Aye. I speak from the perspective of a single car/bicycle house hold.

I'm pretty interested in owning an electric car when gasoline is $3.50 a gallon or higher.

It's a question of math and logic.

Yes-- you can blow $10k for capabilities you don't actually need. While you are at it, why not get the undercoating, titanium 24" wheels, self steering package, and every other option because you might need them? Drop a few grand extra for 4 wheel drive even tho all you are going to do is drive it in the city and highways in Florida or Alabama... you want to take it off road into the hill country where there are no roads or you might go somewhere in the winter where it snows regularly.

Honda Element.

I'm very tall and so my choice of cars is limited to those with high ceilings.

I've never had a fillup that didn't go over the low 11 gallon range so that's about 24 mpg. And that's with the "E" light on and the gauge on empty to get to about 11.6 gallons used.

I've gotten 300 miles per tank when I got gasoline that didn't have ethanol in it. So about 27mpg with old fashioned gasoline.

Most people don't need the range in reality. They only need it once or twice a year. They are paying a healthy premium- WAY over the cost of renting a vehicle for that once or twice a year that they need the range.

So their argument is sort of like requiring F-650's since once a year they have to carry a sheet of plywood or a piece of furniture.

The tesla is a bad example. The 85w has a range over 300 miles.

My gasoline car has a range of 250 to 265 miles (280 pure highway).

Also, it presumes the old battery has zero value. I'm not sure that's true.

There's also some math problem since a tesla owner site says

http://my.teslamotors.com/it_I...

"1. we know the cost to replace an 85 kwh battery is ~$12,000"
This is apparently with a trade in of the old battery...

Others in the same discussion mention 20 year life spans for well maintained batteries.
And others say that as long as the range exceeds 75 miles, it's usable for their daily driving needs ( so the tesla battery pack could lose 65% of it's capacity and still be fine. Some say 50 miles (which was typical of my usage for my ICE when I was working).

Just FYI...

Notch also said Minecraft would be open source someday too...

I seriously doubt that Microsoft is going to be opensourcing minecraft when it dies off or ever.

But hey! 2.5 billion dollars can change reality.

A person may have superior logical ability but poor ability to recall.

Google makes it easier to recall facts for which you only remember "pointers" to. Then you can exercise logic on them.

You can also have someone with a huge memory who is illogical and irrational.

They are independent skills.

Having a good memory helps an intelligent person when they can't access their notes, the internet, reference books, etc. It's great for trivia and for solving problem quicker.

Superpersuasiveness.

So make them cute, let them get past our defenses.. and then like children who grow into adults, they will grow into or reveal their true nature.

We really have to prepare for the worst with A.I. Stringent inability to upgrade at the least.

The reverse is true to tho. Some attempt suicide- regret it then-- but then attempt suicide again later.

It depends on the reason. Is life shitty? Just lost your child? Just got fire?

Or is your brain just shitty? Constant suicidal impulses even tho life is going well? On a drug that enhances those impulses? Always in pain? Always depressed regardless of medication? Always feel like life is pointless even when nothing is wrong?

Sometimes the problem is chemical and there is little we can do to help the people. Sometimes, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem and we can help those people.

And as you say, sometimes attempting and really facing death makes the person realize they don't want to die.

And yea... we were going to end the surveillance program anyway... yea! That's the ticket!

And we were going to stop illegal wire taps and sneaking back doors into our commercial products.

Yea... because our girlfriend... Candice Swanepoel didn't want us too.

Here in the states, LED bulbs are down to $11 to $13.

Still... good to hear 10% less energy usage.

As long as they 3100-3200K light and not that wierd 2900K stuff I might try one.

And they better give an honest 850-900 lumens for the "60 watt" variety!

Also, a lot of suicide decisions are based on impulses. There are many stories of people who took a suicidal action and then regretted doing so. Like the one about people in the emergency room screaming they want to live after they shot themselves or the guy who jumped off a bridge and realized the second after he did so that he wanted to live.

For all we know, that day was like any other. The co-pilot went to work thinking he was handling it. The pilot left the cabin and the co-pilot was unexpectedly overpowered by the urge to kill himself and he locked the door. No planning necessary.

On the parent topic- yes I think they should video and that video should be checked when a plane crashes or has an incident but wiped otherwise when a plane lands without incident.

100 day moving average. Some folks use the 100 day exponential moving average. Results are similar. They tend to get you out of the market for the worst dips - and get you back in before missing too much of the rise. But-- you should never get out 100%. It's more like reducing to 25% invested (maybe 20%). Very hard emotionally to put money back in if you go to 0% in. Scaling up an existing position is much easier.

Unless you are in 15% of jobs- you'll be forced to retire.

Good thing is, worst case you'll get about 85% of your social security benefits. This could be fixed if they raised the limit to 500k salary and raised the tax by 1%. Pretty small change so the problem is partially theatrics.

Bad thing is, those will only cover about 70% of your needs so you will need something to fill that gap. Medicare looks in trouble. It could be fixed if the U.S. offered to pay for medical school in return for lower cost service as germany does to doctors. And if we broke the medical school cartel and ramped up the number of doctors like we did during world war 2.

Save hard- as in 50%. I did and was able to retire at 51- not on social security for another 16 to 19 years.

Another stock market decline is coming soon (probably in calendar 2015). Hopefully 20-30%- but it could be another 50% hit. When the 100dma crosses back above the 300dma again after the bottom- that's when you put the money in and let it rise for years without having to do anything. That will multiply your savings.

So California Pacific lays off 500 existing IT workers to replace them with H1B workers who will be paid 2/3 the cost, forces the existing workers to train their H1B Infosys replacements if the u.s. workers want their severance- and forces them to sign NDA's if they want their full severance.

http://www.computerworld.com/a...

And people wonder why millenials are doing poorly in this kind of environment. California Pacific's layoff seems blatantly illegal (how can you say you need H1B's because you can't find american workers with the skill set when you are LAYING OFF EXISTING WORKERS to replace them with H1B's????) but many other companies are doing the same thing by eliminating jobs at site "A" and immediately starting up the jobs at site "B".

Look- if the companies were foreign companies- we might protect workers or at least get lower prices. But as it is we are expected to pay full prices for the product here while the company uses discount labor.

Here is a blatant obvious case-- will someone do something about this? At least the conservative talk radio is finally mad about the issue. In the past it was only the democrats. How many jobs have to go before something is done?

Why enter a field when you are directly competing with people who can go home and live well on $15k a year?