You could probably pick up an old C4 Vette for cheap as your base model.
@alleggerita: Excuse me, sir, but your bias is showing. The relevant facts are that:
* BP, not Transocean, is the holder of a license issued by the United States Department of the Interior giving the holder the right to drill and pump in that location.
* BP, not Transocean, operates the rig, using its employees and following its procedures.
* At present, the blowout appears to have resulted from a wellhead-maintenance procedure. Again: BP, not Transocean, specifies the procedures to be followed.
Applying your "logic", then Enterprise would be liable if I rented a Malibu, floored it, and aimed it at the overlook on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
I expect the leasing contract between BP and Transocean has some set of provisions that address liability for equipment failures. I also expect it has provisions that address the financial consequences of equipment loss as a result of operator misuse.
@badasscat: Car:
Monthly gas: $120 (and rising!)
There you go, then. I'm not a tax attorney (and free tax advice from a commenter on the Internet is worth what you paid for it), but it seems like there ought to be a way to write off the transit expenses, too. No?
@bmoreDLJ: You're also toting around more car, and I'd bet you'd be doing it with a slightly smaller battery pack to make room for the load floor in back.
Plus the plants I just picked up at Home Depot, which are a lot harder to stuff into the trunk of the Volt.
@DonFlowmaster: The Cleveland area has a whole bunch of these high-rise apartment complexes dotted along the lakefront. The narrow end usually points directly at the water, so you don't have so much of the "water view/parking lot view" phenomenon. They're really nice in the summer, but the balconies are a cold bitch in the winter.
@Jeb_Hoge: Well, OK. At that level of generality, though, one might even observe that there's a certain historical precedent.
[en.wikipedia.org]
@BrtStlnd: Nick Denton doesn't pay you by the page view.
@snapoversteer's profile on Sikes's website has a misleading picture: It's haiku if it reflects nature; if not, it's senryu.
@Straight6er: Marketing drivel isn't German? Weird unpronounceable jargon isn't German? NEIN, mein Herr! Germany owns the patent on weird unpronouncable jargon.
I believe they call it "German."
@GreenN_Gold: I'm a lawyer. You can't trademark alphanumeric names. Ford and Toyota had a big pissing match over "LS" (Lincoln v. Lexus), but them's the rules.
@Wes Siler: It's not like Bloomberg pulled the numbers out of his butt. Take a look at the table on page S-3 of the final report ([www.nyc.gov]). The numbers are from the Census Bureau (which is pretty good at counting things), not from the city administration.
@Vette5885: Who is this "they" of whom you speak? The Bilderberg Group? The Trilateral Commission?
There's an old concept in law and economics called "the tragedy of the commons." It goes back to feudal land use patterns in the UK - you were allowed to graze your sheep on the commons. When the rural population started climbing, the number of sheep being grazed on the commons started outstripping the land's ability to recover. Since no one had to pay for the "damage" (ie, the burden imposed on the common asset), the cost was externalized (ie, became somebody else's problem). But the use went on, leading to the collapse of the commons as a grazing resource, leaving all of the users worse off. The "prisoners' dilemma" is another way of expressing the same problem, in a 2-dimensional universe.
Solving this problem is the principle behind gas taxes (use more gas, pay more money), tolls (use more road, pay more money), and variable pricing on electricity (use more electricity when it costs the utility more to make it, pay more money on a per-unit basis). It's also the principle behind the London congestion charge (use more space at a time when space is hard to get, pay more money).
Wes, did you read the article in the Times? Because your "a far lower number than are dumped into the area daily by the two tunnels alone" simply isn't supported by the numbers. According to the city's study, "only one in 10 people travel along 34th Street by car, including taxis."
@snap_understeer_ftw: DO want. They built a fleet of planes, to haul parts of other planes. Awesome.
@Gimmi Mørgäikkönën: *THERE*'s your new tanker...
Not to be That Guy, or anything, but all of the hashtags are 747, not 787.
@boot shrew: @brc is never late, because of his v8: Or do the same thing as Peugeot has been doing, and stick double numbers in there: 7007, 7017, 7027, and so on. They could use the second number from left for the "primary" model (like the middle number in the current series), and the third number for the sub-model like the "dash" numbers that Boeing now uses on 737s and 747s (737-800, and so forth). So you'd have a 70x7 aircraft, a 71x7.
@twitchykun(lvl. 75 JDM Hoon): It's not you; it's them.
@cobrajoe: You're not wrong, especially in that rear-quarter shot. In fairness, that's at least partly due to Buick improving its game.
@mkbruin: @buzz killington, uplift mofo party planner: @Scotty_Beezle: In addition to the efficiency of pollution control at a single massive point source rather than a number of distributed sources, there's a significant efficiency improvement in "units of hydrocarbon consumed per mile driven." It turns out that automobile internal-combustion engines are relatively inefficient at converting gasoline to work - a bunch of the theoretical BTUs don't get burned, and either go out the tailpipe or burned off by the catalytic converter; more get wasted as heat; more get lost to friction and mechanical inefficiency in the drivetrain; and so on. Even on the current power grid, there are fewer efficiency losses (from "fire to wheel", so to speak) if electricity is produced centrally through combustion of hydrocarbons, transmitted long distances to charge a battery, and the current from the battery is used to power electric motors to drive the vehicle.
Of course, there's the very real - and very much currently in the news - negative impact of coal mining on the lives of those involved. On the other hand, with a central electric grid, you have the ability to add non-carbon power sources (hydro, solar) or carbon power sources that accomplish other desirable goals (waste incinerators, for instance) in a way that's not possible for internal combustion automobiles.
