Why the hate for the Volt?

While it may not be the be-all, end-all of hybrid or electric vehicles it's an interesting concept that seems to overcome some of the limitations of pure electric vehicles while being more electric and fuel efficient than traditional hybrids like the Prius.

All-electrics like the Tesla are range-limited and the electric power demands of charging them would seem to be something of a cap on how widely they could be adopted. It's one thing to talk about installing rapid charging stations everywhere, but it's quite another to consider what happens when you have 30 houses on a common alley trying to pull 150kW to charge 15 electric cars at the same time.

From a pure "harm reduction" standpoint, a hybrid like this seems to be a pretty decent compromise -- you can cut emissions and fuel consumption considerably and greatly mitigate some of the challenges with a pure electric vehicle.

Plus, the Volt seems to have a lot of room for improvement -- a smaller diesel engine would seem like a great start, as would an option for an LNG engine which would mean even better emissions.

I don't think it's ever a question of A or B, I think it's a question of trying all of them.

Then, I'd say the people you know are pretty much ignorant of the world around them. In Canada, this has been known since the 50's, my great uncle worked in Ottawa as a liaison between the Federal Government and the Canadian Intelligence Services. I got to meet some interesting folks before he died, and at his funeral when he was laid in Beechwood. Which is the Canadian equivalent of Arlington. But I grew up in a small town of ~20k people in the Southern part of Ontario, and people knew this was going on, they knew that the government had constructed bunkers in Ottawa and Hull to protect themselves in the event of nuclear war, they knew that the Canadian Intelligence apparatus worked very closely with US letter agencies. It wasn't until the Charter came into being that it quieted down, and wasn't quite so visible to the public.

You don't think the smoking carcass would own all of the patents and make it impossible for a bunch of new startups to get into the industry?

Patents are assets. Assets are auctioned off in bankruptcy. The owner of a patent benefits from licensing the patent for fees, not from sitting on a patent and preventing anyone from using it.

-jcr

Certainly far more useful than chemistry

Nope. Basic understanding of chemistry can keep people from mixing ammonia and bleach to clean the tub.

-jcr

Speaking as one who had the misfortune of having to try to help kids with no interest at all in computing, back when I was in high school myself, this is a fucking idiotic idea. Coding isn't for everyone.

-jcr

Good point, I never thought about the inheritance tax angle.

Most people aren't that deep. The vast majority of self-proclaimed "Christians" that I've had any sort of discussion with can't separate what is in the Bible from Christmas Carols or greeting cards. They have absolutely no real knowledge of what they believe. They go to church for the music, business contacts and fellowship. Theology has NOTHING to do with it.

I once thought ill of the Catholic Church for making it a capital crime for lay persons reading the Bible on their own. After attending a couple of Non-Denominational Evangelical church services, and their "Bible study" afterward where parishioners "interpreted" a couple of verses on their own... I feel the need to apologize to the Catholics. Those people came up with some seriously off-the-wall bullshit that frequently was 180 degrees opposite of what a verse literally said. Worse was two people would interpret the same verse in exactly opposite ways and they'd all nod sagaciously and agree they were both correct. Hands in the air and Praise Jesus!

However, the main problem with these flights of fancy is the extra energy expenditure involved. It is perhaps the least energy efficient method of transport you could possibly come up with.

What the heck are you talking about? Flying tiny little R/C quadrocopters around is highly energy efficient, when you compare it to the amount of fuel you need to propel a 10,000 pound UPS van on city streets.

Assuming the Amazon warehouse is within a short distance of the customer's location, the quadrocopter has an enormous cost an energy advantage. 1) It's electrically powered, so it doesn't suffer Carnot inefficiencies like diesel trucks. 2) It travels directly between the two locations, regardless of any obstructions in the way, traffic, poor street layouts, etc. With UPS, you have to ship the package first to the UPS warehouse where it has to be sorted, then load it onto another truck for delivery. If the UPS warehouse isn't too close, that's a lot of extra distance to travel, all using diesel fuel with big, heavy trucks. 3) It uses no labor, as it's entirely automated. The UPS delivery requires human labor for pickup, sorting (perhaps multiple times), and finally delivery to your doorstep. Human labor is expensive. Amazon's idea is really great; the only Achilles' heel is that it entirely depends on the distance between the warehouse and the customer. These drones will only have so much range, and can't group together packages to build economy-of-scale savings, so the farther that distance, the less viable this delivery method becomes. But for metro areas, it makes pretty good sense.

Most of eBay's operation (and their desired method) is the seller goes to the local UPS store and ships it himself.

Exactly. Also, a lot of their operation involves the USPS, especially for smaller items. This is why Ebay's Paypal unit makes it easy for sellers to ship with USPS (and also UPS) by integrating that into Paypal, so you can buy USPS postage and print out a mailing label right from your Paypal account.

FTFY. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine the country of origin for anything you by from eBay.

On searches there's a checkbox to select North America or US-only. Of course this won't stop a shady vendor from claiming to ship from the US, and shipping from China instead, but the capability is there to screen the shipping location.

I don't think so. The Wright Brothers didn't compete against bike shops with their airplane (people wanting to buy a bicycle aren't going to be talking into buying an airplane instead). They created a whole new market, separate from the bicycle shop market. If anything, the bike shop competitors were better off with the Wright Brothers spending their time and money on airplanes instead of concentrating on selling bikes. It worked out well for the Wrights of course, but it didn't detract from their competitors in any way. And bike shops are still around; the bike market was only hampered by the rising automobile industry, not by airplanes.

for an example my mom worked with a nice gay couple at the hospital. After nearly 30 years of being together one was killed by a drunk driver but because the state recognized common law for male/female but NOT gays the survivor had ZERO rights and the parents of the dead partner, who just FYI had disowned him more than 40 years before and refused to even allowed him to be buried in the family cemetery, were able to come in like vultures and sell everything that he owned.

This is horrible, I'll agree, but wouldn't this situation have been easily averted by simply having a will in place? I understand that for many younger people they might not have one as they don't think they're going to die in an accident anytime soon, but a couple that's been together for 30 years (making them probably over 50) really should have thought of that, I'd think. You don't need legalized gay marriage to write a will giving everything to your partner if you die. I'm not saying gay marriage shouldn't be legal (I believe in equality for all; I also believe in legalized plural marriages between consenting adults), but this doesn't seem to be a very good example to me.