Rapid acceleration wastes fuel.

Does it? Accelerating rapidly to 56mph and staying there is much more efficient than taking 10 miles to get to that speed, for example.

Nope... Road traffic act is the bare minimum insurance you have to have by law, but most insurers basic package is 3rd party, or 3rd party fire & theft. The difference in price between 3rd party and comprehensive is basically 0, so most people have comprehensive insurance now. Most people who have a prang fix it themselves, and don't report it to the insurance, because the cost of repair is less than the insurance price hike most of the time.

No... these electric vehicles were destroyed because they were awful. They were slow as hell, and/or had crap range. And they took a half day or so to recharge.

Tesla has succeeded because they have good/ok performance, and ok range. The charging time and availability is still an issue, but that's something the buyers can deal with.

I guess I'm just tired of seeing thinly-velied advertisements for Tesla's stock on /.

You may be tired of it, I'm not. I enjoy seeing innovative companies doing well, I like hearing about new stuff, and I don't care about the stock exchange.

I doubt I'll ever buy an electric car, because I always buy cheap and sell (or scrap) cheap. My current car (a DC2 Integra type R) cost 5% of a new Tesla.

The other material, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), could produce a gun that fired 8 times without incident.
The agents stopped shooting after 8 bullets, an ATF spokesperson said.

These aren't intended to be highly engineered precision weapons. If you expect that, you're missing the point. However, a downloadable gun that will fire at least 8 rounds without failing... that's quite useful to some people.

The other material, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), could produce a gun that fired 8 times without incident.

The agents stopped shooting after 8 bullets, an ATF spokesperson said.

Looks like the tests showed this gun worked pretty well. I'd personally expect experimental plastic guns to be a bit unreliable, and this test showed they were better than I expected.

Straw man. Social democracies have existed for decades. Some stuff (like the postal service, and power) is better nationalised. The US, bastion of the free market supposedly, pumps billions into infrastructure via private companies. It's more socialist than you realise.

Chavez, not nationalization, ruined the oil industry.

This, and more this. Chavez and the resultant government is the problem, not nationalisation. The US not buying from Peru is also a big problem.

Yes. However... this is not a result of socialism per se... it's a result of cronyism. There are quite a few Venezuelan companies which have not been targeted like this. There are plenty of stable social democracies around the world.

That being said, with the US's record of destabilizing democracies in south America that it does not like... I wouldn't put it past them to nudge a bit (I'm not accusing, just guessing).

The diameter (goes with the radius, r), the surface area (goes with r^2), and the volume of berries (goes with r^3). They cannot all be Normally distributed at the same time, so assuming any of them is starts you out on shaky foundation.

So what? People are only trying to show normalised distribution over one thing. No one is trying to tell you what the best berry is. You can obviously do normalised distribution over each one of those, the radius, area, and volume. I don't see the problem with that.

Already done. Over a billion years ago too.

If only the... wait, over a billion years ago? There was basically nothing on the earth a billion years ago. No plants, no nothing. There was stuff in the sea.

Also... yes, people have thought to look at plants techniques. It is one of the starting points.

Desalination is not easy or quick... the reason it's not caught on is because it's difficult, and energy intensive. If you're rich enough, they work... You need lots of power to run then though.

Desalination plants are common in the middle east. There is loads of power there, and not much water.

There are a whole load of problems with large scale desalination. It's been done, and is done on a wide scale currently.

There's a reason why cities most on the coast don't use seawater... they use the water from their rivers. It's cheaper, and better generally.

That's probably a result of his sarcoidosis (something the wikipedia article doesn't mention, but is easily googleable). The sarcoidosis can result in problems with many bodily systems. I've got the pacemaker/defibrilator to prove it :D

Vera Lynn.