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Comment Nope. Need 250 plus margin on mountains. (Score 1) 119

But 200 miles certainly covers any and all local in-town and in-area travel possibilities, and nearly everything but very long distance travel.

Nope. You need 250 plus a safety margin - on mountains for part of the trip.

In my case that's half a commute between my Silicon Valley townhouse and my edge-of-Nevada ranch. But that's virtually the same trip as between Silicon Valley / San Francisco Bay Area and many weekend vacation spots: Lake Tahoe ski resorts, Reno gambling, gold country camping, etc.

Make a car that can do 30-mile-one-way commute efficiently and has this 250-and-chage range, and a Northern Californian who works near the coast and blows off steam near the CA/NV interface only needs ONE vehicle. (So it takes four to six hours to charge when you get there and when you get back - so what? It'll be parked longer than that anyhow.) Less and he/she needs TWO, with all the environmental impact of building both. Further, the long-range one is a gas hog by comparison.

Comment Yes it does. But... (Score 1) 119

Does a loaded F-150 even get 500 miles on a single tank of gas?

Yes, it does.

But it's a 37 galon tank.

I love everything about my F-150 Lariet EXCEPT the gas mileage (and the refusal to pan the weather map except when the vehicle is stopped). Unfortunately, when you have to haul several tons up and down a mountain or across an unpaved desert from time to time, it's hard to avoid a tradeoff in that department.

Comment Re:Weakest US President ever (Score 1) 582

You really don't know your history if you think that WWII happened because "the world didn't have the balls to stop German and Japanese aggression when it would have been easy". WWI was still fresh in the minds of the people, the great depression was in full swing, Germany was not aggressive, Japan was still (for the most part) keeping to its self.

The obvious counter is that Germany was aggressive (both with a vast military buildup and multiple invasions and forced annexations before the Second World War officially began) and Japan was not keeping to itself (such as their invasions of Korea and China and their well-telegraphed war with the US and the UK).

And a military push by France in 1936 to reverse the remilitarization of the Rhine, would have been pretty easy. But having said that, it would be easy to underestimate Nazi Germany in 1936. They had over the course of a few years rebuilt a world-class military from the stunted post-Versailles remnants. I believe the Second World War would have been easy to prevent in 1936 or 1937, but I also believe that it wasn't that clear what course to take.

Still when one looks at the bizarre things that France did, such as building a vast and expensive defensive network of fortresses (the Maginot line), but not actually defending against the invasion path taken in the previous war (and which Nazi Germany used again), it's painfully clear that they weren't making good decisions even given the uncertainty of the times.

Comment Re:Weakest Russia ever (Score 1) 582

Now, though, I'd say that the people who will use the opportunity will be the ones like Strelkov and Borodai

And do what? They have no power base outside of the Ukraine. And a few thousand "battle-hardened fighters" won't make much of a difference politically or militarily.

I'd look rather at the people surrounding Putin or domestic unrest.

Comment Re:Great... (Score 3, Interesting) 582

Self defense is not "in anger."

Actually, it is a case of "in anger". The term has nothing to do with anyone's emotional state or any particular defense/offense scenario under which they might find themselves. "Used in anger" with respect to a weapon means that the weapon is being used as designed with intent to kill someone.

Comment Re:Stylized (Score 1) 133

Ok, where's the reference then?

I see when I googled, an estimate for "large" "loss of coolant accidents" around 5*10^-6 per year per plant. That sounds like your number. It's worth noting that the accident category in question hasn't happened yet since they're speaking of loss of coolant from pipe corrosion and mechanical failure in a plant with proper maintenance and the following of procedures, not the many other sorts of loss of coolant accidents that can happen to a nuclear plant (such as the real world examples caused by earthquakes, incompetence, and poor maintenance).

Comment Re:Stylized (Score 1) 133

mdsolar stated that the NRC estimated the odds of a "nuclear accident" at 1 in 10,000 and then claimed that such accidents occurred at a frequency of 1 every 18 years. What I noted is that there are 435 reactors currently (according to Wikipedia) and that accident rate he claims corresponds to one such accident per 8,000 years of operation of the nuclear reactor. That is very much in line with the estimate.

This has nothing to do with "nuclear FUD websites". This is just rudimentary statistics.

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