>>>That sort of economy is achievable with a ten year old petrol VW Polo, *without* all the heavy complex hybrid stuff

Unfortunately it would fail the updated U.S. LEV-II standards (too much NOx). The reason MPGs have been dropping in newer cars is because the engine is being tuned to run richer to pass emissions tests.

The best petrol car right now that can pass these tough regs is the Civic HF at 45mpg. And the Chevy CruzeEco at 44. That's very close to what the Civic and Prius hybrids do.

>>>>>Considering emissions on automobiles have been reduced by 99+% (CO, NOx, HC) since the 1970's
>>
>>CO2 emissions from cars have been reduced? Highly doubtful.

Somebody can't read. He never once listed CO2.
As for sources one only needs to look at the EPA which had very lenient standards in the 70s but gradually strengthened them over time. The current standards only allow 1/100th as much pollution as a car built in 1975. (1/1000th in the case of NOx.)

You should look at greenercars.org. They not only look at upstream emissions but also the cost of drilling for oil, shipping it to you gas station, and also downstream pollution (shipping the junk car to China for recycling). Also CO2. Here are these cars scores out of 100:

Mitsubishi myEV 58
Toyota Prius C 56
Civic CNG 55
Leaf 55
The highest non-hybrid cars are the Scion IQ at 53 and the Toyota Yaris at 50. Probably they score that high because both are SULEVs and PZEVs.

>>>US electricity production is 100% produced from domestic sources, none of it from imported sources.

In the 1800s and upto about 1950 you could have said the same about gasoline: All domestic. But when car sales boomed, we had to start importing from outside.

The same would happen if everybody started driving EVs: The boom would exceed the supply and we would have to import electricity (or coal & CNG & oil to connvert to electricity).

greenercars.org rated my Honda Insight as cleaner than the EVs. It rated the EVs as no cleaner, over a whole lifecycle, than a Prius Hybrid or Civic HF (gasoline).

>>>$14000 buys an awful lot of gas.

Or 75% the cost of a Nissan Leaf on the used market. Their value is plummetting fast because just because a company builds an EV doesn't mean people will buy it. The resale value is terrible.

And the cost is cheap for electricity versus gasoline. According to the DOE, $1 for every 25 miles. Gasoline is 3-4 times that much.

>>>What a stupid thing to say. I'm more likely to buy a Windows 8 tablet over the two current leaders as iOS is garbage (really, I don't know how anyone puts up with it), and I don't care for Android (I don't like the clunky UI and hate the pitiful dev tools). I seriously doubt that I'm unique.

Probably not unique given your current location (Washington, near Seattle, Microsoft cubicle). ;-)

>>>Also it's "dradis". Which isn't explained, but does appear to be effectively instantaneous.

I figured Dradis was the name of the guy who invented the scanner, and it appears to be similar to our passive RADAR (shows blips of whatever EM targets it receives).

>>>Any spacecraft gives off heat, and infrared radiation is easy to spot in clumps

Not when it's 3 light-minutes away. You're talking about finding a tiny carrier-sized object at the distance of Mars, and it could be anywhere. On the same plane as you, or above you, or below you, or even behind you.

I wouldn't call that incest. Besides studies have shown that closely-related cousins have a better propagation rate than strangers. Closer chemistry leads to less stillbirths.

>>> "Yeah, we put noise in space, because ... um ... there's pressure on the sides of the spacecraft, yeah, that's it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

JMS never said anything like that. (If you think he did, then I want to see a linked source.) You make it sound like he's some kind of idiot.

Why are so many B5 Actors dying so young? The Star Trek crew lived on-and-on-and-on. Nobody dies until the around 2000..... 30 years after the show. Meanwhile B5 has lost several actors in just the first 12 years.

It appears you have this backwards.
According to JMS it was the *B5 crew* that contacted NASA and asked for technical assistance to portray accurate ship maneuvering. The fact Starfury acts like a real space vessel is probably because the NASA advisor was rejecting early designs & offering advice on how to make it better.

>>>Yes, because there is a world of difference between fictional violence and real violence.

Studies have shown the human brain does not distinguish the difference. It has the same chemical reactions to whatever it sees, regardless if it's real or on TV.

>>>vinyl, because it captures more sound from thestudio recording

Not hardly. When a record is *brand new* it has some high frequency harmonics (upto 25,000 hertz), but those quickly get rubbed-off the record by the needle. Of course being analog it will never be a perfect amplification of the little record ridges into audible sound. There's always distortion. PLUS vinyl adds *extra* sounds to a recording, like the hiss of the needle rubbing the record and the humm of the motor. It also suffers wow and flutter since it doesn't spin at a constant rate. (And of course no record can touch Super Audio CD or DVD-audio with approximately 0 to 96000 Hz range.)