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Nigger's Day.

On Nigger's Day, all the niggers got an extra slice of watermellon.

Do Sysadmins get an extra slice of watermellon or is System Administrator Appreciation Day just another empty gesture by overpaid executives?

You need to learn how to construct an argument.

You're right, I wasn't very clear.

You can't claim the Shuttle is a shitty compromised bastard design, and then also say that NASA should have bought and used the Buran

Right. Except that the Buran's tile system is more robust than the Shuttles (according to a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan).

Anyway, the Russians still had their capsules. Building Buran to be completely automated suggests that they intended it to be for the heavy lifting - and that they were still going to use the capsules for humans (as they still do now).

You can burn up a capsule with a re-entry angle which is too steep. Just like the Shuttle.

Yes, again you are right. But in the shuttle you have to maintain the craft's orientation by moving control surfaces. There's an angle of attack that must be maintained relative to the direction the craft is actually moving in. There's a system there that can fail.

A capsule is a teardrop shape. Once it's re-entry trajectory is defined, the shape of the craft gives it aerodynamic stability. The correct attitude will automatically be found and maintained by interaction with the atmosphere. Push it out of alignment and it'll drift back. You could be tumbling and that motion will simply be stopped by the airflow. Almost nothing can go wrong.

And you'll have to supply a link to the alloys you claim will withstand 3000 deg F

There's an introduction here in an article entitled building a better shuttle, scroll down to this bit:

"So-called hot structures would replace thermal tiles, heat blankets, and other thermal-protection devices external to the craft's skin. Instead of relying on the continuous shunting of heat away to prevent structural materials from melting, engineers are developing metallic alloys or ceramics that don't melt--or even lose strength--at any temperature they might encounter during space flight."

The specific search you want to use is "hot structure" spaceflight to find out more information. There's even a NASA paper from 1976(!) referenced in one of those links that talks about hot structures.

Maybe thats because Russia turned in to a totalitarian state not a worker's paradise. There wasn't anything socialist, Communist or left, left in it, except empty rhetoric, pretty much from the point Stalin siezed power after Lenin's death. Same goes for China.

The problem with most governments, no matter how idealistic they start out, no matter the supposed idealogy, they turn in to a small group of people, like 1%, bent on acquring power and wealth at the expense of the other 99%. In China and Russia it was the upper echelon's of the Communist party. In China most of its big companies are controlled by the upper echelon's of the Communist party. They don't care about workers at all now, if they ever did. They are exploiting Chinese workers so ruthlessly, to get rich, its the envy of the Capitalist West.

In western democracies its wealthy businessmen, executives of big companies, working hand in hand with the politicians they buy and get elected with the purchase of TV ads (just like selling soap). They maintain a facade of democracy by running candidates from two parties both of which are in their pockets, vividly exemplified by the 2004 election when a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman ran against .... a wealthy Yale Skull and Bonesman.

This is compleatly off topic

Sulli,

I read you journals for a while now and thought you whould be interested in this Summery Article in the CS Monitor I whated to post it to a journal, but you've restricted replies to them.

I hope you will add it to you collection of links in your journal.

JFMILLER

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/dailyUpdate.htm l

This is compleatly off topic

Sulli,

I read you journals for a while now and thought you whould be interested in this Summery Article in the CS Monitor I whated to post it to a journal, but you've restricted replies to them.

I hope you will add it to you collection of links in your journal.

JFMILLER

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/dailyUpdate.htm l

This is compleatly off topic

Sulli,

I read you journals for a while now and thought you whould be interested in this Summery Article in the CS Monitor I whated to post it to a journal, but you've restricted replies to them.

I hope you will add it to you collection of links in your journal.

JFMILLER

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/dailyUpdate.htm l

Actually you are wrong. Nearly every big Chinese company is partly state owned or owned by sham subsidiaries that are owned by powerful party members, relatives of powerful party members or the state. The communists haven't given up any real control of their economy. China's economy is still massively control by the elite in the Communist party. They are just creating a facade of a free market to sucker the west in to pouring capital and IP in to their country. Its working great, you obviously fell for it .... sucker.

CNOOC which is the source of the latest controversy this week becasuse they are trying to buy Unocal, is a blatant case of this. They have a front company there to make it look like its a private company but it ISN'T. Its basicly the Chinese government with deep pockets bidding against a private American oil company and China would win were it not for all the alarm bells going off in the U.S.

