Absolutely. The whole thing about the sun not shining at night is a total red herring, because that's not a problem until the day we produce more solar energy than we can use in real time, and we're a couple orders of magnitude away from that good problem too have.

No, not really. The energy available is directly proportional to the collector area, be it PV or thermal.

Besides, installed PV is around $4/watt (and falling fast), while this thermal plant was over $7/watt.

Code that's successful tends to last a lot longer than its creators anticipated, so lay that foundation carefully. It's usually worth investing effort to do it as right as possible the first time. Doing it "quick and dirty" is the equivalent of mailing somebody a bomb, and often the recipient of that bomb will be you.

That said, there are some fantastic programmers in the quick-n-dirty catagory. Use them effectively--to throw together proofs of concept and demos, to explore alternate implementations, etc. Just don't let them manage the whole damn project.

As the codebase gets larger and older, collecting dependencies along the way, it gets exponentially more expensive to redesign/rework components. Sometimes those are the only good ways to fix bugs, so you'll end up with not-so-good band-aid fixes instead. Then, your technical debt is growing exponentially along with your codebase.

What, prepare to die?

Sarcasm detected successfully, but for the record: According to the National Fire Protection Agency, there were an estimated 184,500 conventional highway vehicle fires in 2010. That's an average of 505 fire per day.

Here's a good starting point.

Just for the record, Americans actually spend nearly $9000 per capita per year on health care (without actually covering everyone, of course). The $4500 you claimed would be an enormous improvement, but still worse than the UK, which spends about $3000/year, and actually covers everyone in the process.

IAAEVE (I am an electric vehicle engineer) and I worked on Li cell, battery, and powertrain technology that was licensed to Tesla.

Please stop spreading this BS rumor--it's been floating around the "EV community" for long enough, and it's totally untrue.

Anyone can license those patents, and no, Chevron's not going to build you any unless you want a LOT of them, but it doesn't even matter: No one wants to build NiMH cars anyway, because we have much better cells (Li-ion) now. Even hybrids, which need power (more so than energy) and were the last NiMH holdouts have moved to Lithium.

This is wrong in so many ways it makes my head hurt. First, you're confusing radically-different cell chemistires (NiMH vs. Li-ion). Second, the "flashlight" cells are actually 18650 Li cells, a form factor often used in notebook computers. Lastly, Telsa uses 18650 cells because they are (by a large margin) the best available in terms of energy density [Wh/kg]. If you want heavier or more expensive cells, there are plenty to choose from.

Just to add a bit to this, the verb "shot" is scarcely appropriate, because the 30mm shells the Apache fired are more like HE grenades than bullets (in both scale and effect). Totally disgusting.

$50B sounds like a lot, but for perspective keep in mind that Fukushima I generated on the order of $800,000 worth of energy every HOUR. (Assumptions: 4 GW * $0.20/kWh.)

At that rate, $50B works out to about 7 years worth of energy production.

The right time to fight against nuclear power is the day after the last coal plant shuts down, because back in the real world, when nuclear shuts down, coal replaces it (immediately!) nearly 1 for 1, and coal kills many, many more people even when it is working nominally. (Coal generation also releases much more radiation into the atmosphere.)

Alternative energy proponents: Save it. I love 'em, too, and I back that up with the 7 kW of thermal and photovoltaics on my roof, but it doesn't change the fact that coal (and gas) are what ramp up (in real time) when nukes shut down. Examples abound.

Germany? Building new coal plants as it blathers about shutting down the nukes.

Japan? Partially made up for their nuclear shortfall with conservation (good!) but mostly with increased imports of coal (and especially LNG, brought to you by fracking).

Now that the last San Onofre units are offline, California will be compensating (forever) with additional coal and natural gas generation.

Why? On balance that's what it is.

Perhaps "the people" didn't ask for it directly, but for the most part they're delighted with the outcome. You and I may not like it, but an overwhelming majority of americans approve of the naked body scanners and other invasive TSA practices, and there has been no meaningful backlash against illegal wiretapping, GITMO, "papers please" travel restrictions, etc.

A nation of fools (who would trade liberty for the illusion of security) deserves at least as much blame as any of "those in power" who took advantage.

If you're really making the Texas -> California road trip often enough that it's not an outlier, then an electric vehicle is not the right vehicle for you even if Tesla's Supercharger network (which is proprietary to Tesla, BTW) comes to fruition. The good news is that the (in)ability to make outlier trips like that doesn't have much bearing on the utility of EVs for the 3-4 standard deviations of driving that we do.

Thanks to fracking, natural gas is cheap, and unfortunately will probably remain so for a while. Yeah, it "only" emits about half as much CO2 as burning coal, which is like saying I'm "only" kicking you in the head once today, instead of twice.

Being an industry insider, I'm sometimes a little rough on Tesla, but if there's one reason I'm rooting for them, it's because I want someone to lay waste to the antiquated car dealer model in place in the US.

I just went into a [shall remain nameless] dealer over the weekend for the first time in a decade, and I'd forgotten how absolutely awful it is.

I do some things (like write) left handed, but use my right hand for other things (e.g. I bat right handed). For years I searched for the factors that made any given activity a left- or right-handed one, until a few years ago when I finally noticed the pattern.

I do single-handed activities left handed, and two-handed things the way a typical right-handed person would. Tennis is a left-handed thing, but a two-handed bat (or golf club) grip makes me a righty, there. A fork goes in the left hand (which makes me Euro-compatible) but scissors go in the right hand. (I think it's a two-handed activity because you manipulate the cut material with the other hand.)

And since everyone else is weighing in on this: I'm not a regular firearms user, but a one-handed weapon definitely goes in the left, while I'd hold a rifle right-handed.

And I'm posting this in hopes of discovering if there's anyone else out there like this.