Darmok truly sucked.

I've seen it several times and with each viewing, I disliked it even more.

Oops, must be Bush's fault :-)

I watched that recently and was astonished at their stranglehold on the market. Kudos to 60 Minutes for digging this up.

we simply don't know.

There's also a carbon anode which I suspect would be the focus of development. It's not likely they'll put too much effort into vanadium boride in the short-term.

There's already the ZEBRA battery, used in a few EVs since 2007. I think insulation isn't such a big problem when the batteries are large as there's a fair bit of thermal mass. The threshold for the ZEBRA is somewhere upwards of 20 kWh but that would depend on the shape.

The Tesla Model S which used a flat, relatively thin pack on the floor of the vehicle would definitely be a challenge.

Here's another that's very energy dense - molten-air batteries: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-m...

If you want something that's closer to commercial production, keep an eye out for Sumitomo's low-temp molten-salt battery, due in the next year or two.

Have a look at molten-air batteries - http://phys.org/news/2013-09-m...

With an iron anode, the energy content is roughly the same as petrol - ~ 10000 watt-hours per liter. But the most you can hope for an a straight gasoline ICE is about 30%, whereas a battery is likely to be 2.5x as efficient. A carbon anode, which is more likely to be developed is nearly double that of iron so if this tech pans out and it looks to be quite affordable, it'll kill the demand for fossil fuels in almost all light-duty vehicles and make it possible to have hybrid long-haul trucks.

Right. Paris has been rolling out fiberoptic by sewer robot for years.

I was half-joking but I was also half-serious. While waiting outside a single-person bathroom at one of our sites, I could hear the person inside answering interview questions. He must have been really desperate to find another job.

See here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Not always. Especially when the person in question is something of an expert and the rebuttal consists entirely of "he's wrong"

Ken Ham would think that the RFCs on Avian Carriers were groundbreaking science and is not a Google consultant with 20 yrs of IT under his belt.
His followers are mostly led-by-the-nose idiots; Lauren's are largely grizzled geeks & distrustful nerds.

Guess you're okay with them spying in the bathrooms, too.

Lauren Weinstein is no lightweight; there's a good reason he's a Google consultant and have 400,000 followers. It's not for his singing & dancing.