The neocons want to push the bible as their narrative.

Well, their version of it, anyway.

What I don't understand is the people saying they shouldn't even try.

People aren't saying they shouldn't try, people are saying they aren't trying, for any reasonable definition of "try".

Compare: if I start making noises about becoming the next world heavyweight boxing champion, good luck to me. Except I'm a middle-aged fatso who hasn't been in a fight since I was a kid, and I haven't began a Herculean training regimen to seek my (unlikely to begin with) dreams, or even so much as memorized the rules of boxing, I'm just asking for sponsors. Wouldn't you be just a little bit spectical about this "ultranova for champ" project?

I understand that it could be dangerous, but do you really think it's so dangerous that we are being willfully ignorant and sending people to their deaths?

No one's sending anyone anywhere, since we simply don't have the technology necessary to keep them alive for months which the journey takes without outside supplies, much less establish a colony. This venture is making promises it can't possibly keep, and when it fails it'll discredit legitimate projects; whether this genuine stupidity or cynical exploitation on the part of project leaders I can't say.

And for all the young Rand-bots, Love Canal was the norm for disposal of chemical waste before the creation of the EPA.

A true Randian ubermensch will violate fundamental laws of physics to make the problem go away for themselves, then watch everyone else die. And perhaps give them a little push to help nature on its way.

For all your whining about how the government can't do anything right, you little twits haven't grown up on top of a waste chemical disposal trench. Our tax dollars made sure of that.

Therefore stealing resources from the productive elites for the sake of protecting the looters, the latter which is a bad thing in itself. After all, those destined for greatness will become rich enough to move elsewhere, and those who can't afford to should just die already. Nothing matters except the ego of the supermen.

You really don't get how these people think, do you? For all its anti-government creed, Objectivism is simply another totalitarian philosophy about reorganizing society based on some lunatic's idea of how everything should work to reach some utopian state of eternal bliss. And like its contemporaries fascism and communism, it too is not shy about breaking eggs to make an omelette. So telling a Randroid your tax dollars helped close an open chemical sewer is about the same as telling a neo-Nazi your tax dollars helped bring down the Third Reich.

We can only hope Rand's nightmare vision for the world will fade with time and never get a chance to become reality, like Hitler's did in Germany.

After looking at all that crap for the 20 minutes it took to find the legit message I needed it left me with a desire to choke the life out of these parasitic fuckers.

Because slightly inconveniencing you is not only deserving of being raped 2500 times in a row but in fact far worse than molesting children. That's not at all insane, no sir.

I guess that shows if you absolutely must huff gasoline, at least get the unleaded stuff.

I can think of lots of other reasons why they would also be upset. But the non-Muslim reason is primary and not something you can wave away, even if you fix the other things.

Or it could be just a way of saying "God is on our side!", like people have in every conflict since time immemorial. Just like they have excused the actions of your own tribe while vilifying the members of others victimized by said actions. Which was bad enough for bronze age barbarians but is something we simply can't afford anymore in the modern world, so please stop doing that shit. Unless, of course, you fancy sitting in the dark, paying even more taxes for "defence" and wondering when someone finally goes over the line and drops a nuke on you.

They are also offended at our allowing gay marriage, perhaps instead the nation should stop placating the gay population and stone or execute them instead?

This must be why every islamic group on the planet is focusing on annihilating Sweden, where gay marriage has been legal since 2009. Oh sorry, I forgot: they'll destroy Denmark first, for publishing those Muhammed cartoons.

...Nope, it's still the United States that's enemy number one, despite all its evangelical gay-hate. I wonder why that is?

How about an apples-to-apples comparison, like, you know... one involving the cost of armoring transformers at all the stations?

And poles. Because it won't do much good to have intact transformers if they're unpowered because the wires are down.

On the other hand, why does every single piece of art have to be solely judged by how much revenue it takes in?

They don't. However, opportunity costs do need to be considered - every penny spent on a particular piece of art is away from something else, since there's only so much coin going around. Also, public should have some say about how public money is spent.

