This is in no way comparable to Apple. For instance, almost all the bikes come with pre-scratched paint, and sometimes the nuts and bolts will have started rusting before delivery. Build quality is horrible.

My local bike shop tried a few but stopped selling them.

If you take the two most prevalent metals you have a combination that works for batteries:

Sodium Chloride and Magnesium.

It's not even a new technology, and has been exploited commercially in the past (BA-4386)

Theoretical a magnesium-battery has a higher volumetric energy-density than lithium, but it's much heavier. Unlike a primary battery (the non-chargeable kind) a usable rechargeable battery is hard to make, so perhaps that is the breakthrough IBM claims.

I don't know about South Africa, but do me a favour and look up Germany's AVR reactor. It is a nightmare. In every sense and variation of the word. Even defuelling failed, with ± 200 pebbles remaining in the cracks in the core. It got so bad they filled it with concrete and won't touch it again before 2060.

It's listed as the place with the worst strontium-90 contamination in the world. Guess that qualifies as 'so well' in a Trumpian sense..

Actually.. My central heating has a COP of about 109%. The thermal process of burning gas itself has a hard 100% limit. However, the chemical reaction (CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H20) yields some additional energy, and the water vapour it produces is hot, yielding even more energy. By cooling the exhaust gasses and condensing and cooling the water vapour in it you can increase the overal yield to 109% under ideal circumstances. My central heating system is cycling in an attempt to heat water in a storage loop under almost ideal circumstances, and using valves ('solenoids') to feed heat from there to the heating loops in the floors of my house.

A French TGV uses 9.6MW peak during acceleration. That is a single train, not a 102 storey skyscraper.

If you tried to impress me, you failed.

My main contractor and I came to speak about the subject of smoking. I quit, a few years ago, he never started. He asked me to describe smoking.

I told him it's like looking at the world through nicotine stained glasses. And smelling a nicotine stained world. And tasting a nicotine infused palet. Everything is the same nicotine colour. https://www.google.nl/search?q...

Yes. Exact weight of passengers and cargo is needed to estimate the amount of fuel needed to get from A to B. To prevent fatal fuel mishaps the traditional approach was to carry plenty excess fuel. But fuel might be expensive in the airport you're starting from, and carrying 20 klbs expensive fuel to a destination where fuel is much cheaper isn't smart business. Weighing passengers, obese or not, makes for more accurate margins and thus less wasted cash.

And the bottom line is what it's all about these days.

Just the thought is making me so uncomfortable I'll just give up on air travel, period.

At the ISP I used to work for, some years ago, swearing would have the agent pressing a button on the phone. This would save the recording of the call for later review by the owner of the company. Depending on what you would have said you'd get a letter warning you not to swear at the staff, a letter terminating your service, or, in the worst case, the owner would take the recording to the police-station and file a complaint against you. About half those complaints resulted in suspended sentences and hefty fines.

The average call center agent 'survives' the first line a few weeks before burning down. He averaged three years for his call center staff.

And he forgot bankers. His psychologist (which he also forgot) knows what's going on.