Or that the people that need to interface with the data need it to be flexible enough to do ad hoc analysis because their bosses keep asking for random ways of aggregating the data. Or because getting data into a database in bulk is surprisingly difficult. Or because editing data in a database without admin permissions is typically done via a form allowing for access to only a single record at a time. There are a lot of reasons companies still use Excel, but mostly it comes down to cost in developing adequate solutions, training everyone that needs access to the data, and flexibility in output. I'm no fan of janky Excel solutions, but the reasons that people keep making them are not trivial.

Northern MA, last I saw heat fuel is selling for about 2.09/gal. I think during the winter it was around 2.75/gal or so.

~12000 kwh per year divided by 365 days per year yields roughly 30 kwhs per day for the average U.S. household, according to your chart.

I can vouch for this personally.

Last year I bought a Ford Fusion plug-in hybrid. During the summer, it was great. Roughly 20 miles of range on electricity, and roughly 35 mpg for longer distances. The sweet spot seems to be between 65 and 80 degrees. At roughly 100 degrees, the car will run the gasoline engine to climate control the battery pack. At less than 40 degrees, the electric range ends up being about half. Below roughly 20 degrees, and the car will use the gasoline engine to run climate control in the cabin. Still working out way better than the old commuter car that it replaced (stopping for fuel about once per 4 weeks during typical driving, or when going out of town for a longer trip instead of once per week in the old commuter) but it's far from perfect. My experience in using a plug in hybrid gives me significant reservation about switching to BEV.

Clearly he was buying five one dollar tasers.

I'm not sure if it counts as an article, but the costs of healthcare really are issues for lots of people. Zachary Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) did a public announcement to bring attention to such: http://www.smbc-comics.com/com...

Infrastructure such as levies and dams tend to have ongoing maintenance requirements, meaning we are not looking at a one time cost. A typical infrastructure investment is expected to incur roughly 10% of its initial cost in maintenance expenses per year. And global income (you are measuring expense per person using global population) is around $3,000. If you ask people to pay a third of a year of wages up front, and another 1/30 of their wages every year to support just having cities continue to exist, you don't think that might be a burdensome request?

Are we not calling the XBox One X the XBOX? They went a full 360 with that one.

I'm quite certain that people said the same thing about the U.S. housing market pre-2007 (if smart people were worried, everyone would be bailing already) and the tulip mania of 1636 as well. Just because a market isn't responding rationally doesn't mean necessarily mean there isn't a problem.

How many bitcoins are in a ton?

It's both. Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the absorption of infrared light, which results in warmer temperatures that radiate mainly into the oceans. Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also increases the carbon content of rain, which precipitates mainly into the oceans increasing acidity. Both affect global patterns in different ways and both are unlikely to be friendly to our current mode of civilization.

I've heard that this wasn't an oversight, or perhaps was retconned into making sense, via the narrative that the run involves a loop around a black hole.

The logic here says that a black hole bends space around it, so a ship being able to navigate closer to the black hole means the run is made in a shorter distance than in a ship that has to stay farther away. Speed is a component in how close you can skirt a gravity well. In this scenario, the ability to reduce the distance of the run is in fact a noteworthy accomplishment, and Han is boasting about it.

I've seen several news reports that islands in the Caribbean are facing up to a 90% destruction of buildings and infrastructure, so I'm not sure the added 20% cost is providing the value you claim.

Using a plug in hybrid, it takes me approximately 3 kilowatt hours of electricity to drive to work. If I let the battery drain completely and drive on hydrocarbons, it takes roughly a quarter of a gallon. 3 KWHs costs me around $0.115*3 = $0.35. A quarter of a gallon of gasoline costs $2.80/4 = $0.70. Gasoline doesn't have to cost $5/gallon to make electrics cheaper to drive. This also discounts the part where I have far less maintenance (oil change every 20,000 miles instead of every 5,000; less frequent brake pad changes, etc).

Regarding generation ships, I seriously question their feasibility. I have a difficult time getting a computer to last more than 10 years, and that's with a friendly environment and easily replaced components. Getting a ship to last between hundreds and millions (depending on how close we can get to / how far we can exceed light speed) years with no additional supplies, essentially nothing going wrong, etc. just seems unimaginably difficult.