It came out in divorce court that Neal Bush, the President's brother, was raking in $400K from a Chinese electronics company, Grace Semiconductor for next to no work. Grace is backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. It had the appearance the Chinese were buying influence with the Bush family with a blackmail edge since they sent free prostitutes to his hotel when he was in China.

Lenovo the company that bought the IBM PC division had around 30% state ownership before the deal.

Haier's CEO, Zhang Ruimin, is a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Haier is China's largest appliance maker and is bidding for Maytag.

Here is a good reference, see all the state and party ownership of their "free market" economy at the bottom.

Its also noteworthy how not a free market it is because it is impossible for an American or Europen company to just buy a Chinese company or open shop there. The government is mandating foreign companies partner with Chinese companies which is why IBM sold to Lenovo. In the process there is massive transfer of IP and market penetration from Western companies to Chinese companies.

The Chinese are totally suckering Western businessmen and politicians alike, "See our markets are free, come here and get rich" while they are really stealing them blind and most of the money is going in to the pockets of true blue errr... true red communists.

Do you have any evidence of this, like a link to support your claim? Didn't think so.

The 9/11 victims fund had enough money to pay each family 1.6 million dollars, if it was split evenly.

Instead, they used a formula based on how much income a persom was making.

It is possible for the family of a janitor to get $300,000, and a stock brokers family to get 4.35 million dollars.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0104/p11s1-coop.html

What made it all worse, is the government told all the families if they sued or disagreed with the distributation of funds, they would be denied any government victims money. So what is a poor family to do? They can't hire a lawyer and fight. A few of the ultra rich families decided to sue anyways, they must have felt that getting 10 times as much as everyone else was not enough for their "loss".

Yea, you really can say that the US is managing things better.

From a year ago for example, a large number of leading indicators showed progress in Iraq's infrastructure. Compare that to the Congo or Haiti in which the UN is running peacekeeping operations. While the US has made mistakes on the ground dealing with Iraqi and Afghani Prisoners and civilians, at least widespread allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of women, boys and girls havn't been happening like they are happening in the Congo.

"Didier Bourguet, a U.N. official from France, is pictured here in an image found on his hard drive, which was obtained by ABC News. Also on the hard drive were thousands of photos of him having sex with hundreds of young Congolese girls."

"...only a small percentage of the 11,000 U.N. personnel in Congo were involved." - So it's alright for UN Peacekeepers to molest kids in the Congo, but if a Koran gets wet in Gitmo people riot to death.

"Men from roughly 50 different countries make up the U.N. forces in Congo, and the United Nations does not conduct background checks. Furthermore, U.N. troops are exempt from prosecution in Congo."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0319/p01s03-woiq.htm l
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/UnitedNations/story?id= 489306&page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/UnitedNations/story?id= 489306&page=2

There is a plan, and in a nutshell, if something happens where the shuttle can not return, it is to dock with International Space Station. At that point a Soyuz capsule can be used for the astronauts to return to earth.

To quote from one article:
"If they find major damage, NASA might have the seven shuttle astronauts use the Space Station as a lifeboat until a new shuttle arrives - a worst-case scenario that would involve dumping the stricken shuttle in the Indian Ocean."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0712/p01s01-stss.htm l?s=eee

Because we know that they do. /Sarcasm

Really, when I think: what if all of the money that has been poured into war (cold|on drugs|on terrorism|on every other thing) had been put into improving the lives of people worldwide? While I don't think that we would have a Utopian society, I think that things would be a lot better all around. We would likely have better technological, scientific, and artistic achievement, less poverty, and AIDS would be a non-issue. We would also have a lot less "terrorism," because the whole world wouldn't be pissed off at the US and UK. Therefore, nutcases like Bin Laden would have nobody to recruit.

A tee-shirt I once saw said, "war is so 20th century." I think that about sums it up. We need to evolve now.

How much does the US give to Egypt? USD$1.3 Billion in military aid, and an average of $815 Million a year in economic assistance. That's the Lion's share of aid to the rest of the middle east.

