Gerrymandering. Democrats beat Republicans in popular votes overall, but that does not matter in winner take all systems.

During peak, to compensate for spikes in demand, they use natural gas (or is diesal), but those are expensive. For offpeak, I believe they sell it to be used elsewhere.

It is. Basically since it is fully moddable with no server of any kind really (the game runs P2P), there is nothing stopping people from changing their char to anything. Runic did already disable console commands in multiplayer and do have a way to show that you are using a modded char, but since everything is client side, that will almost certainly be bypassed. Basically, TL2 and D3 took the 2 halves of D2 game play and went full bore in opposite directions. TL2 has no secure server of any kind, whereas D3 is only that. Both gain some advantages from that but they also emphasize the disadvantages. TL2 will never have any large scale anything, there is 0 point to PvP or trading with anyone, or with ladder seasons. The game pretty much is for solo play, LAN play and for small groups of trusted people. Otherwise it is no differnt then D2 Open B.net aka a Hackfest Free for All. D3 will obviously not have offline play and LAN, but for the most part, people can reasonably (not perfect of course) trade and (when they get it patched in) PvP.

Umm those Heros are all late game carries or tanks, and are all very vulnerable to chain disables early on. Int are early game pushers/gankers and late game support/disablers. Ever tried fighting Rhasta + Lion? It's not fun, you chain disabled for 30 seconds (and dead nearly every time). Good teams recognize the carries and kill them to prevent them from getting powerful.

Umm... Even if the United States removed every last nuclear weapon they have, Iran and North Korea would still want nukes to protect themselves, because the United States possesses enough CONVENTIONAL firepower to level both countries.

Umm there was a Deep Space 9 episode that did exactly that, weaved a virus directly into replicated food.

Hmm a geographically distributed caches of content according to what is most heavily being requested. What do they called that again..... a CDN!!! *sigh*

Simple really, they had decades to do it, money was not a concern, and labor was worth less then even today (aka slaves, serfs, etc.)

Any sufficiently advanced RTS, like Starcraft?

I think the point the GP was making was that, yes the US military can instantly and overwhelmingly wipe out any civil resistance. However that is entirely dependent on said soldiers of the US military actually following those orders. If there was a civil insurrection, there is a real possibility that soldiers would simply refuse to open fire on civilians and also possible that they would simply join them. In that case you have a full scale civil war. All it would take would be one freedom loving pilot to go rambo with a Hornet bomber to take out DC.

I was always under the impression that the hobbits were not so easily corrupted by the ring, because their race had never wielded rings of power nor had any made for them, unlike the elves, dwarves and men. I guess the smoking also help, because it indicates a lifestyle that's about enjoying life, not accumulating power of some kind (power over nature, metal or other beings).

First you have to pay someone to divert from their usual tasks to do this, or given the volume, you would need to hire a brand new person to do the lookups, possible more. 2nd the manager or some person delegated by said manager would have to sign off on them, as well as have the legal dept. sign as well. Even if its a total rubber stamp, it will still take people's time, which equals money.

We already have the solution to overpopulation, it just will take the next 50 years. It's education mixed with birth control. Simple as that. For proof, look at the birth rates of most Western, developed nations (USA, Japan, Korea, Western Europe). Their birth rates are hovering at replacement rate, and Japan IIRC is below the replacement rate. Simply put, those countries populations are at the tipping edge between growing and shrinking and most are headed towards shrinking. The only question is whether it will be enough to compensate for growing energy appetite of growing middle classes worldwide.