The only production CNG vehicle in the U.S. is the Honda Civic GX, which has a range of 250 miles, 200 miles less than its gasoline counterparts. It also has a $10,000 premium price tag at $29,000. And as for fueling at home, Honda recommends against it to fuel quality concerns and will void your warranty if you do. That means we need an entirely new fuel infrastructure.

So we roll out CNG fueling stations. Maybe doable in 10-15 years. Then what happens when we run out of NG? We have 11 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas_in_the_United_States) of proven reserves and 100 years of "postulated" reserves. I'll bet those numbers drop quickly when we switch out gasoline for CNG. On the other hand, electrified vehicles are immune to fuel changes so our investment in infrastructure has 0 risk.

A large part of that energy you are counting comes from oxygen in the air, not the gasoline. A fair comparison would be to lithium-air, which has 5-10x the energy density of standard Li-Ion.

More points for Tesla. Even with Mercedes perpaid service (you don't think it's actually free?), who wants to spend a Saturday or take off of work to sit in a dealership every 5000 miles? No thanks.

"When are you environmentalist nuts start studying how the electrical grid actually works instead of having fantasies about how it should work."

While a agree with your sentiment about anit-nuke positions, I think your "study the grid" viewpoint is narrow-minded.

Power demand (and thus supply) fluctuates greatly throughout the day. I'm an M.E. I worked for FPL, who know runs three solar power plants. I know how the grid works and it's sad that we still have to match production to demand. Energy storage systems are long overdue. There are some in place including uphill reservoirs, flywheels and thermal salt storage, but we haven't arrived yet. Though I'm not sure if centralized or decentralized (panels on houses) is best, it's clear that grid storage is a necessary step that will enable much needed flexibility on our power grid.

Grid storage is no more a "fantasy" than splitting atoms. I personally like nuclear. And I like wind and solar. And geothermal. They could work together nicely as base plus spike production. After we move to grid storage and look back, our current system of ramp production to meet demand will seem ridiculous and truly ancient.

XP has been used as an embedded system on some large format scanners, printers, lab machines and other specialized hardware where I work. Other machines such as digital copiers have their own OS providing services such as SMB, FTP and other network services. Do you think these other OS's are somehow inherently secure and free of security holes? Why require embedded XP to have current updates and not the other embedded OS systems?

They could switch the trade system to .NET. As London discovered, delay functionality is already built in.

Or get people in office who do care about the next century and beyond.

Flywheels used today for industrial power storage are typically low mass - high strength. They're usually spun at very high rates in a vacuum on magnetic bearings. At 60,000 RPM I doubt the mass is an issue. Probably weights less than your lead acid battery.

Their homepage just contains the comment in html:

        put announce for mtgox acq here

We laid phone lines. Why can't we lay fiber.

You should create a website documenting this history. When someone asks what's so bad about MS, we could just point them to the website.

Looks like Papa John's pizza. Mmmmm!

Driving on snow is fine. The snow at least gives you some traction. Driving on an ice rink ain't so easy. I live in Meridian MS (also have nice new Bridgestone's) and there were places I slid through with absolutely no exposed road and no gravel, sand, or even snow to get traction on.

While I agree one should keep a cool head and I agree with your driving suggestions, you should understand that many of the roads here you could ice skate on. No gravel. So Salt. Not even snow. Just pure slick ice. There was absolutely NOTHING to get traction on. Short of having chains, no tire or drivetrain could help. I had the pleasure of sledding down a hill this morning despite inching forward carefully. Luckily, I got into some snow on the side and regained traction.

Thanks for the nostalgia and laughter.