And that has been Tesla's argument for the last ten years, yet they still lose about $9,000 on each car they make.

"On" each car, or "for" each car?

"On" makes it sound like their marginal costs are negative -- that, literally, producing one more car increases their losses by $9K. Were it "for" each car, then they're losing money only after fixed costs, R&D, etc. are taken into account.

That latter makes considerably more sense -- folks can legitimately decide to back a company investing in itself rather than taking out a profit; indeed, Amazon has done that for years.

Tried Parker Quink, or the Noodler's Bernanke series? Both are quick-drying.

I'm actually a right-handed overwriter (rare thing that is), so I feel at least some subset of your pain.

please enlighten us as to why the fountain pin and/or feathered quill is superior to the free pens I get from the bank?

Y'know, I actually don't mind giving this a serious answer.

You don't need pressure to write with a fountain pen -- at all. (The modern competitor is a rollerball, not a ballpoint; rollerballs don't give you amount of flexibility on nib grind or opportunities for flex and shading effects that you get with a fountain, but at least you're not forced to use tons of pressure). Allows different, more comfortable grips.

Also, they're refillable with water-based inks -- meaning that they're not disposable, and that you have a huge amount of choice in terms of color and properties of your ink. Want an ink that's still viscous in below-freezing weather? I've got a bottle on my desk! Want an ink that changes from yellow to red depending on how much you're putting down on the paper? That too! Want an ink that responds to ultraviolet and is completely waterproof you can mix in with other inks that are water-soluable, so you can see where writing that's been washed away used to be under a blacklight?

Lots of room for geekery. :)

We can make modern flex nibs better than the old ones!

(Good flexible fountain pen nibs are pretty much all circa 1950s or prior right now; it's a sad, sad state of affairs).

Joe Haldeman wrote a novel about it, The Long Habit of Living(renamed to Buying Time). One had life extension procedures that in principle allowed the rich to amass more wealth and power , making the wealth distribution more skewed. But then the the life extension procedure was made extremely expensive and short lasting, which in principle could redress the balance. As long as the foundation that handled it would take care of redistribution, because it became a huge concentrator of wealth. I liked that book. It was reworked into a graphic novel that reused the same themes in different ways.

The guy already apologized to the cops. http://www.trust.org/item/2015...
Yeah, streetwise. He knows to keep his head down.

Sure, things are more complicated than I'm claiming. But I was well aware of what was happening while it was going on. You're using as reference the most egregious cheerleader of the WMD campaign.

Do you think people currently care about Iranian WMD? Not only did they never exist, nobody even would care if they did.It's just an alibi. Of course you need to make a lot of noise about it to make the alibi work.

Syria's defense was good enough to hurt a lot. Saudi Arabia doesn't care much about that because they're not attacking directly. They're avoiding open military conflict. The same with Turkey. The only ones actually openly attacking Syria is Israel, but even they are mostly working indirectly by supporting those inside.

But they do far more to protect the innocent than they are capable of doing to assist an enemy.

As long as governments continue to see innocents as the enemy, we have all lost.

Encryption is a defensive technology, not a weapon.

I can't see any good reason (plenty of bad ones!) for ever limiting defensive technologies. Weapons are a different matter because they can cause direct harm to others, but a shield, or armour, or encryption, are all defense only with no offensive angle. They should never be limited.

I think the relation between your narrative and reality is very weak. WMD were not a driving force for the US invasion. They were merely the alibi. You've got the reasoning behind the alibi wrong, but even if you had it right it would already be missing the point. The 'doubt' there was left was only about a theoretical question. WMD or no WMD: then one shell of mustard gas proves the WMD thesis. But if the question had been 'significant WMD, enough to be militarily relevant' then there was no doubt. The bottom line is the US took Iraq because they could, and people went along with the alibi to save face.

Assad did have a powerful military. That didn't stop the Saudis.But I agree, the whole WMD excuse was made into something important by people who knew very well that Iraq was almost defenseless. As Wolfowitz said in the runup to the war 'I could take Iraq with 10000 men'.(If I recall correctly). If Iraq had been strong everything would have been different.So it was important for Saddam to appear strong. I've heard claims that oh dear Saddam fooled us into thinking he had WMD. Bollocks.

I call bullshit. Sure, they were a nasty bunch but there's a lot of those around . Saddam himself was cruel but he also thought it was necessary to be so. As dictators go, he was relatively competent. That was maybe the main reason the US turned on him: too competent. Iraq had been developing itself very well and was becoming a bit too independent and too powerful.
The sadism of his eldest son was another matter.

By Judy Miller. Really. She's full-o-shit.

What all of the intelligence community understood was that whatever the WMD capacity was of Iraq, it was insignificant. That they were uncertain of Saddam's efforts or intents , that I can see. It's hard to prove a negative. But part of the effect of the propaganda effort was to change the question. "Saddam would like to have chemical weapons". "Saddam is trying to make them". "Saddam would make them if we normalize relations".

I think politicians on the other hand were often eager to be fooled. They were deliberately gullible because they often thought taking over Iraq was not such a bad idea. Because of a simple logic that removing something bad would make things better. Because they thought it a good idea to redesign the neighborhood. Because they didn't see any other way to end the blockade. Because being perceived as being fooled was preferable to being perceived as afraid to row against the current. Because they thought it was going to succeed and didn't want to be on the wrong side afterwards.

In practice what happens with propaganda is there is no real center anymore of people who really know what's going on. Everyone is just believing someone elses lies. The same is still going on about Iran.

Far opposite from the truth. I'm no vegan myself -- but growing meat animals requires vastly more inputs (grain, water, etc) than would be needed if skipping the (delicious) intermediate step. Humans consume less grains in sum when consuming them directly, rather than via an intermediate layer.