The 'average' household uses something around 700-1400 kwh a month.
The 'average' electronic vehicle gets about 5 miles to the kwh, and the average vehicle is driven around 10-15k miles a year.
Don't forget that the average household is 2 cars today.

So, you're looking at probably around a 22% increase in electricity usage if people go to EVs. You just can't reduce energy usage that much via other means, especially when you also have 5% growth in population/households on top of it.

1) Upgrade the power grid (Thankyou Obama)
2) Embrace nuclear (Thankyou Obama)
3) Fund Battery and EV R&D (Thankyou Obama)
4) ...
5) All of the issues you listed are addressed (Thankyou Obama)

This is perfectly within our means, provided big oil and auto makers are unsuccessful at stonewalling these initiatives (which they are desperately trying to do through their mostly Republican congress critters). The auto-industry relies on planned obsolesence, which is much more difficult to hide using simple electric engines that can last for decades.

If Eisenhower could get an interstate system built, there is no reason we can't do this.

From another thead on this topic:

The prequels, and especially the replacement of the original trilogy with the "re-mastered" Lucas-edited crap are great examples of how destructive exclusive IP can be to creative works.

"The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell."

That is what George Lucas became to his own films. After a great piece of artwork has become culturally accepted, it should be cast in stone, and be preserved as it is.

The franchise is dead. Lucas killed it. Not worth the emotional investment to lament or analyze.

Move on, people.

Not quite that simple.

I want the Original Theatrical Release of Episodes IV, V, and VI in stores, along with a promise from Lucas and his estate that these films will always remain untouched and available alongside any 're-mastered' versions.

I haven't seen it, but I'm glad someone devoted the time to do this.

The prequels, and especially the replacement of the original trilogy with the "re-mastered" Lucas-edited crap are great examples of how destructive exclusive IP can be to creative works.

"The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell."

That is what George Lucas became to his own films. After a great piece of artwork has become culturally accepted, it should be cast in stone, and be preserved as it is.

A new study by a team from Rutgers and Columbia has discovered that poorer children are more likely to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs. According to the NY Times (login required), 'children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts.' It raises the question: 'Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them -- but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?' Two possible explanations are offered: 'insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private insurers do', and because of 'the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available'. The study is due to be published next year in the journal Health Affairs.

Non of the above.

These people are beta-testing the atypical antipsychotics.

Poor people can't litigate. It makes the drug companies look good by 'helping the poor', and gives them lots of people to test their new drugs on. /I've taken these medications //as a class, after 6 months only 30% of people prescribed atypical antipsychotics can remain on them, because the side-effects are so unbearable.

I agree with most of your points.

I just find it strange that a company with such a huge revenue stream needs 12 years to crank out a sequel to their most successful single player fantasy title.

I mean, that's like 20 years in old-media time (books, films, etc). Most film sequels...even the really great ones with attention to detail and care for quality like you mention (Aliens for instance)...take 2-6 years tops. The original star wars trilogy was spaced by about 3 years per sequel. 1 year for the LoTR series. I can see building a new game engine taking time, 2-3 years, but 12?

Diablo I 1996
Diablo II 2000
Diablo III 2012?

It doesn't add up. Maybe you're right about WoW. Perhaps it grew so fast and unexpectedly they couldn't afford to assign talent to other projects until now.

The PC didn't die as a gaming platform, but it's barely hanging on life support these days and the only thing keeping it going is the MMORPG market. Sad.

I worry about this too.

Blizzard keeps pushing back the release dates for Diablo III and Starcraft II. Those titles would really revitalize PC gaming. Blizzard has the resources to bang them out...but they're stalling for some reason.

Maybe some of it is the economy...maybe they're waiting for the market to open up. They're also addressing the piracy problem by forcing players to use Battle.net to play those games...something which involves more infrastructure work on their end...and bandwidth is as expensive as ever.

Then there's another issue.

When you look at the demographics, the majority of potential Diablo III and Starcraft II gamers are already playing WoW. Nobody is going to pay for 2 subscription games at once...Blizzard knows this, so that isn't an option for them. I know plenty of people who would cancel their WoW accounts for 3-6 months to play D3 alone. Blizzard may be worried about shooting themselves in the foot. It hardly serves them to release new games when it causes their customers to cancel their WoW subs. We've seen how stifling WoW's success has been to the MMORPG market, ironically WoW may be stifling Blizzard too.

It seems they have a lot of non-technical problems with very few obvious solutions. It's a bummer.

I'm browsing with SeaMonkey 1.1.17 right now, I prefer they way it handles tabs over firefox.

Hope they didn't change that!