TV? Bah - it's public domain. Someone, anyone, can convert that puppy to any format they want and copyright / DMCA be damned.

As an aside, car manufacturers are also moving towards higher voltage because that gives them easier access to drive high-power systems like power steering. Currently most power steering is pneumatically driven, which comes with a hefty overhead cost in terms of manufacturing and maintenance. With a high-voltage bus to drive it, the complex machinery simplifies it to an electric motor and some gears.

I live in Oregon / New Jersey you insensitive clod!

(FYI: Those states require, by law, that gas is pumped by an attendant.)

Okay - how about they pull money from football so the Tide can smack 'em next year? I'm all for that :)

RTR

Why not put an RFID tracker on each car? They're relatively cheap and you can store some encrypted identifier in it. Pillar or mat sensors would pick up when the car crosses the line, though it might be a challenge finding sensors that'd pick up a car at 60mph...

Absolutely. *GETTING* to orbit, from a mass and technology point of view, isn't a huge hurdle any more. It's getting there affordably. Elon stated a $50M Falcon has $200,000 worth of fuel, or 0.4% of the launch price. All the rest is split between building/refurbishing the rocket in the first place, launch prep (largely labor driven), fixed overheads (buildings) and profit. If you soft-land, theoretically you're "building" once, and doing a lot less "refurbishing" because there was no jolt from a parachute landing, or corrosive salt-water to clean up. SpaceX is hammering launch prep costs already by being able to setup and launch a rocket in days not weeks/months. By reducing these costs, you're able to sell cheaper and launch more frequently, which drives the overhead allocation to any one lauch down as well.

In summary, while you may get a lower mass fraction to orbit by having soft-landing lower stage, the amount of money/equipment lost per launch is less, making the whole setup cheaper. Drop some extra coin on fuel to get more into orbit, it's still cheaper than a smaller, higher mass-fraction throw-away rocket.

From what I know of trademark law (just a few IP classes in my MBA), you're spot on. You need to continuously use and defend your trademark or lose it. Of course, whether the word "scrolls" in a fantasy game setting would dilute you trademark brand is another question.

Well, technically executives have to public announce trading activity to the SEC of any stock they have privileged (insider) information about. That's why you'll see trading activity listed on things like a 10-K filing. It's a huge frigging clue if an executive shorts his stock a couple of weeks before a quarterly or annual report. It's much more common for them to cash in options or stock around the holidays or summer vacation.

Forks? What, you think we're civilized? No - we just wrap our artery-clogging fuel, ie food, in foil or wax paper and shove it in our pie-holes while driving our 6-ton SUVs with our knees 3 blocks to the gym.

Using uranium as a guide, the spot price of uranium is $85 / lb, or about $0.19 / gram. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, geologically diversified (less transport costs), and doesn't need to be radioactively treated (a la U-233) in order to be usable. It does, however, need chemically separated using sulfuric acid in a non-trival process. Even if the treatment and packaging were 100x-1000x the raw material cost, you're still way ahead of heat & pressure treated dead dinosaur guts.

I'll second this. I actually took classes from Dr. Davidson (lead researcher) over a decade ago, and he was shooting for the same goal back then. The approach seems to have changed - using CVD now instead of cut, polished, and etched diamond crystal (just like silicone) - but it doesn't sound like they're any closer to having solved some of the more practical or marketable problems outlined above.

And damnit it was invented by Americans, or at least Dan Quayle, so quit fighting it and get an American name!