I hate to say this as someome from the US, but the serving of yogurt from Starbucks has more culture than anything the big, mainstream movie houses churn out these days.

This is, of course, complete rubbish. Mainstream movies transmit and reinforce cultural memes. You're simply already surrounded by said memes, so you don't necessarily notice.

Political correctness flat out denies any pride in your heritage, unless you are part of some select minority.

No, it denies vilifying or ridiculing other heritages to make yours seem better by contrast. If you need to see "singing chinamen mispronouncing words" to feel pride about your non-chinese culture, and political correctness keeps you from broadcasting this fact for the entire world to see, then you should be thankful about it.

The factor that you've left out is, the corporations spend millions upon millions to brainwash the masses into believing that the corporate offerings are all there is.

Right. And is it actually accomplishing anything? At this point even the dimmest bulb has heard of Rule 34, and thus knows that fan works exist. Do you really think the average person is incapable of making the mental leap from "fan works exist" to "original works exist"? Especially since you can't take two steps in the Internet without running into someone referring to DeviantArt or their fursona or their tulpa or their Youtube music video or their webcomic or their fiction or whatever? Even copypasta counts as a creative work, and some creepypasta is actually pretty good.

And of course this is completely ignoring corporations like Valve, who are actively promoting indie content for sale through such little-used services like Steam. This is one instance where capitalism seems to have everything well in Invisible Hand.

Anyone who says otherwise is a dumb ape who doesn't grok basic post-scarcity economics.

And anyone who leads a comment with a clumsy and obvious ad hominem is shooting themselves in the foot: even if the rest of the post is well-reasoned, they've poisoned their own well.

You don't need giant indoor dam, you just need a giant outdoor tank higher than the surrounding region. The problem is, big tanks like that are kinda expensive. Millions of dollars.

Expensive and, more importantly, dangerous - storing large amounts of power would risk a rather large flood. It would make more sense to excavate an underground cavern and pump water out of it to store power. This is (likely) cheaper, safer and allows far more height difference, thus more power per same amount of water and storage space. And of course you get a huge cistern out of the deal, too.

Let's assume we excavate our cistern so we get a water head of 100m for our turbine. Also, let's assume the turbine+generator is 80% efficient. A single cubic meter of water weights one metric ton, so we'll get 1000kg*100m*9.8m/s^2 * 0.8 = 784 kJ = 217.8 kWh out of it.

According to Reuters, New York State's electricity usage peaked last summer at 33,955MW, so if we'd want to provide every single watt for, say, two weeks from our reservoir when fully loaded (completely empty of water) at maximum power draw, we'd ned to excavate 24h/d*14d*33955MW/217.8kWh/m^3= 53 million cubic meters of rock. This works out to a square 10 meters high and 2.3 kilometers on each direction (plus enough to compensate for support pillars). Expensive, yes, but also ridiculously oversized and perfectly doable with today's technology. Also, doubling the depth doubles the power contained in every cubic foot of water, leading to smaller cistern required.

Or we could focus tsunamis - and all other waves - to a reservoir and let it drain back to sea through turbines. Or we could build concentrated tidal power plants. Or whatever.

I don't understand why the utilities simply don't build out their grids to accept feed-in from customers' solar rigs, and then split their pricing structure into 1) grid access, and 2) net power supplied? Or is this too simple?

I suspect it's a matter of idling power plants being nonprofitable. Remember, all those solar panels are going to be varying their power production pretty much in lockstep, so the grid's net demand is going to vary by a huge amount. You could solve the problem by building storage capability, but that's an expensive investment that could drive the cost of grid tie-in to the point where people get their own batteries and disconnect.

Also, what happens if there's, say, a week-long spell of bad weather? It seems unlikely that people would accept "it was cloudy" as an explanation for why utility couldn't deliver enough power. That means it can't scrap its usually-unused power plants even if it builds energy storage but must keep them ready to go before batteries run dry. And that eats into profits.