They didn't fake it so much as they filmed the scene. Top Gear is a sitcom about cars and like any sitcom they first write the script, then they film the scenes. Then they put those scenes together and there you have the week's episode.

The major disconnect here is all those people who seem to think that Top Gear is some sort of unbiased, or even just serious, product review show. It is not: it is a British scripted comedy show. It is a bit unusual in that cars play parts in the show, but then that is presumably an important factor in its unique appeal. (In the movie Evolution the protagonists use a well known brand of shampoo to give the big bad alien a fatal enema, saving the world; the same people who take Top Gear seriously might also think that saving the world from aliens is an actual feature of that shampoo.)

Cynical as this is, there is certainly a lot of truth to it.

This isn't the case however. There needs to be a certain correlation between the election result and polls etc., or people will realize it's all a sham. The easy way to achieve this correlation is to make a reasonable effort to actually count the votes and use that result as the official election result. (One of the difficult ways is to try and control the press without the people realizing that you do; there are so many pitfalls down this path I don't know that it can be done well for long.)

It is a purely pragmatic viewpoint: we know there's going to be war, whether we like it or not, so banning it is pointless. (Besides, we may want to go to war at some time and we'd like it to be legal to do so when that happens.)

It is also accepted that in a war people are going to get killed. This is a necessary consequence of war. If you couldn't kill enemy soldiers then essentially you couldn't wage war and we have already realized that you can't ban war outright. (People would just wage it anyway, it's too compelling.)

What is not however, or so it is thought, strictly necessary is for war to be overly cruel to the participants. Yes, you can get killed if you're in it, but people shouldn't be going out of their way to be cruel to you beyond this. There is usually a way to wage a war and achieve political objectives without torturing enemy soldiers and so nations can go to war without also at the same time being forced to ignore the rules of war, so long as all you are expecting them to do is not be overly cruel.

So the rules of war are what they are because that's more or less the most you can get away with and still have some hope that they will be adhered to.

There is also more than just a little colonial power bias in there, but that is something of a separate issue.

Putting holes in people is just a very straightforward way of killing them or putting them out of action. Adding a non-clotting agent mostly seems like a purely cruel addition to this since someone who's been hit by a flechette is likely going to be out of action anyway. The non-clotting isn't needed for combat effectiveness.

Additionally, although this is seen from a completely different angle, it seems to me that the anti-clotting is ill advised from a military effectiveness viewpoint. What you want to do, ideally, is wound the enemy soldier so that he becomes an active burden on his side's evac and medical services. If he's dead he can just be left there for now and dealt with when there's available resources to remove bodies, but if he's wounded then manpower will need to be diverted immediately to deal with him which means less manpower to fight the battle that is going on there and then. (Even more ideally you probably want to maim him so that he becomes an immediate burden, and won't be returning to the action even after medical care; but pure maiming weapons are usually found in violation of the rules of war I believe.)

Tesla's advice for fighting a fire in the battery pack is to just pile on huge quantities of water, and to continue piling on water until the battery no longer produces heat. (They suggest using an IR camera if available, or looking for smoke if not.)

Small amounts of water on the other hand have little effect. It might seem to temporarily smother the flames but does nothing to bring down the internal thermal process and so once you stop applying it the thing will flare up again. You need lots and lots of water over some period of time to cool down the battery below thermal runaway temperature.

"Shoppers"? I would take this to mean shoppers in general, 90% of whom would never be able to afford a Tesla anyway.

Absent evidence to the contrary I'll go out on a limb and categorically state that 98% of people who shop for a Tesla do qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit. And the 2% who do not don't because all their income is hidden away in tax havens.

I'd say Tesla is writing for their target audience here, and in this context their calculation is pretty much spot on.

The tax credit is necessary because every single one of the other EV manufacturers out there is completely incapable of building a compelling EV that people actually want to buy, so they need to be bribed into buying it. Tesla gets to have its cake and eat it too by both building a car people actually want and simultaneously cashing in on the incompetence of its competition by partaking of the tax credit.

I can see two immediate reasons why Tesla wouldn't want to involve themselves with existing dealerships.

First, the dealerships are a poison pill. It is common in the various states to have laws that effectively say that if you have ever sold your cars through a dealership, you are condemned to always sell your cars through dealerships in the future. A car manufacturer would be a fool to voluntarily tie his own hands and feet like that. Tesla being a brand new manufacturer without any legacy chains holding them down have great freedom to come up with their own sales model and they are making the very best out of that opportunity.

Second, existing dealerships have no incentive to sell Tesla cars because there isn't any money in it for them: They can't skim a lot off of the sale price because people can easily order the car from California at the factory price, and they can't rely on profitable service and repairs because there's just not that much to service or repair on an EV. Tesla needs to run a very aggressive sales program to generate the cash flow that they need to achieve their short to mid term goals and dealerships would never deliver this cash flow. They'd keep a couple Teslas on the lot as talking points but they'd try their damndest not to actually sell any.

There was even a whole railroad system set up specifically to cater for this. But people always conveniently seem to forget that.

(I forget, what was that sarcasm tag we all failed to agree on earlier? ...)

The article doesn't describe a security flaw with Tesla's API. What it does is complain about how Tesla doesn't provide a reasonable framework for allowing third party apps access to the car. Which is probably correct: Tesla never promised this and never intended to deliver it at this point in time.

The API that is provided is a proprietary one that is intended only for communication between the car and Tesla's own app. It has a perfectly fine password-based security implementation for which the article does not even suggest a hack or a workaround: to access the car you absolutely must have the password.

The article then complains that if car owners run around publishing their passwords on the internet this would enable strangers to access their car, and implies that this is a serious security problem with Tesla's cars. Which it is not, it is a security problem with the car's owners. Good luck trying to design a security system for this that cannot be compromised by the car having a stupid owner.

The SUV/crossover (Model X) is the same iteration as the Sedan (Model S): it's just a variation built on the same underlying platform, and we will likely see more variants of that platform. This is essentially the high-end luxury iteration.

Iteration 3 will be the mass market car, a couple years down the line.

Gold has great intrinsic value in its usefulness as a currency: It is rare enough without being too rare. It is malleable and user divisible. It doesn't corrode. It's pretty so people will be proud to own it. Silver shares many of these qualities, but to a lesser degree (it's a little too common, it does corrode, and in part as a consequence of this it is not quite as pretty).

And you really shouldn't dismiss the usefulness of having a good material for currency, trade via a currency is leaps and bounds more efficient than trade via barter. (And sometimes sea shells just don't do the job.)

Beware the fearmongers, for they shall paralyze you with their visions of Doom!

(todo: wood engraving decrying the luddite sentiment)

"So, Governor, now that you've tried the car. Yeah I see you have the Tesla grin already. So, now that you've tried it. Two years down the road, when voters start to realize what a great American car it is that you have prevented them from buying. ... What exactly are your plans for reelection?"

"he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company"

I claim greed effect. (Emphasis mine)

Science isn't something you believe in, it's something you use. If I use a hammer to nail a picture up on the wall, does this mean I believe in hammer or does it just mean I used a hammer to achieve some desired result?

A scientific result is something you may choose to believe or not believe, depending on the level of confidence you have in the team behind it and the rigour of their methods. To believe in a scientific result on the other hand sounds to me more of a fanatical position than a rational one.