How can you bring religion into this? The Israeli-Palestinian issue is a political struggle, though it has religious overtones. If you're going to start pointing fingers, have you read any right-wing Israeli press? There are Jewish extremists who claim that since they are the "chosen people of God" that they have the right to do as they wish. That's not "looking down on us," as you claim? Some settlers are saying it's OK to kill as many non-Jews as necessary if it protects even one Jew.

Most importantly, I must point out talking to the terrorists would not have prevented this either.

Slashdot comments have made me aware of how little Americans know about the activities of their own government. Yet surprisingly those with little awareness often have extremely strong and angry opinions.

Michael Moore's information about the involvement of Saudis with the Bush family came from this book:

The Iron Triangle: Inside the secret world of The Carlyle Group by Dan Briody, Wiley, 2003, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon

With what don't you agree concerning this book? Do you doubt that both the rich Saudis and the Bush family have investments in oil and weapons companies? Michael Moore's movie showed network footage of George W. Bush and a Saudi holding hands. Do you doubt that Bush holds hands with Saudis? Then read these articles from The Christian Science Monitor and CBS News. The Bush family calls one of the Saudis "Bandar Bush", and believes that he is their friend; that's completely untrue of course. Fifteen of the 18 attackers of the 9/11 bombings were Saudis, and some rich Saudis have supported al Qaeda.

Unocal, and many other oil companies, want to build a pipeline across Afghanistan, because that is the shortest route from rich oil fields to Pakistan and the ocean, with the exception of through unsafe Iran. Do you doubt this?

Notice: The links to the book are tied to my accounts with the booksellers. If you buy the book and don't want me to have a commission, do a search for the book to get a link that is not connected with me. After a year, I have made exactly $0.00 from these arrangements. I spent months reading the books and writing short reviews of them for my article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.

The average TV comes in at more like 22 cents for 10 hours. Source That's at 8.14 cents/kWa. Bigger screens take more power.

That's ~$6/month for juice to run a regular TV for 10 hours a day, every day. That's significantly cheaper than cable in most places.

There's a 2-year old article on Amtrak at the Christian Science Monitor's site that discusses this question in depth.

No, we are not all that much more free than these other countries. Our laws just persecute different groups.

Are you aware that the U.S. has the highest per-capita prison population of any nation in the world?

A lot of Americans are surprised to hear it, because we've been brought up from birth being told over and over again how great and free our nation is. It's true, the ideals we believe our country to hold are good ones -- but in practice, the people we elect often (usually?) ignore those ideals.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.htm l

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/globalinca rceration.shtml

Not that I see this happening but ...

1. Seize Joe SixPack's house
2. Base compensation on value in tax records (which is normally lower than market value)
3. Auction to highest bidder or offer back to Joe with an easy payment plan.
4. The tax base has now been increased.

Between this case, Kelo v. New London, and Gonzalez v. Raich, the people of the US have lost a big chunk of our rights.

FYI: With the decision in Gonzalez v. Raich (Raich lost) the Feds can now regulate any commodity with possible fungibility. From the tomato plants in your backyard, the local church's quilting circle or printing more than one of the same picture on your inkjet printer: it can be regulated and outlawed by the Feds.

Add in the proposed "flag burning amendment" and I'd say we're on our way to becoming quite a fascist state. All that will be left is work, shopping, prison and church (and if you're in Florida the last two have already been combined).

Sigh ...

Uh, that should be modded SAD, if there were such a mod.

Remember that guy Mike Emmons, who was a developer, his job was outsourced to India? But instead of actually sending the work to India they brought the Indians here, put them right at the displaced American's desks, and they had to train them in order to receive their severance pay?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0420/p03s01-usec.htm l
Especially since they hired a consulting firm (TATA Consulting) to provide and pay them, their pay wasn't then subject to the same payroll taxes that would be levied on the American's wages.
Outrageous, I think.

I also remember all I read about nuclear fusion and now I see it made available(ok, in actual testing and producing actual electricity) in a breadbox sized box...

Um, no. The breadbox-sized fusion device reported on a few weeks ago is nowhere near the break-even point.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p25s01-stss.htm l

Instead of being a defensive jerk and typing 'UMMMMM' why don't you try Google for an example? Try this nugget about Bush's lack of real concern for science and enviro issues...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0215/p03s01-uspo.htm l

I find it hard to believe that you would really be so naive about his statement, instead of just taking the hit and privately admitting Bush has big business as one of his major concerns, whether you like it or not. He's saying that concerns over the enviroment are sometimes being overlooked if it interferes with the convenience of an American or a corporation... Love or hate Bush, at least admit to the whole picture - but I guess you're only paying attention during election years?

