North Korea Nuclear Missile Range

The lightest area is the range of North Korea's short-to-medium range missile, the Musudan. In terms of operation range, it's 2500-4000km. Not really a west coast threat, but still enough to devastate Beijing, Tokyo, southeastern Asia, and southwestern Asia/parts of India.

The middle area is the range of the Taepodong 2, NK's long range missile. Its range is closer to 10,000 km. This opens up an entirely new, longer list of in-range population centers. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, not to mention the dense European capitals. While Mumbai is probably not a primary target of KJI, it certainly could prove to be a leverage point considering it has a staggering population of 14 million. Delhi could also be a WWIII bargaining chip, weighing in with 12.5 million residents.

"You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan,' even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics -- because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well, then everyone loses their minds!"

The Healthcare Swamp

The Slow Reversal of Periods and Quotation Marks

Here.

In the time which I've experimented with Linux and all manner of techie things, I've noticed a constant, willful violation of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style growing within the language of English-speaking geeks. Every day, this phenomenon extends further and further, it seems.
Slowly in quotations, the periods and the commas are switching place with the quotation marks. What do I mean? Well, take a recent node, Troll for the Ages, by TheBooBooKitty. In it, the wise Kitty postulates that

A proper troll should have a title like, "Everything2 is Becoming a Little More Communist Everyday", while an improper troll would have a title like, "Everything2 is just a bunch of god damn wankers".
Notice how the pipes end. They do not end in the order period-quotation marks or comma-quotation marks, as is standard in the Queen's English. Rather the punctuation has been reversed. I don't think that this instance was a typo, nor do I think the hundreds of other violations were. I believe it is an intended departure from normal rules.
In the past, total integrity of the greater ideas within a missive was required, hence, something set off in quotation marks framed the complete thought, including a period or comma. But as technology advanced, the need of technical speech developed. Here, total integrity of the letters themselves is required. A trailing character within a quotation, required by grammatical tradition, could introduce unnecessary error to the data. Example:

You want to enter at the shell "gcc -cf ."Here exists some confusion. (well, not a lot if you're really familiar with bash and gcc but bear with me) Does the trailing dot belong in the shell command? Who knows? The following is far superior. You want to enter at the shell "gcc -cf". So the period began to be pushed to the outside of technical quotations. And even now as the days go by, it permeates the wider English language more and more.
In fifty years, will the Oxford English Dictionary note and accept this change to the ever-pliable interchange medium which is English?

GDP vs. National Debt (By Country)

On Violence

President Obama (of whom I am generally a fan, besides his fopo) is really riling up those of us who have a "Don't Tread on Me" streak in us and are sympathetic to our (little) sister nation,ישראל. While I need to think of a more succinct way to outline that in a blog than the profanities that are in cartoon-style bubbles above my head when I think of it, there was a part of the President's speech regarding Israel that I really, just straight don't agree with:

“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end.”

I have a few problems with this:

1. Violence ended slavery. As gruesome and horrific as it was, the Civil War was the enforcement mechanism for the 13th amendment. If Lincoln had added a cherry on top to plantation owners to get rid of their (free) work force, would they have suddenly said "Oh- our bad, slaves. Peace out," would it have changed anything?

2. You know what didn't work in Cambodia, Chechnya, Rwanda, Nazi Germany, WWI Germany, Weimar Germany, any number of former Soviet Union battle grounds, or Indonesia, and hasn't worked and isn't going to work in Iran, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, or North Korea? Asking nicely. How about the American freaking revolution? It's impossible to get leverage over a few types of people: 1. Those who have nothing to lose; 2. Those who believe they are sent from God; and 3. People who are smart enough to call the U.S.'s bluff. "Palestine" (in quotes because, well, it's not a real country) is a dangerous combination of all three.

3. When stone-throwing terrorists try and play at the big boy's table next to Netanyahu, and their efforts are rewarded with a few Tomahawk cruise missiles and F-16 night strikes, they cry foul. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of liberal America's attitudes towards the Middle East is the propensity to victimize its inhabitants, to characterize the poor Arabs are the oppressed. Look, the Jews have been oppressed for thousands of years, and now that its oppressors are getting their come uppance, the international community sympathizes? I call B.S.

Boozer to the Pistons?

Carlos Boozer has certainly been an easy person to have a lot of contempt for if you're a Jazz fan. His propensity to play in 70% of games, combined with his lackluster defensive effort that leaves a lot to be desired, has a lot of fans calling for his head. Maybe we shouldn't make that declaration so fast. Do we really want Paul Millsap in the production spot of the Jerry Sloan four-feeding offense? There is really zero debate as to who is the more effective offensive presence: a chiseled post-specialist who can finish equally well with either hand, and who has a reliable mid-range shot, or an undersized power forward who will get the dirty work done on both ends, but whose inability to shoot outside of four feet make him basically ineligible for the high pick-and-roll game?

Also, Siler and Luhm have an excellent post regarding GM accounting in the NBA that ought to change anyone who values the Jazz as a team and contender more than they dislike Boozer.