Actually they don't belong on the racetrack* either. From public driving events up through LeMans and F1, if you drive recklessly there are repercussions. Either a penalty or a wall. You still get to drive as fast as you want, just as long as you're in control.

*excluding oval tracks so NASCAR is an exception.

Perhaps. If current trends continue, that may be a real problem for utility monopolies in 50 years or so. In the mean time the load shed of residential solar is doing a small part to help utilities avoid shelling out $billions for new power plants.

The problem here is "APS recently admitted that it had _lied for months_ about paying the 60 Plus Association". Things may have been different if they'd just come out with their side of the story on why solar is bad. The way they went about it is indeed an outrage.

If the gov decided not to pay the cost of lawsuits brought by the contractors claiming its not their fault may well dwarf the original contract price.

The sad fact is the government ALWAYS pays no matter how big of a disaster a program becomes (or even negligence!). The only tangible repercussions are cheesy corporate produced lessons learned videos that all employees have to watch once a year.

I'm not gonna suggest Kutcher is a visionary engineer but he is certainly not as stupid as the roles he plays. This is going to sound completely ridiculous.... but look up his speech from the 2013 teen choice awards. When you get over the screaming teeny boppers he is actually using his pulpit to give useful advice. You can hear the mood shift in the crowd. A good quote from the speech: "Opportunity looks a lot like hard work".

That sounds like the most impressive accomplishment of all!

Not to mention, how many "storms of the century" have there been in the past 5 years?

Aren't astronauts government employees and already have health insurance? They won't be needing healthcare.gov.

Rarely will you find THE answer to anything. Biking is just one of the answers to some (many?) situations. Take college. I biked to pretty much every class. My crowning achievement was waking up at 8:56 before a test at 9 half way across campus and making it on time (thankfully it was downhill...and no I didn't do too well, hence being proud of just making it there on time). Sure, in the driving rain the answer isn't biking, its skipping class.

But seriously who said everyone has to bike? If 1/3 of people bike on nice days it would do wonders to reduce congestion and pollution. Speaking of, how many big cities get 3ft of snow on a regular basis?

I say its good to have the option.

"The deal" is that its the most extensive public transportation system in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ny_subway) and was built early in the 20th century. As it serves over 5 million riders a day you can't just shut it down and rebuild the whole thing for less than $50 billion and another $100 billion in economic impact. Especially considering it functions well for most people. Of course its dirty because it's old and serves one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. I'm sure you can find many cleaner systems throughout the world but not many (outside asia maybe) are as effective. Articulated cars seem like a good non disruptive improvement that's good for everyone except a few hipsters that will miss the nostalgia of the trains they've been riding since they moved to williamsburg 8 months ago.

Actually, if you read the manual, soviet russia "jokes" stopped being an obligation when taco left. None the less, given the subject of the story I calculate the overused meme will appear in 51% of all comments. Carry on, comrades.

The "few dumb consumers" market is many orders of magnitude larger than the "educated/awak/aware consumers" market. Privacy implications not withstanding, I'd say Nest has succeeded in desiging a significantly better smoke detector.

I think its definitely worth pursuing further experiments. Maybe this will blow the lid off our society as we know it or maybe its flawed like the special interests say. I'll add that some people in hospitals (the "cage") stay addicted to pain killers long after their treatment ends and they return to their normal life (the "park"). I'm guessing like most everything else in the universe, the answer isn't as simple as legalizing everything and building a park.

Actually despite what hollywood would have you believe, modern cars are very good at not catching fire in a crash. As is the Tesla in most cases I'm sure. As more of them get out there, more unforeseen circumstances will occur but I'm assuming no one got hurt (else that would have been the headline) so its a great data point to make a safe car even safer. And Prius sales are doing just fine....

How often do you really need a revolution? I'd say a revolution is a once in a lifetime type thing. Many people would consider the smartphone revolutionary and they didn't exist 10 years ago! In theory you should be waiting another 70 years or so for the next true revolution. Or how bout just the cell phone? That was invented 30-40 some odd years ago so we still have 40 years to go. Or the internet (about the same time). Or digital computers? Now were getting to something that happened almost a lifetime ago. But in the mean time people have also gone to the moon and somehow made it profitable for everyone involved to sell a packet of ramen, a full meal to some, for under $0.15! Including transportation across the world! You want a revolution? Take your pick. The problem you might be having is that you are around for all of the other technologies and events that make today's tablets possible. You really think in a world of 7 billion people, there is a completely new unique idea that has not appeared in prior human history? Think of the craziest bleeding edge theory you can think of and search IEEE and you'll probably find dozens of papers on the subject already. Unless aliens show up and give us warp drive and transporters I doubt any new technology will meet your standards of revolutionary.

While I'm here, I'll give you the revolution you want from google: the self driving car. Which conveniently takes care of your cars gripe as well.