And nice "Dan Quayle"-style spelling by the way.

Are you freer to move around in Canada or the US? (hint: you will not be checked for your papers when travelling inside Canada. hint: you can still carry a small knife on a Canadian domestic flight.)

I'm not sure what you're referring to in regards to the 'papers'. The only 'papers' I've ever had demanded were my driver's license and insurance, during a traffic stop for speeding, and I had the same thing happen in Canada. You've got me on the knife, but on the other hand, I can carry around a handgun in my trunk in the U.S. if I'm driving, so we're even.

Are your rights of privacy and protection guaranteed by the state? (hint: in the Canada it is not a crime to let someone know that the government is violating their constitutional rights.)

No, on the other hand, if we're talking about free speech, it is a crime to actually try using those constitutional rights. Win for the USA.

Are you free to do what you will with your property (hint: DMCA, fair use) Um, yeah. My definition of free to use my own property includes not having it seized by the government in taxes. Win for the USA.

The list goes on.

It sure does, and the US keeps winning on most counts. Too bad you can't talk about it in your own press.

The British, for example, have a much lower threashold to search and sieze, as well as detain without trial. England is not alone however.

I guess what I'm saying, with about 5 minutes worth of research, is, it's not wise to throw stones if you live in a glass house.

The British, for example, have a much lower threashold to search and sieze, as well as detain without trial. England is not alone however.

I guess what I'm saying, with about 5 minutes worth of research, is, it's not wise to throw stones if you live in a glass house.

I know that I would give more weight to the CSM's coverage of this story than I would, say, Fox News, The Washington Post or Slashdot.org.

The Christian Science Monitor is LIBERAL??!! Are you kidding me, when the very next link was to a story about right wing students fighting back against liberal bias in teaching? (The kid put up posters equating Islam with beheadings, which they made him take down.)
Even running that story is pretty clearly Republican. . . do you think the Christian Science Monitor would even make a peep if the school made an islamic student take down posters equating Christianity with the inquisition? If they did, it would be to applaud, but in this case they side with the kid because he's Christian.

http://csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p01s03-legn.html?s= u

• Video-game industry mulls over the future beyond shoot-'em-ups (06/03/05)

As someone who actually reads the newspaper regularly, no I wouldn't expect such a simplistic idea from them...

The Christian Science Monitor tends to be one of the more liberal newspapers in the US. I wouldn't classify them ideologically with papers like the Washington Times. The CSM is also not about spreading the the Christian Science church's doctrine. It was started by Mary Baker Eddy to provide fair and accurate reporting. This was a response to attacks on her from a Joseph Pulitzer newspaper.

For a more indepth explnation:
http://www.csmonitor.com/aboutus/about_the_monitor .html

California's Republican mayor just signed something that will get the state to reduce their carbon output. And to show that blatant energy wasting (in the form of excess driving) is bipartisan, just look at LA. They are always considered way liberal, yet they drive so damn much. From what I have seen, most of liberal California drives a ton.

Here is a good overview of recent carbon reduction initiatives in the US. It also talks about how over 150 city mayors have gotten together to fight carbon output and energy use. Even though Bush won't do it, states and cities still might. Between California and the cities represented, that is a large number of Americans.

Report: 108 Died In U.S. Custody

Polls consistently show that a (thin) majority of Iraqis feel better off now than before the war

Really, here is a cut and paste for you :

The bigger risk: Polls find that at least 80 percent of Iraqis - whatever their views on the insurgency, democracy, the removal of Saddam Hussein, and other issues - want US armed forces to leave their nation.

Here is the full link http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0930/p17s02-cogn.htm l
Yes, I could have found something more recent, but hey, I read both sides, it's not my job to educate those who choose to ignore the truth.

Keep telling yourself that the US is doing a "good thing" if it lets you sleep at night. Those who have to live with Bush's foreign policy every day seem to see it differently.

I would agree with you that to a certain degree the current EU is akin to the early Confederation of the American colonies.

