That is exactly how congress works. Except the average IQ of congress is around 85.

2 out of 5 people are lower IQ than 95. an IQ of 80 is considered barely functional.

Because animals are TASTY! In fact I'm going to go have some chicken and cow for lunch... If I choose hotdogs, Then I get Chicken,Cow, Pig, Rat, Squirrel, and Mystery animal all on one!

The 1920 pumphouse at the one I worked at was like that.

"You need Air, Fuel and Spark"

You must not work on many engines then....

Diesel does not need spark.

"but more importantly, neatly all the valves in those plants are controlled by electricity. " And they have geared handwheels on them for emergency backup.. Have you ever been in a Water filtration plant? I worked in one for over 7 years, during that time I had to operate the whole place by myself during two extended power outages, one actually blew up the main transformers on the premise and melted the 7200 volt power lines coming in to run our 350hp electric motors. I had a very hectic 30 minutes to run the 1/2 mile to the other end of the facility during a major thunderstorm to start the generators manually as we did not have auto start back then. Then run all the way back and manually close 4 60" gate valves by hand to shut down half of the water plant as water consumption dropped way down as most of the town was out of power. By the time the emergency response guys showed up and I opened the gates I had the 500,000 Gallon per day pumps running and the water towers in the city above a 75% full point.

What is fun is when you are in a pumphouse and the check valve fails and a 350hp motor is running backwards at full speed and someone does not answer the radio up at the control house and hits START on that motor. the smell of vaporized copper and ozone in the air when the breaker arms exploded and vaporized because 7200 volts at insane amps met a motor running backwards and acting like a direct short. My ears were ringing for a week.

Not hard at all. EMP does not blow up starter motors and does not blow up lead acid batteries. Hell all I have to do is connect jumper cables from the battery to the starter lugs to start the generator.

Granted that's far more difficult for the typical person that cant get past the "I pushed the button, it most be broke" thought process, but that is why most places actually hire competent employees to manage that stuff.

Real transformers dont die from EMP unless it is a direct hit by a megatron.

" disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Most people wouldn't even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps"

Every single water filtration plant has very large diesel generators that can run the place for months without electrical power. And no, a solar flare can not burn out giant motors and generators, all that can be ran easily without the SCADA system. In fact we used to run drills operating the place by hand, as most of the guys that did it from 1940 until 1990 did it mostly by hand.

I'm in that boat. I've gotten so used to my 2 week disposable contacts that they're barely noticeable any more. (I give em a good cleaning once a week when I give my eyes a break and stretch each pair out to a month.)

I can't have any kind of surgery that involves cutting a flap in the cornea since my eyeballs still need to be shockproof, there are types that don't require this though. Still a bit worried about the aura/halo effect. And the cost is not insignificant.

Yeah, the SSI check my sister receives is just about enough to cover the cost of her group home's fees. I think she gets $30 spending money a month, plus whatever we send her. Her meals are covered, but she's not exactly living in the lap of luxury.

We are about to go live with a system where we're doing just that. 10 year old internal website, originally built for IE6 or somesuch, throws a hissy fit when presented with anything passed IE8. We're rebuilding one page of it that happens to be the most broadly used page, so that 90% of the user base can finally get rid of IE8. The other 10% can wait another few years while we gut and rebuild the rest of it.

I've heard about it, but I know precisely one person who is on SSI for disability - my sister who has schizophrenia - and she has the mental capabilities of a ten year old.

I have an acquaintance (not a friend, I don't like him) who threw out his back at work and tried for years to get SSI disability, to no avail. He was capable of working, he just didn't want to any more. (We have a lot of call centers here in town. Indoor work with no heavy lifting.) I think all the judges in his case knew that was his goal, which is why he kept getting turned down.

TL;DR - Despite what the commercials and stories say, I think the system is working as intended.

After I read TFS, I am become infinitely hilarity!

...They should make someone play FF7 and run this test at the point where Aerith(/Aeris) dies.