Do stealth fighters need active radar jammers?

Some say no.  The idea of stealth is to become invisible on radar.  If the stealth aircraft starts radiating, it can be a give away, similar to violating radio silence at sea.  Jamming can give your position away.  On the other hand,  stealth or no stealth, there comes a point when enemy radar sees you, and is guiding missiles your way.  In this case a range gate stealer, an angle track deflector, a sidelobe jammer, or what ever else has been dreamed up since Viet Nam, can save your bacon.  If you have the equipment on board that is.  If you don't, best to check your ejection seat. 
   The Aviation Week article goes on to criticize the F16 for lacking internal jammers,  and the F15 for having old internal jammers.   Back when I was on the flight line, you put your jammers in pods under the wing.  That way you could upgrade your jammer to meet new threats by just loading a new pod, rather than rewiring the entire aircraft to install new internal jammers. The jammers are most effective against missiles.  A good radar man can often sort the target out from the jamming.  Missiles are dumber than radar men.
  What set off this Aviation Week commentary?  The Malaysian Air Force showed up with new model Russian jamming pods on their Russian built fighters.  The accompanying photo shows a Sukhoi 30 fighter so old that the twin rudders are mounted straight up and down.  The simplest stealth design would have canted the rudders off the vertical, so radar reflections would go down toward the ground, rather than straight back to the enemy radar set.  This bit of stealth has been well known, even to Russians, for at least 10 years, maybe longer. 

What matters is Syria, not American credibility

The TV has been all Syria, all day.  Being newsies, they get a lot wrong.  They yack a lot about credibility and what the rest of the world thinks about America.  But intervention in Syria must be decided upon what intervention will do to Syria, not what the rest of the world thinks about us.
   Does anyone think we can just do a fireworks display?   When we intervene against one side, we are handing victory to the other side.  If we zap Bashar Assad, much as he deserves it, we tip the civil war to the opposition, who seems to be mostly Al  Quada.  Have you seen the video of an opposition soldier disemboweling a fallen soldier, and eating the heart and liver, raw?  Do you want to put  those people in charge of Syria?  Think about it. 
   Obama has convinced the entire world that the Americans are flakes.  Intervention is Syria isn't going to make them think better of us.

Words of the Weasel, Part 33

"Military grade" firearms.   Phrase used by anti gun types to imply that some guns are more dangerous, more worth of being banned.  In the real world, a gun is a gun, they all shoot bullets, and bullets hurt.  It is true that guns made for the Army are more plainly finished than guns made for commercial sale.  But a plain finish doesn't effect the shooting quality of a gun. 

Flying a satellite in atmosphere

The Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution  ("Maven")  mission, getting ready to launch for Mars, is planning to do just that.  To investigate the Martian upper atmosphere, the satellite will be placed in an elliptical orbit around Mars, which dips into the Martian upper atmosphere to take readings.  The orbit will go within 150 kilometers of the surface.
   That's about the altitude that the old Mercury capsules orbited at.   On Earth, there is enough air left above that altitude to form the ionosphere, important to HF radio transmission.  Clearly the experimenters believe there is a Martian ionosphere, thick enough for Maven's instruments to take a reading on.
   They didn't say how long this can go on before atmospheric drag pulls the satellite down. 
   They mentioned that Mars used to have a strong magnetic field which disappeared some time in the distant past.  That's a new one on me.  It is thought that the magnetic field used to shield Mars from the solar wind.  When the field went away, they think the solar wind stripped away most of the Martian atmosphere.  Just how the ancient Martian magnetic field was discovered, and what might make it go away wasn't discussed. 
   Anyhow they hope to use Maven to measure what in the upper atmosphere might be related to, or causes of, Mars' lack of air and water. 

We were eyeball to eyeball and our guy just blinked

Probably not a bad idea.  Zapping Bashar Assad in Syria to teach him a lesson about the use of poison gas, actually amounts to tipping the civil war against Assad and in favor of Al Quada.  Which is not a good idea. 
Note:  The reason Obama hasn't gone to Congress yet is he fears he will loose, making him look stupider than ever.  And Congress is just as happy with that, they don't want to vote on anything, 'cause taking a stand on anything just looses you votes.  So Congress doesn't get called into special session. 

Is college worth it?

Depends.  For students who like their subjects and study 'em, it's a good deal.  For a lot of students coming out of 13 years of K-12 classrooms, who really could care less about the declination of Latin verbs, Shakespeare's literary devices, or when the battle of whatever was fought, college is another four years of drudgery, punctuated with parties.   These students would do better getting a job in the real economy (fast food, construction,  truck driving , retail sales) or enlisting in the military.  After a year or so of hard work for not much money, they will find their attitude toward academia much improved, leading to much better grades and the learning real life skills. 
   College is only worth it if you study real subjects.  Subjects with a job market other than becoming a college professor.  English, history,  foreign language, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, economics, computer science.  Art only pays off for artists.  Unless you have some artistic talent, study something else.  Same for music.  If you don't have any musical talent, don't study music.  You gotta have some talent to be an artist or a musician. 
   Avoid the fake subjects.  Black studies, gender studies, these are indoctrination subjects.  Sociology, political science, and journalism, the talky talk subjects.  Lots of fine ideas, no facts, anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's.  And there is NO job market for these subjects. 
  If you cannot get interested in real subjects, college won't pay off for you.

Destroyers to the rescue?

According to the TV newsie, the US is massing destroyers off the coast of Syria to do a little 21sth century gunboat dipomacy. 
Destroyers?  The smallest warship that counts as a ship?  Smaller vessels are known as boats, not ships.  Either 21st century destroyers are a LOT bigger and meaner than 20th century destroyers, or the proposed strike on Syria is gonna be a lovepat.  I mean, we used to do this sort of thing with aircraft carriers, no destroyers need apply. 
    Actually, destroyers have gotten bigger and costlier over the years.  Used to be, a destroyer was only 2000 tons displacement.  Lately they have been pushing 5000-6000 tons.  Ships that big used to be called cruisers.  Now they are destroyers.