I can't tell if you're being serious or not, especially with, " Even if it would turn out that people are too stupid in aggregate and would technically benefit from a despot or anything less that direct and absolute democracy."

At what point does "technically benefit" not equal better? I know this isn't exactly a single-factor situation, but since we're only talking about a single situation, when you say something is beneficial (or perhaps, *more* beneficial), that pretty much by definition means it's better.

And in my opinion, a 24-hour Athenian democracy like you seem to be advocating is great in the same world where communism is great or libertarianism is great : a utopia where every human is perfectly-informed and respectful of every other human. Maybe we'll get there one day, but we don't live in that world today.

I'd argue that prior to the last few years where smart phones have become incredibly popular, Sprint tended to offer some of the best/most advanced phones available (other carriers did as well), so your argument that they offered "the worst phones" seems completely wrong to me.

Actually the market for new law school grads is pretty terrible right now, and outsourcing lawyer work is already happening.

I don't know. The Soviets did some cool stuff with duct tape and bailing wire (Sputnik, for example!), but I'd hardly call them technological geniuses. If they could build aircraft carriers, there's no reason at all the Chinese couldn't. It seems more likely the Chinese just took a cheaper option in this case.

How much of that renewable energy is subsidized? Considering Spain's current budget issues, I hope not much, because otherwise the price of energy in Spain could be very unstable.

I'm certainly not anti-renewable, but nuclear energy is such an attractive alternative I hate seeing all the fear-mongering that goes on with it.

Additionally, the link you provided says that only 32% of Spain's electricity is generated from renewable sources, not "over half".

It's not "tiny" compared to KCMO. KCK's population is about 150k, whereas KCMO's is ~500k.

H&R Block is actually in Kansas City, Missouri.

I'm confused how China could not have built one on their own at this point? The F-117 was designed in the 1970's, so "stealth" isn't exactly a new concept. China has a big enough economy to dump billions down the drain figuring out how to build a stealth aircraft, it wouldn't be surprising at all to me that they could achieve it without stealing any US technology.

Whether or not it was entirely a home-grown effort is a different question, but it may include stolen tech only because it was cheaper to steal than to reinvent.

And to say "this was really quick" seems incorrect to me. The F-117 was debuted to the general public twenty years ago. It's likely the Chinese knew it existed before then, so they certainly could have started their own research program long ago. Considering that the F-117 went from initial design to flying prototypes in less than ten years (using 1970's computers, no less), there's no reason to think the Chinese couldn't do something similar using more modern technology.

I think AC means google.