Check out Kerbal Space Program. You can build rockets, send them into orbit, land on the moon, and learn about concepts like apoapsis, retrograde burns, orbital transfers, and learn astrophysics -- plus it's simple enough I've seen multiple dads who have a blast playing with their kids. It runs on Linux/Mac/Windows and has a good free demo.
 
...but does it really teach orbital mechanics? Oblig XKCD says yes;)

Before "terrorism", there was communism. Before communism, there were anarchists who assassinated an American president.

The FBI once called Martin Luther King Jr. "the most dangerous man in America" (and given death threats). Sartre wrote about suicide bombing as terrorism in the 40's (and thought it was going out of style! page 80).

Tyrants in the US government have always used name calling in the name of "national security" to justify whatever inhumanities they wish to commit. "Terrorism" is not new; its use as a boogey man to scare the citizenry into the creation of a surveillance state is.

Also, never be afraid to learn your math in a physics course. It's the best way.

That kinda depends...I found it was easier just taking more math courses than trying to figure out what the hell my EM professor was doing. Eventually I just switched majors to Math.

Correct, I was just pointing out that even the best of the competitions offerings still fell well short of price parity, the fact that the fuel for the more efficient vehicle is more expensive just exacerbates the situation. Another factor swaying the per mile cost in favor of the electric is the fact that you're highly unlikely to reach the EPA rating in southern California traffic so real world numbers will be even more skewed.

1. Really? I want the exact opposite of that. I don't give a crap what's going on under the hood or what the filesystem is doing. Pull a blanket over it, I don't want to see it.

2. OK

3. If they allow it you'll get people here posting "Windows is so dumb, it let me copy an mp3 to my phone that it couldn't play!"

4. See #3.

5. OK

Linux you just install once and then it runs and runs, regardless of any updates.

I wish I lived in your world.

Nissan Leaf would go from 25K to 18K
Or, much more likely it would be available for $18k with the current range or $25k with double the range. In fact Nissan is seriously talking to existing owners about how much they would be willing to pay for a model with double the range as they see Tesla coming down range at them.

My wife's friend who works for Rigid gets a company truck and a fuel card that covers his gas for work, he's supposed to report personal use but I believe if he doesn't they just use a standard IRS formula and take it out of his annual bonus.

VS what, a car from the 1970's? Everything from the mid 80's on is a complete fender replacement in the case of an accident. It's the price we pay for fuel economy. Heck, many fairly minor accidents result in the vehicle being totaled due to crumple zones, that's the price we pay for safety. In both cases it's a minor percentage of the total cost of the vehicle fleet.

I doubt it, my wife's last van is 11 years old and while it has some rust her sister is still driving it just fine, my 11 year old Vibe has hardly any rust and I live in the middle of road salt hell (NE Ohio), it's not the 70's anymore, cars don't rust out in 8 years.

Right now there are plenty of stations listed on gasbuddy in LA proper, and the greater LA area at $3.47-$3.49, of course there are quite a few listed at $4.99!

According to their terriff sheet summer consumption at 200% of baseline is $0.19564 for delivery and and $0.12396 for generation which actually comes out to $0.3196 per KWhr so I assume the $.35 includes some kind of taxes.

Well, there are some original model Prius out there with over 1M kilometers on their less overengineered batteries so I think any speculation about throwing away a Tesla because of a worn battery pack are just a bit pessimistic.

The tax credit is there to jump start the industry, and there are per manufacturer and total vehicles sold caps on the credit, compared to all the perpetual credits for the oil and gas industry that's actually extremely progressive.Oh, and you can buy a Nissan Leaf and take full advantage of the credit without being anything approaching "Rich".