Is this article some kind of joke I don't quite get?

I suspect people put too much emphasis on brain evolution as an explanation for technological innovation. Think how slow innovation would be coming now if the world population was 50,000 and we didn't have writing.

Our ancestors of maybe 10,000 years ago had a material culture closer to the apes than to us, but we probably hyaven't changed much during that period.

Probably I should learn to spell it, but if you got a laugh out of it, more power to you.

Low as my opinion of Obama is, I'd certainly vote for him again if he was running against the same two clowns as last time, or the two psychopaths from the time before.

I hardly imagine that that would matter, other than give his successor the "terrorism" excuse to do whatever he wanted.

Putin's cronies at the FSB put him into power. His successor isn't going to a have noticibly different agenda.

Which have been NATO countries for a decade. The Soviet^w^w Russia will have a bit more trouble getting them back.

In fact, Putin may be making his play for Ukrania now, lest it also slip permanently beyond his reach.

What is it with all these short leaders and their need for military conquests? Compensating for something less publically visible?

Well, it's a fact that hippies didn't have any money.

So you'd like to convert the discussion to why we have the kind of God we have instead of why we have the kind of universe we have? Maybe we have an infinite number of Gods, each slightly different?

Actually, to almost everyone outside of Africa, in varying degrees.

No, there's a long tradition of viewing the Neandertals as "incapable of symbolic behavior". In the latest edition of Scientific American there's still a guy peddling the argument with moved goal-posts.

ISTM that Homo economicus is almost incapable of resisting the urge to cut corners in the design, construction, operation, and inspection of nuclear power plants. (And in non-nuclear projects as well, though few have the destructive potential of Cherynobyl.)

I wish the whole world was on nuclear powar, but our species simply isn't mature enough to "drink responsibly" when it comes to such things. And with the past few decades' huge increase in pressure to cut corners in order to maximize short-term profit, I suspect things will get worse before they get better.

As for the Chinese... have they hit on a better approach than capitalism, or are they practicing the Soviet-style corner-cutting that gave us Chernyobyl?

ISTM that Republican anti-science-ism is mostly limited to two areas, evolution denial and global warming denial. The latter is easily explained by the party's tradition of ruling for the benefit of Koch types (and having their campaigns funded by same), and the former is easily explained as an easy way to get religious traditionalists to vote against their own best interests.

It's not just software projects that that can't be completed in a timely, cost-effective manner.

You'd think expectations for "the plant's automation system" would be pinned down before the contracts were signed, let alone before construction started.

The Wikipedia article leaves the impression that the actual problem has been shoddy workmanship and poor project management.

FWIW, In my experience with small-time contractors in the petrochemical industry (back in the day), common practice was bid an untenable price and make the profit by finding or "finding" problems that had to be fixed at great expense, and with little ability for the buyer to bargain on the price. (And sometimes the findings are real; I have seen the blueprints showing a foundation with an 8' radius for a tower with a 10' radius, the problem not discovered until the crane tried to lower the tower onto the bolts in the foundation.)