After the conclusion of the Soviet union, records surfaced which showed that at best, nuclear espionage accelerated Soviet atomic bomb development by about one year. A little more, perhaps 15-16 months for the Hydrogen bomb. So while we happily executed the Rosenbergs their spying only changed the Soviet timeline by less than a year and a half.

For atomic bomb (fission) the challenge was and continues to be an engineering problem once you work out the basic math. What was being stolen were engineering solutions, materials science and such. Problem was, the Soviets were backwards, from an industrial perspective so they couldn't take full advantage of the massive national scale industrial solutions the Americans used to manufacture their materials, purify them, engineer them and package them.

On the other hand, the fusion side of development is quite different. The physics of the Teller-Ulam design were not understood or pursued by the Soviets. Sakharov took an entirely different approach to the same solution using very different mathematical tools. The Soviets would have actually been regressed had they used the American high energy physics in their solution. And again here, they had more to gain, theoretically, from American engineering and materials science which they could not easily put into practice.

Similarly today, physicists know the math behind building a bomb fairly well and crude rail type designs don't have to be tested. The challenge is in the process engineering used to make a bomb unit. That's still hard to do. Synthesizing the correct type of nuclear material in the correct purities is difficult and expensive to do. Then machining it into the correct shapes and building triggers that function correctly is hard. Then doing that in a small enough package to put on a missile is hard. Or least hard enough to be difficult to do reliably more than once.

The essential trade off is size vs power. The smaller the bomb the more efficient the bomb, the harder it is to build. But then it's more accurate so you don't need a big weapon. The less sophisticated the bomb, the more it weighs, the less efficient it is and the bigger the rocket you have to put it on. Make it big enough and you have to deliver it by truck or container ship. Of course with indiscriminate terrorist nuclear weapons, it doesn't matter how accurate it is. So you can afford to make them cheap and large. This was the trade off the Soviets made. With warheads 10x more powerful than American warheads they needed rockets much larger to deliver them. And because their electronics were not very accurate, it was a good match to combine large inaccurate bombs atop giant rockets. The strategy there is go after unprotected civilian centers instead of missile bases themselves, which is what the American strategy was and is.

See with the Soviets, or with anyone, building a gadget that explodes and building a weapon you can direct to someone else so they explode are much different problems. The initial hydrogen bomb tests did not use any sort of deployable weapon. They were building sized gadgets.

I went to a Mexican Christening recently. You'd think the real Christ was there. 400 guests, custom made clothing. It was huge.

It's become a ringtone.

Asses and ass touching for a change. Sort of. Dude has issues.

Because The Closer and Saving Grace, and Bones are damn near unwatchable. If they run for more than 4 minutes before a commercial, it's unusual. Now I know that the DVD episodes run 43 minutes but I am positive that they edit the network broadcasts down to cram in more ads. Plus banners, lots and lots of animated quarter screen banners. A shame really. Well at least they're trying. At least they have more than 6 episodes a year.

PS, Burn Notice? Cmon Bruce Campbell, you're not even phoning it in.

Friend of mine spent years literally planning out her own wedding. Saved and saved for a massive Church wedding the de Medici's would be proud of. When the blessed day arrived, there was one small problem. Hubby to be was in a military brig.

Damn that's gonna leave a mark.

Is the official motto of the Democratic party.

That's not the issue. It's not how they do it, it's are they allowed to?

Sorry but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Any idiot can see that they're the same drawing.

Democrats only persecute or prosecute other Democrats. It's about ideology not atrocity. Just ask Glenn Greenwald. Better a million people die than his holy liberal creed is besmirched by those of questionable fervor.

What will Salon run next? The agony of trying to pick out the right outfit for the book signing for first brilliant novel said trust fund writer has slaved away on through a decade and 3 failed yet promising romantic relationships, one of which was a same sex relationship? Or will it be an adventures in chucking the 'writing game' to run a goat cheese farm in Tuscany that only uses Etruscan techniques story?

Poor disorganized countries in the midst of anarchy, corruption, war and the normal course of events all look the same and they all look like this. More than anything else, Americans are astonished. Not because they're outraged that they're involved, but because from the swaddling of their experience they're outraged that this is fairly normal.