The current Defender has aluminium body panels, but a steel ladder chassis and bulkhead. I imagine that the new one, whenever it comes out, might be all aluminium since that's the way Land Rover's going with their other vehicles.

It's true that Ford sells probably 10x as many F150s as Land Rover sells Range Rovers. However, Land Rover is probably selling about 50k Range Rovers a year (vague number as I couldn't find specifics). They saved 700lbs off their previous model by going to all aluminium. Sound familiar? The 2014 Range Rover Sport is also aluminium and they are moving all Jaguars and Land Rovers in that direction.

Land Rover currently runs the world's largest aluminium body shop, so they're hardly a "niche manufacturer". It's great that Ford is going this way with the high-volume F150, and they are breaking new ground in that they are going to produce MORE aluminium vehicles than other manufacturers. However, because many of the engineering challenges have already been solved by manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover, it's a shame that none of the referenced articles even mention the word "Rover".

I don't remember exactly, but they were gone maybe 3-5 hours including cab rides.

Why shouldn't I expect you to keep your seat upright? I have no problem making a trans-continental redeye flight with my seat upright. It's not what I'd call "comfortable", but it's not "comfortable" with the seat back either.

I could contend that if you want a more comfortable seat with reclining room, then YOU should be the one buying the more expensive seat.

I also make allowances for the fact that a larger person is going to want more reclining space than a smaller person, and what time of day/night it is. My point remains though, if you're 5'1 and the person behind you is 6'4, you should take that into consideration before you put your seat all the way back, right after take-off, in the middle of the afternoon.

We had a similar experience (sort of) in the UK earlier this year. We had a 4 day stopover, and my daughter was sick with a fever and throwing up after getting off the plane. My wife took her to the emergency room, where she received top-knotch care from sympathetic and helpful medical staff. She received prescription antibiotics, and the entire process cost us a total of £0. Healthcare in the UK is free for children, whether they are citizens, residents, or visitors. We were really impressed and appreciative. Thanks, UK taxpayers!

I imagine that there's some limit, like maybe only emergency room visits are covered for visitors or something like that. Still, the process was simple, the staff were helpful, and my daughter got what she needed and she was fine as soon as the antibiotics kicked in.

That's an interesting post, but did you notice that the article is talking about the NHS? Regarding advertising, in the UK, http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Howweregulate/Medicines/Advertisingofmedicines/ states that "The Regulations prohibit the issue of any advertisement to the general public which is likely to lead to the use of a prescription only medicine (POM)."

Since you're talking about the US, that's an idea you Americans could take and run with. Once you've done that, we can all start dealing with the pharmaceutical industry's marketing towards doctors.

I've wondered for a long time why airline seats are so (seemingly) heavy. It seemed like a no-brainer that they'd be spending money on lighter weight seats. So, I was really surprised upon reading the article that the guy from Recaro said that 5 years ago, their seats weight about 29 lbs. That's surprisingly light for a seat that size and apparent heft when you look at them. Even more incredible is they've managed to save a further 9 lbs off that with their lightest current seat.

At 6'4 I'm pretty protective over my legroom. In my opinion they should improve coach by just not allowing reclining seats. I know that will never "fly", but it really pisses me off when some 5'1 person in front of me reclines their seat all the way back into me once the plane takes off. I just pretend the seat is back in its upright position, and if that means they get bumped every two minutes, they can just move their seatback forward. I guess it's only going to get worse. Or, I have to get a lot richer and start flying in a more expensive class.

That's because you're Canadian (I assume). Try to think like an American, because they don't use Interac.

If this is the case, why is it that most of these articles use phrases like "many of them belonging to Americans"? If it doesn't matter, why is the point made? The answer, of course, is that it does matter. That is, it matters to American law. For reference, see https://www.aclu.org/nsa-surveillance-procedures and highlight the word "Americans".

Speaking as a non-American, I think it shouldn't matter whether I'm American, Austrian, or Azerbaijani. We're all human and we all have the same rights. I find it offensive when I read these articles and there's always the "including Americans" tagged onto the article headline, like somehow it's OK if it's done to non-Americans. I realize it wouldn't be much different if any other country had been caught with their pants down. It's just that in this case it's the US (again).

This one could be considered the opposite of the rant in the tarticle. Why in Canada with Bell on my land line am I NOT ALLOWED to dial 1 before a local number, yet I HAVE to dial 1 before a long distance number? I DON'T CARE if it's local or long distance! I can afford the $0.04 per minute or whatever. Just let me make the call without having to hang up and dial again with or without the magic prepended 1.

At least my mobile phone just tells me it's local/long distance and puts the call through anyway. It's an improvement.

I switched from Bell to TekSavvy for my home phone a few years ago. I thought TekSavvy might make this problem go away then but it didn't.

</rant>

No they can't really. The article is really about the reinsurance companies. These are the companies from which the insurance companies buy their insurance. Insurance company X maybe doesn't have $10B in the bank to underwrite all their policies. They may be bringing in $100M per year in policies, and pay $75M per year to underwrite their policies from reinsurance company Y. Note that I'm not in the business and I'm pulling these numbers out of a hat.

An established company is probably running similar risk numbers to everyone else and reaching similar conclusions. An upstart insurance company betting against global warming and offering lower policies is unlikely to have the cashflow to purchase their more expensive reinsurance. They're also the ones most likely to need reinsurance as they don't possess any significant assets to underwrite their policies themselves.

I live in the region, and right now I'm glad I work for a startup based in another country. There's going to be increasingly fierce competition for those open positions around here over the next few years. Of course, I'm good enough that it wouldn't matter to me personally ;-)

We'll see what, if anything, it does to the real estate market.

That's been the problem with GM for as long as I can remember. They make cars that (they think) people want to buy.

The problem is, that people in general aren't thinking of the future. Most of us aren't very bright, and we want something big and shiny that we thought was pretty cool a few years ago when we first saw it. We also don't consider the true cost of our purchases, only thinking of the up-front costs. Most people when it come down to it also hate cars and hate driving, and don't really care directly about safety or fuel economy. So, GM ends up with vehicles like the H2 and the Escalade EST which are essentially automotive dinosaurs from a company that hadn't yet realized they were extinct.

GM needs to be (slightly) in front of the market if they truly want to be successful. Sadly, that just isn't their way.

I think you a word there.

I'm aware of the fact that there are people with faster internet speeds. The main point of my comment was the second last sentence.

I just tested my internet connection this morning at home and got 143.25 / 9.13 Mbps. While I probably don't need all the download speed, I work from home and I find it just amazing that I can get this here. Less than a year ago I was getting 5/0.6 and thought that was the best I could get. Yay me.