Cillit Bang
Named after the sound an exploding server makes?
This was the week when Americans came right out and told Pew Research Center what we've all been thinking about Facebook: that sh*t gets old. Pew found that 61 per cent of current US users felt they needed a break from the social network, voluntarily abstaining from baby milestone status updates, pictures of breakfast and …
One interesting side effect of the Death Star kickstarter is that the guy raising it is from Leicester. This means that, should he raise the required money of the stretch goal to actually build it, it'll be a UK production, and so under our control and not under that of the sceptics.
Whether or not that makes them more or less likely to view the Earth as an Alderaan substitute depends, i guess, on your nationality.
Didn't El Reg standardise on long numbers?
But even so - it is an obscene amount of money to even consider to spend on a totally unnecessary venture (to allay fears of "terrorist" attacks?). 53 000 times the American GDP for 2012?? Boy, talk about smoking something. Did anyone proposing this even sit down and think where the money must come from?
A MUCH better investment (in world peace and American ease of mind and goodwill towards the US of A) would be to just spend 1/22 of the USA's annual defence budget to eradicate world hunger (http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-03-04.asp). And if we can get the world's obese (mostly secptics in any case) to stop excess consumption, they could actually save, rather than spend money on eradicating hunger.
Yet they still wonder why the USA's image in the rest of the world is a PR disaster (to put it lightly).
<---- What should be done to those wastrels.
The correct term of endearment for our cousins in the USA is 'septics', from the rhyming slang 'septic tank -> Yank'.
You're welcome.
@Kobus Botes - I can't decide if your post is trolling, or if you could really have missed the joke so spectacularly. Entertaining stuff, either way.