DFTT, please. He's one of those lunatics who thinks all taxation is slavery; you can't win an argument with him, because you're not inhabiting the same reality.

I'm sensing some misdirected rage here?

. . . says yet another person who appears to be totally ignorant about history. Do you really believe that if you went back in time to, say, 1950, you couldn't find politicians saying equally idiotic things, perhaps in even greater numbers? And do you think "technology" is limited to, say, space travel?

I am carrying, in my pocket, a computer significantly more powerful than anything I used as a child (and much cheaper in absolute dollars), with access to a global information network containing most of human knowledge, and the ability to instantaneously communicate with anyone in the world. The overall computing infrastructure is rapidly overtaking the technology depicted in a 20th-century show about 24th-century space exploration. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people across the planet, whose parents lived in virtually pre-industrial economies and regularly suffered from pandemics and famine, now have relatively comfortable middle-class lives thanks to improved technology and the expansion of the global economy. These improvements have mostly happened within my lifetime (i.e. since 1980 or so). So I'm not exactly losing sleep over the fact that the developed world still has a handful of proudly ignorant fools in government.

It's also worth remembering for context that shortly after the close of World War II, the British government drove one of its greatest scientists to commit suicide at the age of 41 because it was run by superstitious, self-righteous prudes who disapproved of his homosexuality. Today, the UK has some random back-bencher spouting nonsense about homeopathy. I think that's an improvement.

Sure there's a few Californias and Greeces out there

These two are nothing alike, unless you think the whole of the developed world can be judged solely by the condition of the central governments. Besides, California's debt-to-GDP ratio is only about 20% - Greece's is 175%.

My personal favourite is sites that get your screen resolution and assume your browser window has the same dimensions.

My second favourite is sites that try to force every link to open in a new window. (Yes, 90+% of Chinese websites, I'm looking at you. WTF is with that, anyway?)

We'll always have postcards.

I'm thinking the whole lot of yas just got trolled.

Unless BH is an AI, I'd assume that he's comprised of a multitude of cells.

Stockholm is like this, and it's been mostly planned this way, since the late 1940s or a bit later.

That's assuming that reform is the goal. That's a noble but probably naïve assumption.

Would these be some of the same Third World kids who learn that condoms cause AIDS, that sex with a virgin cures it, and that they're morally bound to kill their sister if they suspect that she's not a virgin?

Don't discount knowledge acquired in the School of Hard Knocks.

Not "likely". Certain. In both cases.

The AC was thoughtful enough to offer a very literate respone to you, despite the fact that portions of your original post did not even parse. Counter the AC's assertions with something better than your implied "I think I'm special, so anything that doesn't reinforce that notion for me is bad" or GTFO.

But that would actually make sense, and not line pockets! Can't have that...