My wife and I test drove one recently when we had to get her a new car. Aside from a visibility problem for her over her left shoulder, she loved it and we would have bought it. We had it for about a half-hour, and she put it through some good paces, testing acceleration, braking, and essentially slaloming through a mall parking lot. When we got back to the dealer, we realized that the car wasn't even in performance mode. Had that visibility issue not seriously bothered her, we would have bought the car right there instead of getting the Prius-V (which is certainly more practical but a lot less fun).

I'd love to get one, but I work from home and drive *maybe* once a week, so there's no sense in dropping $35K on a new car that will get a few hundred miles put on it each year.

In the short term, we're still struggling with embarrassing things that we did 5, 10, even 20 years ago. But as time goes by, there is slowly growing acceptance that people do things in private that are publicly considered to be taboo, in bad taste, or crude. One of the interesting things I observed when the Fappening was in the news is that the subjects of the hacking were, by and large, not blamed. The blame was placed on whomever stole the pictures, and few calls for apologies from the various victims were made, and I'm not aware that any of them did apologize for taking the pictures in the first place. Someone is likely to bring them up should any of them run for office, but I don't think voters will care. If anything, it makes them look a little more normal.

When Clinton's reported past drug use was reported (where he claimed not to have inhaled), people made a short fuss and then shrugged their shoulders. Less was made of the younger Bush's drug use, and even less of Obama's. Character imperfections that are shared by a significant minority (or even a majority) of the population are looked past. Where once there was a fear that the only candidates that could run for president were those best able to hide the skeletons in their closets, I think that will fade over time as many of those skeletons won't matter. Within my life, there's a good chance that someone in the White House will get there despite a sex tape being available. A fuss will be made, but ultimately, most people will care more about other matters than that someone recorded their sexual activities.

If you mean the puff toward the top of the stack around the time it went supersonic, I think that was just a vapor cone from the transition to supersonic flight.

Possibly, if it was programmed to do so. But they probably don't program for that because no recovery ship would have been available anyway.

It's initial incident analysis that doesn't need quarterbacking from people who don't have access to internal data. With SpaceX, so many people are anti-Elon that within minutes, people were declaring the company a failure and wondering how long it would take for the entire company to collapse. Orbital Sciences has the advantage that far fewer people even know who they are and they don't have legions of people hoping for them to fail, so being more open up front doesn't carry as much of a downside.

I woke up to the news of this (I usually watch but entered the time wrong on my calendar), and the first thing that I thought of was the docking adapter, IDA-1. I imagine an IDA-3 will be built and flown, but I wonder how long it will take to build and if the delay will impact future missions.

Dragon tore clear, but was tumbling far too much to be able to deploy parachutes.

The same thing happened with the Volt when the look everyone loved turned out to perform poorly in the wind tunnel. They've since cleaned up the look a little, but it still doesn't look nearly as cool as the concept car did.

That's the concept car, not the test car. Concept cars almost never make it to production looking like they did at the initial roll-out. Even with the camouflage, it's obvious that the body has undergone some major design changes including a lower angle from the front of the hood to the peak of the roof. The grill is also different, and the windows have a slightly different shape.

GM doesn't put the money into these things to fail. Designing a new car costs tens of millions of dollars. GM is still behind the curve on efficiency, too, so it needs the credits against its fleet mileage. That doesn't remove the possibility of just bad design (the Pontiac Aztek made it through to production), but I expect that they want this to succeed badly, if only to get a start on competing against the Model 3. If they can get something acceptable out first, the first redesign will probably hit right after the Model 3 hits the market with its own teething problems, and there will be stronger competition for the electric cars that average people can afford.

In Bob Lutz's book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters, he discussed the inception of the Chevy Volt, how it progressed through design concepts, was unveiled to the world in 2007 to widespread acclaim over its look (but with very mixed responses to its then-new lithium-ion battery design, something Toyota called "dangerous"), and then when the production version was rolled out was called ugly and dismissed by many. The problem is that what looks great in design can fail miserably when it gets into the wind tunnel. (Lutz says that when they started wind tunnel testing, the results were so bad that they wondered if they put it in backward.)