The primary difference between the American constitutional republic as it exists today (and arguably since before the American Civil War) is that there has always been a standing army controlled by the Federal branch of government. The EU has no such thing, and there does not seem to be a provision for the establishment of such an army in the EU constitution. It is primarily an immigration and trade agreement rather than some formation of a true continental government.

However, it acts as a continental government. So again, I ask what is their actual power to enforce member compliance to an EC decision? If (as an extremely unlikely example) they bar Microsoft from doing business in the EU, how will they enforce that? If England or Denmark say, "No, we want to import Microsoft products. The economic cost to retool 80% of our computing industry is prohibitive and would ruin us," how would the EU respond to that?

In the American system, borders are controlled at the Federal level, so preventng (say) California from importing a banned product is fairly straightforward. It is illegal, for example, to import any product from an embargoed country like Cuba, so the Federal government is empowered and able through the use of the Armed Forces to physically prevent the importation of such goods.

The EU, without an actual enforcement force, must rely on the goodwill and willingness of a member state to implement and follow the regulations and decisions of the EC. However, as we've seen in the UN Iraq Oil for Food debacle, states that have no willingness to follow the toothless laws (France, Russia) will circumvent the system to their own gain.

So in our hypothetical situation, if Britain or Denmark decide to import Microsoft goods against the decision of an EU court, what do they stand to lose? EU membership? Massive sanctions? If the EU were to eject a large state such as Britain, how much credibility as a whole would the EU retain?

The Governor of Colorado and The University of Colorado's Board of Regents are trying to strip a Boulder professor (at CU) of his tenure for publishing and speaking out on the war in Iraq and the attacks on 9/11. Now I don't want to get into whether he is right or wrong but persecuting him for speaking about his beliefs is wrong.
This article says their stated reasons for trying to fire him are that they've accused him of plagiarism and lying.

"They've been legally buying it from Microsoft Canada."

This is not possible. Under the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, US companies and their foreign subsidiaries are specifically forbidden to trade with Cuba.

You can go to jail for that.

They have already done this for other types of "reaching out and touching animals."

Christian Science Monitor says bad acting, bad dialog, but visually spectacular.

(which means it's no different than the first two - and frankly, 99% of Hollywood's offerings for the past 20 years).

Of course, I'll watch it because I need to relieve the tension of the uncompleted story, that's been left in this state since I read about Darth Vader and Obiwan's volcano fight in Starlog back in like, 1977 or something. Worth $9? meh.

For those clamoring for stats:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.htm l

If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17. ..
An estimated 4,299,000 former prisoners are still alive..By 2010, the number of American residents in prison or with prison experience is expected to jump to 7.7 million, or 3.4 percent of all adults, according to the new report.

And that's probably just people who went to prison; that doesn't include people who were only fined for a felony and/or received a suspended sentence and/or did community service, and perhaps even excludes people who went to jail rather than prison.

Not 1-in-5, but even for white males, uncomfortably close.

In upholding his conviction and the mandatory identity-disclosure law, the majority justices also said the law only requires that a suspect disclose his or her name, rather than requiring production of a driver's license or other document.

I take that to mean that even if a state does require you to identify yourself, that does not mean you must produce a document to do so. I was unable to find anything suggesting a pedestrian must produce an ID card.

Hervé This (a molecular gastronomer) built a machine which, given the ingredients and a formula, makes the sauce. You can make mayonaise (the formula is H\E) or meringues for example. Of course you have to know the formula.

http://www.chemsoc.org/chembytes/ezine/2003/burke_ oct03.htm

"Meanwhile, This is working with the Institut für Micromechanik in Mainz, Germany, on a prototype of a machine that makes dishes from a 'calculus of recipes'." -- The machine exists now.

From the CS Monitor: http://blogs.csmonitor.com/notebook_iraq/2005/03/i ndex.html#a0003873189

It looks like the checkpoints have a real culture clash problem -- prior Iraqi government wanted citizens to speed by as fast as possible (or else face possible arrest), while the US forces want people nice & slow. So lots of Iraqis tend to speed by, just trying to follow the last commands they've heard on the topic.

That's great, but in true Slashdot fashion, you've neglected the fact that the Monitor isn't a religious paper. It's a reputable, independent publication similar to PBS in its own right, and while it isn't worth much for science journalism it's a great source for all things political.

Lets see as little as 2 years ago we had the highest incarceration rate in the world, we have put to death innocent people, and if you look you can find more ugly stories about the failed war on drugs than you can shake a stick at.

