I know cop-outs when I hear them.

The nations with the highest power consumption have ceased excessive breeding. They're all near or below replacement population growth among their indigenous population.

That right there is an outstanding argument for surplus energy.

A degree of conservation is a fine thing, but it's also a cop-out and a means of comfortable people to pull up the ladder behind themselves. Our millions of elite Al Gores will always live comfortably regardless of how hungry and cold they make you. Thousands of elderly Briton pensioners are learning all about that as the UK inflicts energy poverty on them.

Oh look at the outrage.

Cops, fire fighters, city managers and the rest routinely gouge huge chunks of money out of city and state governments in the US. Most of the time they get a pass. After all, why shouldn't some LA assistant chief pull $260k a year bilking double and triple time hours recorded while getting dressed for work? That's nothing compared to some evil capitalist pig-dog bankster. Right?

That's the rationale, anyhow. So now this culture of corruption has gone and created a way to launder some of their bribes through a charity. And we're supposed to go all pitchfork and lick-spittle about it?

Selective outrage. That's all it is.

Contractors routinely soak the federal government for billions in overruns. You happen work for a peon outfit that lacks the leverage to get away with it. France et al. have a little more pull.

I'm afraid that is naive. In the real world the figures are low-balled to get signatures knowing that once the commitments are made and the real figures are revealed backing out will be politically difficult for the funding parties.

This isn't the last cost bump either. There will be more as the years pass, each carefully calculated to be just feasible politically.

Right now they can get away with bigger bumps because Obama et al. have never seen a demand for money from Europe they weren't eager to cover. This extra few billion might involve one whole phone call from Hollande if things get rough. More likely it will be pencil-whipped through by the NSF or whatever other TLAs are involved.

$3.9E+09.... about four days of Fed money printing.

Perhaps we could forego half a weeks worth of bubble inflation and fund it that way.

Remember the days before Harper when Canada's electoral system was incessantly lauded as the obviously superior system? Since conservatives took power that view has not been offered as frequently around here.

All those proud anti-Harper Canadians must be languishing is some NWT gulag where they can't post that stuff anymore... it couldn't be that they forgot how wonderful their system is when it fails to produce their preferred outcome.

No way!

I'm told mainstream media outfits like CBS are the exclusive property of profits-before-all Corporate America and its free market, planet wrecking, right wing fat-cat captain of industry one-percent types.

So, either Colbert is a sell-out, or the MSM is nothing like as hostile to libtards as is claimed.

Which is it?

Then you're a fool. The catch is the "adopt trade-secrets protections."

I know from personal experience that an employer can turn effectively any montage of trivial business practices into a "trade secret" strong enough to crush a competitor that hires a former employee. When I mean crush I mean obliterate; they can sue your new employer or start-up out of existence and walk away with the trademarks and copyrights.

Unlike a most non-competes and all patents, trade secrets are not limited in time. Under a strong enough trade-secret regime you can be sued by any employer for whom you've ever worked.

I guess this is the sort of thing BadAnalogyGuy is supposed to handle, but he wandered off years ago so here goes............

After Stalin died in '53 a large number of zeks were amnestied from Soviet gulags. And while not all of the gulags were shut, so many victims were released that the critical mass necessary to sustain the gulag culture collapsed and the gulag culture, central to the lives of so many Russians, lost its vitality. Those that were not released were left to the ravages of forced labor, sans the support network they'd relied on for years.

Navel gazers. I swear to God. I really hate to say it but this demented shit is exactly what Hanns Johst had in mind when he wrote (approximately); "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning."

The only way these get cheap is if we have to make a lot of them to fight a war. Be thankful we only have to deal with low-rate peacetime economics where the development costs of unique tooling gets amortized across a small number of prototype rail gun slugs creating a big per-unit price tag that causes fools to go apoplectic.

For the record, the first impediment I encountered was requiring a valid credit card to establish a free account.

15 years..... some of the users they're trying to monetize weren't born when dyndns started this deal.

This is one of the more compelling arguments for national standards where local administration would have the excuse that they were "forced" to follow imposed guidelines. Otherwise, every nutter in the community will rally to tar and feather the administration.

Shutting down IFR research to indulge nuclear hysteria? Democrats
Shutting down Yucca Mountain with no scientific justification? Democrats
Cancelling the Superconducting Super Collider? Democrats

We could have had the Higgs Boson over 15 years ago. We got Clinton instead.

Keep knock'n back that kool-aid son.