It's relatively easy to make a car that gets good numbers out of a wind tunnel, but the Pontiac Aztek was able to do that and it's widely regarded as one of the ugliest cars ever made. It's difficult to make a car look really good and still keep the cost down, especially when you're trying to integrate it into existing production lines. GM may be better off making a competitor to the Model S in its Cadillac line, but by making an inexpensive but potentially not as attractive car, it can sell more and lower its fleet mileage, giving it breathing room with less efficient cars like the Camaro and Corvette and its truck lines.

A lot of things have been seen as unethical but are commonplace now. Snipers were considered unethical for centuries but used widely in war, often with the units disbanded after the war; that ended with World War II when most of the involved nations established sniper schools that are maintained to this day. Guerrilla warfare was seen as unethical, but it helped win the Revolutionary War, and most nations have units that train in it (or its euphemism, asymmetrical warfare) to this day.

Spying is a part of international life. It's even a part of diplomacy. It's about gaining an edge over the other guy. You can't stop spying: it's as old as civilization, and probably as old as humankind. Whether it's scouting ahead and reporting back on the enemy formations or stealing their nuclear designs, it's part of what nations do.

If a spying incident starts a war, it's just an excuse because a war was going to be started anyway. Espionage ramps up when tensions do, and whether it's a spy getting caught or a stray round or someone says the wrong thing on TV, some small thing will always be the last straw.

I've played plenty of Civ. If you keep spying, then yeah, even he's going to get mad. But if you get caught spying on an ally, you get a chance to apologize. That doesn't change the point that if one spying instance starts a war, then it means that a lot of other things led up to it.

Some countries are returning to the US sphere, some are trying to make their own path, and some are turning away. I think the turn toward the US may be strengthening somewhat as the Chavistas lose influence since the death of Chavez and the nightmare that Venezuela has become, but Bolivia is still charting its own course while not completely blowing off the US, and, of course, Venezuela is still cursing the US.

For all the peasant look and desire for peaceful relations with everyone that Evo Morales has, I'm sure his daily briefing includes intelligence updates from spies in surrounding nations.

People fled to the USSR to escape at least what they perceived to be unfair trials during the Cold War. Many of them arranged to live in allied countries, but some returned when they realized just how difficult life was in the Soviet Union and their allies.

There is no crime of 'skipping bail' in the UK- only the USA has the 'crime' of breaking bail conditions.

The Bail Act of 1976 says otherwise. Section 6, Offence of absconding by person released on bail, says in part:

(1) If a person who has been released on bail in criminal proceedings fails without reasonable cause to surrender to custody he shall be guilty of an offence.

(2) If a person who— ..(a)has been released on bail in criminal proceedings, and ..(b)having reasonable cause therefor, has failed to surrender to custody,
fails to surrender to custody at the appointed place as soon after the appointed time as is reasonably practicable he shall be guilty of an offence.

(3) It shall be for the accused to prove that he had reasonable cause for his failure to surrender to custody.

(4) A failure to give to a person granted bail in criminal proceedings a copy of the record of the decision shall not constitute a reasonable cause for that person’s failure to surrender to custody.

(5) An offence under subsection (1) or (2) above shall be punishable either on summary conviction or as if it were a criminal contempt of court.

(6) Where a magistrates’ court convicts a person of an offence under subsection (1) or (2) above the court may, if it thinks— ..(a)that the circumstances of the offence are such that greater punishment should be inflicted for that offence than the court has power to inflict, or ..(b)in a case where it commits that person for trial to the Crown Court for another offence, that it would be appropriate for him to be dealt with for the offence under subsection (1) or (2) above by the court before which he is tried for the other offence,
commit him in custody or on bail to the Crown Court for sentence.

(7)A person who is convicted summarily of an offence under subsection (1) or (2) above and is not committed to the Crown Court for sentence shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both and a person who is so committed for sentence or is dealt with as for such a contempt shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to a fine or to both.

He was granted bail (which was posted by followers) in a criminal proceeding (extraditions are criminal proceedings). He was ordered to return on a specific day and failed to do so. He was granted chances to return in order that his bail would be returned to those who had donated to it, but still did not, and the bail was revoked and the money kept by the Crown. Unless Assange can prove that his failure to appear was reasonable, he's in for three months at a minimum but it could be up to 12 months, plus a possible fine.

I don't know that any country would make bail jumping not be a crime. It's intentionally evading criminal prosecution. Assange will probably never get bail again anywhere in his life.