At best this is a revenge move. I can't see the Russians actively hunting and sinking a Turkish submarine, even if they were capable of doing so, unless the sub had fired first.

And these days, when a sub shoots, it hits.

So I guess this is intended as a deterrent. "Yeah, go ahead and shoot a torpedo if you want to lose your sub afterwards."

It then becomes a couple of questions: what kind of provocation would it take for the Turks to decide to shoot, and would the Russians actually have the ability to find and sink the sub afterwards?

A different question: what happens if Turkey closes the Dardanelles to any and all Russian warships? And then Russia decides to send a group of ships through anyway? And Turkey uses shore-based artillery and airstrikes?

I think I'm going to go hide under my bed.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that we ought to have wound down NATO well before now.

 And the idea that we could get sucked into a conflict by the Erdogan government is positively grotesque.

I wouldn't just leave him hanging, I'd root for the Russians.

Article V of the NATO treaty ultimately only requires each member to do what they think is best. We found that out in 2001 when Article V was invoked for the first time and the response from some European countries was underwhelming.

Everyone is supposed to treat it as if it was their own country that was attacked, but that's not binding. (As we found out in 2001.)

At this point the NATO charter is pretty much a dead letter. Obama won't do anything except deploy strategic hash tags and expressions of deep concern. Until a new president takes office, no one in Europe had better be depending on American military power. And if it's Hillary, they still better not depend on it.

The trendy mega-edifices that are built in place of these once thriving areas that are actually lived in tend to have a certain characteristic to them: There are no niches, no easily contained spaces, no natural microcosms within them where people can actually set something up.

One thing about all the trendiest buildings on campus that I find absolutely maddening is that there is nowhere you can go to get privacy, or to get away from other people. It is all, 100%, 270 degree public space (and overcrowded on top of that). Set up a booth or a display? Forget about it. All you can do is pass through at high speed and try not to let it wear on you. Find a corner (as I used to be able to do in my undergrad university) in the periodical stack to set up and study all night? There’s nowhere like that here.

It almost seems of a piece with all the uber-trendy "open-plan office” designs. (I have an open desk in an open office that I never spend any time at, because I can’t *think* in that setting. (Nevermind the noise – I have no control over my space.) Better the corner of a cluttered bench in a lab, where my back is to a wall.)

In Calhoun’s rat overcrowding experiments, the rats that stayed sane the longest were the ones that took over and controlled the niches. The ones that had space that was *theirs*. The others had to scramble for spots in poorly defensible public open areas.

"...hopping mad..."

We all saw what you did there, Pete.