For the most part, yes. But if it travels such a long distance it's more likely to be picked early and "ripened" in transit. Also, supermarket produce is more likely to be treated with pesticides, herbicides, etc.. Your best bet is either to grow your own or get to know your local farmer.

...is also a major culprit in this story, in part due to the "low-fat" orthodoxy that developed in the 1970s. When you take out the fat, you lose a lot of the flavor, so sugar was used to make processed foods more appealing. Even worse, hydrogenated vegetable oil was used as a fat replacement. (Turns out that saturated fats are not as bad as they thought back then.) Another problem with processed foods is that they contain far less fiber, since removing the fiber is an easy way to extend shelf life. But this affects the way they are digested and absorbed, exacerbating the bad side effects.

Dr. Robert Lustig has an excellent lecture about sugar and how it is the single most important change in our diet in the last few decades, and the chief cause of rising obesity and diabetes rates. (The above link is a TED Talk, he also has several long format lectures available on YouTube.)

The author Michael Pollan has a simple set of 3 rules for managing your nutrition: 1. Eat food*; 2. Not too much; 3. Mostly plants.

* What he means by this is "real" food, rather than the "edible food-like substances" that constitute the bulk of the American diet. He has a simple rule for identifying real food: If you've ever seen it advertised on TV, it's probably not real food. Also, for various reasons, there is an inverse relationship between the "realness" of food and the distance it travels from its source to your plate.

LOL, pretty much... except for Bill Koch, who seems to be the "albino" among his black-sheep kinfolk... perhaps not quite as awful as the other two. ;-)

Which Koch brother is this?

As Richard Wolff often points out in his lectures, the USA had a constant labor shortage from the 1820s up to the 1970s. The shortage ended in part due to automation, and also because of women's liberation bringing millions more people into the workforce. For that entire period, American workers enjoyed steadily rising wages, but wages have flatlined ever since, despite continually rising productivity.

For anyone who's interested, Musk's announcement at the Nat'l Press Club is up on YouTube. It's 32 minutes long, and the lawsuit issue comes around 15:30. (The first 15m is about reusable rockets.)

The GP is talking specifically about price, not "quality" per se. It's hard to gauge NASA's robotic missions against the private sector, since nobody in the private sector is doing much yet in that space.

Sweet or not, those deals were negotiated in a competitive environment. SpaceX recently inked a 20-year lease on SLC-39A (intended for their upcoming Falcon Heavy), and in addition to the rent, they are paying for all the upgrades and renovations they have in mind. (IIRC, Bezos also wanted pad 39A, and they had a bit of a bidding war over it.)

Not sure what you mean by "seed money" here. Yes, they got a COTS contract (also in a competitive bid) to develop their hardware, but so did Orbital. How is this different from, say, Grumman getting a contract to build the LEM back in the 60s?

I don't mean to imply that SpaceX did it all without any help. Musk knows full well he's standing on the shoulders of giants, and readily acknowledges that they couldn't have succeeded without NASA's help.

That said, I fully agree that being a private company is one of the main reasons why SpaceX is able to beat everyone else on price. I would also point to vertical integration as another reason. They're not trying to integrate thousands of parts and modules from a supplier in every Congressional district. Except for "commodity" parts, they make most stuff in-house. This alone gives them tremendous agility, compared to any gov't program.

You can watch the speech on YouTube. It's 29 minutes with Q&A. The "blunt" remark comes around 25:40.

I stand corrected. OTOH, pretty much any study in economics is not much more than a "thought experiment", no? But when you look at the observable facts, there's no doubt that inequality has been steadily rising for decades, alongside increasing influence of "big money" on politics (and not just in the USA). So I contend that the point about plutocracy stands. And if the NASA-funded findings about collapse are, perhaps, a bit sensational, they don't strike me as nonsensical or unexpected.

Considering that there's a 3-month waiting list to purchase a Model S, I reckon Mr. Musk doesn't much care what you think of him or his fans. He's got his hands full just trying to keep up with demand for his cars (and rockets, and solar panels), not to mention his five kids.

As for the GP's point, I agree that there's a niche opportunity for Nissan here, but it is limited. This increase in range will no doubt boost their sales, but it won't close the gap. And that window will only be open for a couple of years before Tesla comes out with their Model E, which is projected to have a 200mi range at the $35k price point. In any case, it's great for consumers that we'll have a broader range of choices in the EV market at various price points.

What interests me more is the rapid evolution of battery technology in recent years. I wonder if Elon didn't jump the gun a bit in committing to his "giga factory" for Li-ion batteries instead of waiting for the (potentially) better solution with Zinc-air batteries.

This issue is far too complex to express in a single variable such as hours worked. The poor have less access to child care, for example, and are more likely to be in single-parent households. Recall the woman (Charlene Dill) who died in Florida a few weeks ago? Much has been said on the left and right about her case (because she fell into the insurance "donut hole" created by Florida's refusal to accept federal money to expand Medicare) but the fact remains she was working 3 part-time jobs trying to make ends meet, while trying to raise 3(?) kids on her own. That's a tough row to hoe, by any standard.

And her story is hardly unique in these times. Real wages have been flat for three decades, while worker productivity has steadily risen over the same period. Meanwhile, CEO pay is through the roof, corporate earnings are better than ever, and effective tax rates on corporations and the wealthy elites are lower than ever. There is no longer any room for doubt that we are living in a plutocracy, not a democracy. And according to a recent NASA study, that is a prime indicator that we are a society on the brink of collapse.

Fair enough, but why bother with that when we can already make methanol from the same feedstock?

I'm no expert, but I reckon it'd be a lot cheaper to engineer the right material for some gaskets than to dredge up the last megaton of tar-sands (and still be no further along toward the goal of energy independence).

Hmm... this is weird. Our comments seem to be stacking up at this level of depth. Did we max-out the allowable depth in slashcode? At least the "parent" link still leads to your comment. Whatever... it's late on this side of the world, I gotta sleep...