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On Tue, 10/21/14, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Fusion by 2025?
 To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 10:58 AM

 On Oct
 21, 2014, at 10:37 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 wrote:

 (And 99% of
 them went home to their gated communities covered by CCA’s
 that tell, them, in no uncertain terms, just exactly what
 color they’re allowed to paint their roofs.)
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Ever check out the Bay Area or Silicon Valley?
I'll bet most of those gated communities are filled w/ eminently politically-correct  members of the intelligentsia.
And I'll also bet that they are rabidly anti-nuke & just as rabidly pro-green.
The Left always like to complain about how the 'establishment' restricts folks but when they get control of that 'establishment' they always, always enact even more restrictions.
That guy ran afoul of  left-wing 'political correctness' & that was that.
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 Germany dumped their nukes in
 response to Fukushima, which was not an altogether idiotic
 thing to do. If a country as allegedly technocratic and
 competent as Japan could have such a disaster, the people of
 Germany certainly thought that they no longer wished to have
 that risk.

 YOU may think
 it’s irrational, but that doesn’t make it so.

 Total costs are not calculated
 in relation to "political prejudices and ideology”.
 Contracts may be agreed to on a "You tell me what you
 want & I'll make the numbers support it” basis,
 but reality has this REALLY annoying habit of ignoring our
 attempts to override it. I’m sure that mainframe contract
 turned out, in the end to be the cheapest, right? :-/

 --
 Bruce
 Johnson
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Your *opinions* don't make anything 'so' either.

It's true that 'reality' has a way of ignoring 'fiddly' numbers & that has happened & is happening right now wrt some of the overly 'rosy' solar power 'projections'.
And what difference will it make?
Some new 'projections' will be made that will 'prove' that, in the future, whatever is desired will be achieved.
If that 'future' never comes then it's just as easy to keep pushing the timetable forward.
(remember the 'Worker's Paradise' that the soviets promised?)

*Projected* Total Costs certainly are calculated in relation to "political prejudices and ideology”.
It happens all the time to 'sell' (remember how ObamaCare kept morphing into whatever was necessary to get it passed)
a program.
'Cuz once a program gets going & gains momentum, it becomes very, very hard to stop it once enough people have a vested interest in getting it going.
At that point 'Total Costs' just becomes an exercise in semantics.

P.S. in response to your last question, it depends on which contract you are talking about. The contract (IBM) that the local school district got stuck w/ wrecked their finances for a decade as they could never afford to completely replace the old system w/ IBM equip. As far I where I worked, I have no idea whether or not the ones (there were actually two instances)
were the 'cheapest'. I only know that in one case we had a very smooth, though prolonged, transition (2 1/2 years) while the 2nd was delayed so long that 'accelerated implementation' had to be utilized w/ the result that there were still significant problems when I left 4 years later. However, in either case the main driving motivation was personal preference. Financial projections were merely used to serve that purpose, both before & after implementation. In other words but the projected (conjectural) costs & actual (supposed reality) costs were both calculated & presented in such a manner as to support the personal preference of the staff. You can only trust cost calculation if you can trust the folks making the calculations.
I believe there've been enough public examples of 'jiggery-pokery' to make it clear that any such numbers should be viewed w/ great skepticism..

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