And after all this I'm supposed to care about a few prisoners who make websites? Ooookkkk.

Oh, and all you right wing guys feel free to start flaming me............now.

They're changing their name to "Christian Scientific American.

There's already the Christian Science Monitor, but it appears to take a more balanced, secular approach to journalism. How dare it! :-)

As for Scientific American, it'll probably be July or August before I get round to reading this April edition as a UK subscriber. Okay, maybe not quite that long, but the issues do seem to take the slow boat across the Atlantic...

Founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy

Is the paper a religious periodical?

No, it's a real newspaper published by a church -- The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Mass., USA.

Some of us may remember a flap of the MPAA in 1998 where the MPAA was going after girl scout troops that were singing the Macarena, a popular song at the time with a dance that went along with it. They didn't want the Girl Scouts to use any copyrighted music on their boom boxes... Nope, nosirreee, stop that dancing and listening to music that is not on the radio girls!

The artists stepped in to stop the madness. Here, read it for yourself - http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/d urable/1998/06/11/fp51s1-csm.htm (Thanks uncle google).

If someone is violating the law that is one thing. Planting evidence is something entirely different. Anyone doing that should face a stiff penalty for that. Perhaps they should be convicted of the original crime and have to serve the punishment.

The Supreme Court has only said that you have to give your name when asked for identity.

No, this is 100% about journalism and blogging. If a New York Times reporter had received the same information as the bloggers and reported it, he would not have to reveal his source. Journalists are protected in that regard.

Tell that to Judith Miller, the Times reporter who has been ordered by the courts to reveal her source. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p09s01-coop.htm l/

... images is that they can find out when their goverment is telling lies to start a war ...

Sorry. I confused the 1.20 with South Korea.

Nonetheless, my point still stands. You see gangs of male Indians in American colleges and companies. They talk claptrap about how great Indian society is, and they send their kids back to the Indian fatherland each year to imbibe them with Indian culture. These Indian animals reject Westernization.

Guess what? They kill Indian girls so horribly that the sex ratio is horribly out of whack. There are 1.10 Indian boys to girls. The normal ratio is 1.05, which Japan and the rest of the West have.

Do you think that "it" is rather ironic that the male Indian animal types SlashDot articles about how great India is yet he does so from the comfort of his home in the USA? That Indian animal should put up or shut up. He should stand by what he says and get the hell out of the USA and go back to India, which he considers a "haven".

As it is, hybrids barely beat out economy cars. Add 300 pounds more batteries, and they will actually get worse gas mileage, once those batteries run down.

1. Hybids can do considerably better; for instance, the Accord hybrid is tuned for performance while still delivering fairly good economy (design tradeoff).
2. At least one Future Truck hybrid managed to add all the hybrid features to an Explorer while subtracting weight from the smaller engine and superfluous drivetrain components. According to this CSM article:

   With engineering students at the University of California at Davis, Professor Frank has spent more than a decade turning production vehicles into plug-in hybrids using off-the-shelf parts. "We just built a high-performance plug-in hybrid Ford Explorer," he says. "It's 325 horsepower - 200 of that horsepower is electric and 125 is gasoline. This car goes like a rocket, but still gets double the fuel economy of a regular hybrid. And for the first 50 miles it is all electric - zero emissions."

   ...

   Built on a stock Explorer platform, the hybrid retains all its original interior space. There is also more space in the engine compartment because the vehicle lacks moving parts like a fan belt, generator, water pump, and even a transmission. Because it has fewer than one-fifth the number of moving parts of a conventional SUV, the hybrid's weight, even with a heavier battery, stays the same.

Even worse, unless you size up the gas engine and generator to handle the extra battery weight, it would be easy to run an electrical deficit which could leave you stranded with a puny 1 liter engine to haul your extra heavy hybrid up a hill.

1. Maximum power requirements are typically in acceleration, not hill-climbing.
2. Running out of battery isn't "stranding", it's just going slower. Like, you know, having to downshift when climbing a mountain with a load?
3. These folks appear to be using engines in the ~2 liter department, but they're getting better-than-V8 performance out of the system. Better performance appears to be one of the common elements of hybrids, though the extent to which it is stressed vs. economy is a design tradeoff.