Good customer service is less expensive than bad customer service. A smaller call center staffed with decently trained and compensated CSRs is far more cost effective than watching the headcount continuously grow and churn to deal with the increased call volume due to poorly trained staff dumping calls, permaholds, supervisor escalations, previous callers figuring out they've been lied to, etc. At some point, your call center will outgrow its allotted space, and then you'll have to deal with a costly move or additional locations. Both companies I worked for experienced this, one of them had to move TWICE in 4 years, and the cost was mindblowing. Then, as you lose a lot of your customers, there's the cost of downsizing.. all of which could have been avoided by just properly hiring, training, and compensating a solid, core group of people to take care of your customers and make sure they didn't become unhappy with the thought of giving you their money.

When was the last time we lost a large commercial jetliner for so long that the batteries ran out before we picked up the ping? When was the last time we had one fly so far off its planned flight path, intentionally evading radar, and probably crashed half way around the globe from its intended destination? This case is so out of the ordinary, it wouldn't have made sense to plan for it (up until now). Sure, lets throw another $100 worth of batteries into it. But what if that wasn't enough? Lets throw another $100 in to be sure. But is that really enough? Let's keep piling batteries onto the thing until it barely gets off the ground, because you never know when some asshole is going to pull another stunt like this. While we're at it, lets make them all fly around with gigantic inflatable bumpers attached to the front, in case one tries to fly into a skyscraper again...

"Shit" can't have two meanings and the efforts to muddy the definition is a transparent attempt to lessen the stigma attached to excrement. So, obviously, you mean to say that "hackers" are hellbent on stealing the feces of strangers, to which I am not in a position to either prove nor disprove, but wrinkle my nose to it just the same.

The fire sprinklers with the visible glass tubes are activated when heat causes the liquid inside to expand, shattering the glass and opening the valve. No melting occurs.

None of them of any appreciable size in the greater Los Angeles area since Northridge. None of the larger ones since Hector Mine were widely felt in LA, and the majority of them were off shore or way out in the sticks. Look at the fault map for LA.. there's tons of them, yet none of them produced anything newsworthy in 20 years. The period between Whittier Narrows and Hector Mine was the most active, with many quakes that didn't make it on that list but I still remember to this day. 1992 was a a crazy year for quakes. The fact that nothing larger than a 5.4 has hit LA since 1999 is unusual compared to the 20 years that preceded it.

"Significant tremors in the west"? The recent earthquakes used to be business as usual back in the 80's-90's. We'd have them at least once or twice a year, if not more, and it never really raised an alarm. We've just had such a dry spell since 1999 (or '94, if you want to keep it in the LA basin), that these light/moderate earthquakes seem like big news. The bigger story should have been "Where the hell are all the earthquakes??" for the past 20 years.

Kawasaki Versys 650, actually. Can do upwards of 50+ MPG in the right conditions, but people fail to realize that the real world takes a heavy toll on actual stats compared to paper. My commute is 50/50 freeway and street, and there is a ~1000ft mountain pass in between my house and work. Plus, I don't ride it like I'm driving a Prius. Some people are too hung up on fuel economy that they miss out on the fun things in life. PS: Some 'crotch rockets' can get 60+ MPG. Check out the Ninja 250/300 line :)

No. My ~40mpg motorcycle pollutes far more than my ~27mpg car. It's all about how well the engine burns the fuel and handles the emissions before they leave the pipe, not necessarily just the volume of it.

http://www.haynes.com/products... 2 seconds on Google.. come on, man.

Those things are serious polluters, both chemical and noise. There's nothing that ruins a nice stroll down the Seine like the grating buzz of a 2-stroke with CVT. And the way they just pile them on the sidewalks everywhere.. ugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/interac... California's population up 10%, no seats gained or lost.

Uh, no. California's population has grown at a fairly steady rate for the past 100+ years. 1.5 million may have moved out of state, but far more have moved in to replace them.

You forget that Tesla also has to pay taxes, and I doubt New Jersey is entitled to taxes due by a business operating in another state.

New Jersey isn't very large, and nobody is forcing Tesla to sell there. I'm sure a neighboring state would love to allow a showroom near it's border to collect all that tax revenue that NJ clearly has enough of, right?

No, I'm advocating that everyone take a step back and ask "does the world really need another mouth to feed?", regardless of genetic suitability. Deciding not to have a child because it may be afflicted by a genetically inherited condition, in my opinion, is a noble choice. Spending $$$ on a method to circumvent this natural limitation just so you can have a brand new little copy of yourself seems a bit selfish. The more diseases we cure, the more babies we have, the longer we extend natural lifespans, the closer we get to resource scarcity. Take a look at places in the third world with rampant disease and famine. It's not because god hates them or they're unlucky, it's in part because they're producing more mouths than the land can feed. We will some day reach that point as well, but we shouldn't just go running full speed towards it because we all feel some biological need to reproduce. That's what sets us apart from the animals, right? The ability to reason and think about the consequences of our actions, and plan accordingly?