one of the tenants of punctuated equilibrium

I had no idea that punctuated equilibrium was renting out its spare rooms.

Or did you mean "tenets"?

I had no idea we were supposedly responsible for the extinction of mammoth.

Why not? We've had evidence that we ATE them going back to the 1800's.

The early 1800's

FTFY

That would be a nice quote, but it contains an implicit assumption which is seriously wrong: That there is any distinction between humanity and nature.

It's not surprising that we tend to see ourselves as distinct from the rest of nature, because we are dramatically different from all other forms of life around us, and not just because we're self-centered, or even because we're objectively hugely more successful than any other species. We're dramatically different because we're the only species we know of that is capable of creating explanatory knowledge, of conjecturing and criticizing ideas, individually and in collaboration, to understand how and why things work. Many species on Earth are capable of learning, but as far as we can tell it's all "behavioral" learning; understanding merely that specific behaviors cause specific results. Sometimes the results of that level of understanding can be quite sophisticated, as in the animals who can create and use tools in complex sequences to accomplish goals, but it's still on a completely different level from the ability that humans have to deduce deep explanations of the structure and nature of the universe, and how to manipulate it.

Regardless of the temptation to view ourselves as separate from nature, though, we're not. That doesn't mean we won't benefit from applying our understanding of the rest of nature to maintain the elements of it that are beneficial to us. Obviously, we're better off if we don't make the world a worse for ourselves -- the flip side of that is that we are better off if we make the world a better place for us, so stasis is not the goal. That's really good because stasis (aka "sustainability") is impossible.

The price may or may not be reasonable, depending on your budget, though it definitely is for a non-trivial number of people, but the Tesla Model S fulfills the other requirements today.

My Nissan LEAF doesn't, though it's still a very practical car that easily manages all but a small fraction of my driving.

It's idiot thinking. Why would you want to share space with the cars? Roads for pedestrians and bicyclists have much lesser requirements than those for cars, so they can be placed not only along much more direct routes, but also along far more pleasant ones because they can run through more environmentally sensitive areas without causing harm. Send the cars out of the way so that they don't bother the bicyclists and pedestrians, and let them have the most desirable and direct routes. The cars are much faster, so they can afford to go around.

A supercar needs to have top speed. It doesn't have to be over 200 mph, but it does need to be up there. Tesla makes zero cars with high top speed. For 5-10k you can buy a used Audi A8 (yes, just the A8 and defeat the limiter to get somewhere between 170 and 180 mph. (All cars not limited to 155 for euro-compliance are limited to 130 mph, for inadequate stock tires, depending on the model.) There are many wonderful things about the Teslas, and how fast do you need to go anyway? But they're not supercars. If I didn't live in the boonies, and range wasn't an issue, I'd like to own one, but they're still not supercars. There's a sports car and a sport tourer without enough range for touring but there's no supercar and no plans to produce one.

The Energy Dept, should be only working on current and NEW forms of energy.

Of course funding should be cut for things that should not be part of their mandate.

This makes about as much sense as instructing NASA to make more efforts to placate muslims er oh wait.

Probably not. This isn't a place of business in the traditional sense - it's a purchased seat on an airplane. It would be more akin to selling you an item, posting a poor review, and then the shop owner taking it back unless you deleted the review.

Exactly, though I probably would have re-tweeted both the original and the SWA legal threat immediately upon landing.

That's dumb. Pedestrians and bicyclists don't have the same requirements as automobiles, we should focus on keeping them separated. It's not as though they need to share the same space, except where no thought has been given to them.

There are no electric supercars. Audi is about to bring out an electric R8 with a top speed of 124. My 1989 240SX would get there, if you defeated the rev limiter.

If you knew enough about Windows Mobile to know whether you had a valid point, you'd know that you don't. Explorer is still lurking in the OS, waiting to pop up and make you fuck around with a start menu when your replacement shell shits itself. This sort of thing used to happen in Android, too... way back in 1.6.

Bullshit. More than half the time they helped some asshole put it in the bin to begin with. When I show up with my normally-sized piece of carry-on luggage, they'd rather tell me to stow it under the seat in front of me (I'm 6'7" and wear size 16 shoes and that's not fucking happening, bitch) or take it somewhere far away that will make me have to wait much longer to get out of that tiny aluminum can.

I'm wondering a little differently. I wonder how plugged in that gate representative must of been to find and successfully identify the source of the tweet and call the family off the plane before it left.

I say this because I don't see some SWA social media monitoring department demanding the tweet be removed in that fashion. I figure it was the 'dissed' gate rep herself that did it.