraft, thus giving it a speed/time boost, saving development and testing costs, as well as providing economies of scale and hence cost savings on these parts/components. This too constitutes an indirect form of subsidy, as if Boeing's military division gave "funds" to its passenger division.
• Also necessary to mention here is the billions in military aid that US gives Israel, much of which flows back to the US in the form of purchase of US weaponry and fighter planes, thus effectively being a US-taxpayer provided subsidy despite giving the appearance of being a normal foreign-customer purchase.
• A similar mechanism of subsidies - though to a much lesser extent as Europe has handed over its security apparatus to America/NATO - likely functions for Airbus too.
• And so it's a matter of great laughter when Boeing complains that the Bombardier CSeries is being subsidized by the Canadian/Quebec governments. Boeing is lying and it knows that it's lying and it's lying with the explicit intention of lying and it knows that it's Boeing in reality which has received huge subsidies over several decades from the US government, paid for by the American public. What a crooked corporation!
• Overall, both Boeing and Airbus receive state subsidies, that harm other, much-smaller aircraft manufacturers in the rest of the world. The subsidies that these two manufacturers receive create a roughly level playing field for these two [relative to each other], but severely curtail the ability of other manufacturers to challenge this cozy duopoly.

The risk of loss of defense technology secrets in foreign sales of military equipment

Recent news stories reveal that Israel, in collaboration with Greece, conducted training against the deadly Russian air-defense system, the S-300, which is now deployed in Syria and is also being sold to Iran. That Israel and Greece [and ultimately their master - the US] are able to sort of reverse-engineer the working of the S-300 system shines spotlight on the risks inherent in foreign sales of critical military gear. As part of the Cyprus Missile Crisis, the S-300 fell into the hands of a NATO member, and it is certain that America must've pounced upon the system to understand its inner workings, to copy its superior characteristics and to train against it.

Of course, there's a risk for Israel, Greece and the US too. Assuming that Russia keeps updating the software of the S-300, it's possible that Western nations train against an older firmware version of the S-300, and are taken aback in the battlefield when a system with the latest software version is able to lock-on despite the evasive measures devised by the West.

Nothing wrong with factual labeling of products made in settlements on Israel-occupied territory

There is absolutely nothing wrong in correcting the false and incorrect information printed on products made in Israeli settlements built on land grabbed from Palestine [or other countries]. Since that land and the natural resources on that land rightfully belong to their actual owners, Israel's use of the phrases "Made in Israel" or "Product of Israel" is incorrect and also illegal. Hence there is nothing wrong [it's helpful and useful in fact] with correcting this incorrect and misleading information on the relevant products through factual labeling.

As far as Israel's and Netanyahu's habitual cries about anti-Semitism are concerned, Israel and Netanyahu are known pretty well to invoke the overused anti-Semitism excuse whenever they can't come up with any meaningful argument [which they almost-always can't]. Hence Israel's denunciations about this labeling can simply and quietly be ignored.

NATO's collective defence, collective security principles seem illogical and illegal

Suppose Russia retaliates militarily against Turkey for the latter's criminal downing of a Russian bomber jet. NATO would likely invoke its collective defence agreement here and other members of the gang would come to rescue Turkey by waging a war with Russia. This doesn't seem logical or even legal.

Britain claiming that an attack by Russia on Turkey is the same as an attack by Russia on Britain, this seems too foolish and provocative. It's like this has been designed to cause large-scale wars, as if some of the NATO members want war, rather than letting bilateral conflicts remain bilateral.

Mathematical probability can explain the frequency of shootings in the United States quite well

The US experiences gun-related murders, school shootings and other violence quite frequently. It obviously is a direct consequence of the mass-ownership of guns by the general public. Simple mathematics can explain the regular occurrence of these shootings in America quite well.

Since it's certain that at least some people among the entire population of America are going to be mentally unstable, and since it's also sure that at least some people among the overall population are going to have some sort of vengeance with some other people [for whatever reason], and so on, plus if all or most of America's population owns a gun/pistol/rifle, then it becomes quite natural that at least a fraction of these angry/disturbed/enraged/violent people are going to pick up their guns and actually use them on others. It's as simple as that.

Possibility - could terrorists use pressure difference to explode something in the cargo hold of a plane

I wondered about this dangerous possibility when the other day I saw this message on the box of a deodorant I received from Amazon - "DO NOT SHIP BY AIR".

Could terrorists improvise some sort of explosive that works by exploiting the pressure difference between the interior of the improvised device [high pressure] and the outside atmosphere [low pressure]? Can this explosion be strong enough to damage, and thus bring down a commercial airliner? This concern is especially important considering a lot of things - deodorants included - are allowed in the checked baggage.