I've actually lied. The total amount of investment into PV and wind energy was close to $450bn. And for that Germany got about 100TWh/y of generating capacity. For that price it could have built about 15 modern 5GW nuclear power plants, producing about 500TWh/y of energy.

Yeah, paying 5 times more than nuclear is certainly an unqualified success.

Oh, and I really hope all those hippies get cancer from the new coal power plants that are being built.

Ok, sure, whatever. Let me restate my point: "Investment in photovoltaics and wind power so far has been an abject failure in Germany". Biomass-based renewables are OK, but they are already maxed out as they are limited by the availability of biomass to process.

Hydro received very little funding in the recent 10 years in Germany, almost all of the investments went into solar panels and wind generators. So it's only fair to compare them to nuclear.

All the current nuclear waste if properly reprocessed can be buried in a couple of Olympic swimming pools. We can then bury it in deep salt deposits or (my favorite) in ocean subduction trenches. Or we can just continue keeping it in temporary storage for the next couple of centuries. It's a NIMBY problem, not a fundamental one.

Classic hydro is not what people usually think when they talk about 'renewable'. It's also not without environment issues - flooded lands, CO2 emissions from rotting organics, etc. And all of the German investments into renewables (about $300bn so far) could have been _easily_ beaten by 6 modern nuclear power plants.

In short, renewable energy in Germany is a total failure. It provides only feel-good feelings to fucking eco-hippies and not much more.

The official result for 2012 is 21.6% of energy generated from 'renewable' sources. Except that 25% of that was from the classic hydro, and without hydro it's 15% as I've said. Look it up: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/componenten/download.php?filedata=1357206124.pdf&filename=BRD_Stromerzeugung1990_2012.pdf&mimetype=application/pdf

And the goal for renewable energy use won't be met. It won't be even close. German government knows this just fine - so the official target for renewable electricity got lowered down to 35% by 2020. And it will be lowered down even more in future.

Do you see any protests from Greens? No? Yup, because these fucking hippies are the direct cause of this.

Germany is NOT 40% renewable. It's about 15% renewable and falling rapidly, because of all that nice new shiny coal-burning powerplants.

Seriously, animated films are getting better and better. Sure, they are mostly child stories or fairy-tales, but most non-animated films are no better these days. And at least with animated films studios don't have to fork over millions to get barely-capable-of-acting "superstars".

Aren't these units similar to the ASUS Transformer Infinity, which sells just fine at $400 or more?

I guess that's why you won't see them with an Android load and a discount. MS has probably contracted with ASUS not to do that.

No.

This article compares modern plants with their wild ancestors. 1950-era plants are going to have the same problems, for example, it's well known that modern wheat contains far less fat and protein than its wild ancestor. Also, this article uses an ill-defined term 'phytonutrients' which can mean anything.

Vitamin C in gigadoses (like, 200g at a time intravenously) is somewhat effective against some cancers. But it's no better than more modern chemotherapy drugs. And in lower doses it actually might help cancer to spread.

Vitamin D is absorbed by your gut just fine. In fact, decreasing sunlight exposure and getting D3 as a supplement reduces the risk of skin cancer.

What the fuck? Nutrients do not "find their way into vegetables" (apart from microelements like zinc or iodine that are concentrated by some plants) - they are _synthesized_ by plants. And let me tell you - the current cultivars are almost invariably better at that than their 1950 era relatives.

It'll soon be possible to diagnose Down's Syndrome from a simple maternal blood test. AFAIK, it's already in the clinical trials phase. And it also gives unambiguous results.

Ok, yet another ion thruster. This time it uses water. So?

It's no big deal, right now we have ion engines that can successfully work for years: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/28/nasa_to_shut_down_long_running_next_ion_propulsion_test/ We have missions that use ion thrusters to move across the Solar system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Mission

Low-thrust propulsion is basically a solved problem. What is yet unsolved is getting to the LEO cheaply enough.