In the past Silicon Valley thrived due to people coming from all over the world to get funding for their designs that ignorant over-conservative people people would not fund in other places.
Even going back a bit more "the dread spirit of innovation" was complained about in the Austria-Hungarian empire so Tesla came to the USA to build his alternating current motors.
Now? Doesn't look quote so good. We've turned into the Austria-Hungarian empire that Mark Twain reported on as being stagnant instead of the vibrant Roman empire we say we are the heirs to.

It's not about getting funding for way out ideas like Horvath's hydrogen car scam, it's about progression instead of just sitting on assets.
As for the bridge, a third year civil engineering or mechanical engineering student can show it can work using mathematics that was taught to such students early in the 20th century. Solid mechanics is difficult but the heavy lifting was done in the 19th century, since then we've mostly just added various tricks to take advantage of computers to get good, fast approximations and handle huge matrices. Something so big as that bridge was never going to be easy to get the workers and materials but there was never any doubt that a suspension bridge would scale that far. It's no space elevator where no material matches the requirement of the maths yet.

The only Gods harmed by Darwin are those puny enough to be ordered around by Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggart.

So - how many of those contracts in other places are not government related? The others just don't pay anywhere near as much do they?
It's an artificially distorted environment and you are IMHO very much out of touch with the commercial environment that is beneath you.

Google: The IE 6 of Internet search.

Maybe Mozilla could make a search engine and re-light the competition fire and user focus in this space. (Bing just seems to be a clone of the stagnating leader.)

It shouldn't be about what you want, or what you think you want, but what you need. I want (need?) a search engine that will give me that.

Even being above average means you're surrounded by (relative) idiots. Hell, just stay informed about world events, history, literature, and then stand there in disgust as all people can talk about is the latest episode of "Naked and Afraid". This is by no means a recent thing either; every generation throughout history has repeated the same sorry story.

Yes, most definitely in areas where that idiocy has taken hold and we should oppose things like the clauses of the Trans-Pacific-Partnership that aim to spread such idiocy. Patenting a living being just seems kind of sick to me.

If its from *our* big bang, why is it heading towards us

Einstein became pretty famous by suggesting that space is curved, which is why it's come back around.

Doesn't quantum theory mean that the above can all be true at the same time?

Not as such on a macro scale.

It's turtles all the way down...

"The Science of Discworld" has a good section on the big bang. For those who haven't read it the book is about comparing science with magical thinking by comparing a very fictional world with reality.

Why is the light seen as background radiation not from these OTHER big bangs?

Because the math fits the background temperature. It doesn't fit the other ideas suggested so far such as yours.

I mean so wrong that crap has been built on crap that now has become a religion, a test of faith

Don't let your lack of understanding of either religion or science stop you from making such stupid accusations. Is your God so puny that it can be killed by astronomy?

As I've seen with the relationship between government and telecommunications companies giving the CEO an expensive bribe does not stop them screwing you over either.
Paying someone to care just results in them caring about the money supply. Without "skin in the game" there is little reason to care.

Nokia's (and Blackberry's) problem was mostly one with which market leaders have had a long tradition - the unwillingness to compete against or see beyond their own success.

With less infighting and a bit more resources the N900 would have come out before the iPhone (it was nearly ready for sale at that point), and then Nokia may have decided it was worth enough of an advertising budget for people to actually hear about it.
Yes, I know about the mythical man month and all that but the N900 team was tiny and there was plenty of stuff that could have been done in parallel with more people on board.
The first iPhone is crap in comparison - it can't even multitask and is slow. Compare it with the current iPhone and you'll wonder why anyone thought it was ready for market let alone bought one. However it was "good enough" and had the Apple marketing machine right behind it and serious resources going into the app store.

One person who cared had to speak up and notice. Thus somebody with the goals of the project in mind instead of the goal of the contractor to have maximum profit.
Outsourcing fails when you don't have enough people left to keep the contractors honest.

What gives you that impression?

they are full of nasty stuff which needs specialist handling and removal

Proper asbestos removal is not as hard as you appear to think and the protective gear isn't very expensive. Training isn't hard either - "keep your stuff on or you are fucked" covers 99% of it.

When it's not done properly (there are idiots in the world) asbestos sparkles in a pretty way in the sunlight as it blows in the breeze. Like all dust a lot of water keeps it down for a while.

It's actually a dirt cheap process and a lot of large ships are scrapped in India at very low cost.
Making steel requires a huge amount of energy, a range of materials and very large and expensive plant - melting down scrap is light industry.