Comment White-text-on-black-background (Score 1) 170
The white-text-on-black-background is discouraging. Can that be changed?
This is the flip-side to regulated utilities. When your profit is determined by the government, you always turn to the government to increase or maintain your profits, which in turn means you become quite expert at that game.
Which is not a problem, if the legislators, governor and regulators are working for the public. The public needs a grid and base generation capability, and the utility is guaranteed a safe and reasonable profit if it provides these things.
Bostonian here.
My work has taken me to cities all over the country, and I have to say that I've found New Yorkers to be the most considerate and helpful big city denizens in the US. The picture of the typical New Yorker as an obnoxious ogre is a phony movie and television trope.
People mistake adaptations to the pace and concentration of urban life as unfriendliness. Yes, people don't smile and nod at everyone they meet as they stroll the length of 5th Avenue, because after three or four blocks they'd need a chiropractor. But approach one of those people on 5th Avenue for directions, and most of the time he'll be pleasant and eager to be helpful.
Of course, you take your chances approaching strangers in any big city, but I also think that a lot of the treatment you receive is determined by the attitude you bring with you. I've heard wildly different reports on the infamous rudeness of Parisians, but the reports are usually a reflection of the kind of person making the report. Courteous people tend to be met with courtesy wherever they go, and obnoxious people get a rude reception.
Because the Republican "cut taxes while spending trillions invading other countries" works out so well.
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BMO
In other words, the answer is a truly universal system with no insurance middlemen.
I've seen a lot of manuscripts that follow this basic template in my writing group. You have an enemy (often Muslims speaking dog-of-an-infidel Arab-ese) who launches a ludicrously successful EMP superweapon, and in the collapse that follows a charismatic leader with a military background emerges to lead the building of a new, and looks-likely-to-be-better society.
I've seen enough of these to justify doing some research on the physics of nuclear EMP, and have yet to see a Ms that is even remotely scientifically accurate. These stories come out of a sense of dissatisfaction with where 200 years of democracy have brought us. These authors long for rule by extraordinary men (always men), unencumbered by the dead weight of by-definition-mediocre 300 million ordinary people. Remove technology, remove most of that 300 million people and set the remainder to the task of survival, and there is no longer any constraint on the greatness of the extraordinary few.
Of course there's nothing wrong with an authoritarian fantasy, any more than there is anything wrong with a story about the restoration of the "rightful" king. You can enjoy such a story without *really* believing you'd be better off under a charismatic military leader or king. The key to enjoying such a story is "suspension of disbelief".
I wonder how much draining the water would help if the contaminant was actually batrachotoxin.
Source please?
Butamax is a shell company of BP and DuPont. It is suing Gevo to prevent it from selling Butanol fuel based on an obvious patent developed at public university, partly with our tax money.
So, you're telling me someone who can afford to drop $70,000 on a car is going to want to be seen driving it 8 years later?
That depends. Top Gear reports when the cocks have shifted brand, I believe they've moved from BMWs to Audis just in time for me to buy one and remove all doubt. Otherwise, they seem to get rid of their cars (What's a $70k car? S-Class, A8, Jag...) about the same time all the electrical stuff takes a dump. I don't think they're worried about being current, only having the correct brand.
Holy shitballs, batman. Even on an Audi A8 the transmission lines are only four hundred bucks. They only list one part so apparently that's both of them and you buy them together.
On the other hand, the Chevy dealer wouldn't sell me door handles, they wanted to sell me door handle mechanisms. 2000 Astro, a thousand bucks in door handles. I got the handles on eBay for ten to twenty bucks a piece depending on placement. So I guess Chevy really is worse than Audi
With gas cars, you buy them doing calculations about repair cost and resale value that simply do not apply to the situation with electric cars. It's damn unlikely (unless I get in a wreck) that ANY repairs will ever be needed on my Leaf other than the big one
The suspension is pretty much guaranteed to be ripe for a rebuild by or before that time, because they're still not using polyurethane bushings. That's spendy and it's no less (or more) spendy on the Leaf.
The CNC milled guns tend to have parts that go in without smithing. I'll take that over pedigree.
Per-home ROs are cheap as hell now. A system that was up to a grand (if you were being robbed) a decade ago is just over a hundred bucks now.
It's only a problem if you are taking too much of the plant away from the field. Growing corn isn't the problem, growing corn and carrying away the waste instead of turning it in is the problem. Corn still gets most of its carbon from the air like every other plant.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz
