Darlington refurb starts handing out the contracts

Inspiration

I'm not railing against stupidity here.  That always gets me manic or depressed so I try to keep away from that stuff.  This is 'talk depression time' on the commercials, so we'll start with that a bit.  I'm a hereditary intellectual depressive.  There must be an evolutionary advantage to depression, or it wouldn't have lasted so long.  It's a simple fact of synapse speed.

Intelligence is determined by synapse speed, and creativity by cross-connections.  You would think evolution would have zapped these things up by now, but there is a downside.  If you were making a Sim-Human (you're God or something), and dialled up synapse speed, there would be effects.  Sure, Simmy would do well in his 20's programming or something, but he would be burning up Serotonin.  As well, he is thinking so fast, he starts dwelling on depressing thoughts, like everybody is so stupid, and he kicks his TV a lot.

Simmy either becomes a lush, or kills himself, and not a big reproducer.  If you or anybody you know is very bright and starts becoming moody in his 30's, please tell horrible family stories, and get him to a doctor.  Serotonin can be boosted with a very simple pill.  The evolutionary advantage came from having people in the village with brains, so they could invent tools and such.  Who cares if they were nerds?

But I digress.  As background on Darlington, I know a lot.  I helped put in the foundations and tunnels.  That was a heck of a lot of fun in my Serotonin burning days.  We were expecting it to last 40 years before refurb, but there was a horrible design flaw.  Pushing too much water down the fuel channels caused chaotic interactions, with the result being horrible vibrations.  Something like earthquakes.  These vibrations shattered everything in 20 years.

Without my pills, I would obsess about the stupidity in this refurb.  But I'm not.  Let everybody have their fun!  Pour out the billions.  Who knows, it could succeed.  :)

ps.  Anyway, it's good to do this in the recession.  This creates lots of horrible jobs for middle-rank engineers, since it's all going out to consultant.  Better than starving.