Snails, frogs... do we really want the children of America to start eating like the French?
Well since the French are renowned for having some of the best cuisine in the world that sounds like a very good idea.
Plus if you think French cuisine is heavy on snails and frogs you really need learn something about French cooking. That's like saying that US cuisine is based on Rocky Mountain oysters. Yeah, some people eat it but it's not exactly a diet staple.
There will be more Tesla Model X sold at $120K than at $130K.
That is not necessarily true. While that is normally true for most markets there are exceptions. I explain below.
As such, the expense of putting lambo doors on one will price someone out of buying it.
That argument doesn't always work when you are talking about high end luxury cars. I used to be in the business back when I owned an auction company. High end car markets are more like selling artwork than anything else. Utility is NOT the primary concern among buyers of these vehicles. This is not a purchase being made for practical reasons. Without the fancy doors it is entirely possible that they would actually sell less cars overall than if they made it simpler and lowered the price a bit. People buy these vehicles for many of the same sorts of reasons people buy expensive artwork. Fun, conspicuous consumption, investment, etc. While the Model X has a fair amount of utility the buying equation is more complicated than for a $30K family sedan. The difference in price between a car selling for $120K versus $130K is relatively inconsequential for buyers interested in products at that price point. Not to say it doesn't matter at all but the usual expectations don't necessarily hold.
Seems as though they are just vitamins, water and fiber.
And protein and carbohydrates and sometimes even fat. Plus sodium, potassium and plenty of other stuff that is good for you. If veggies were just vitamins, water and fiber it would be impossible to live on a vegetable only diet. One serving of broccoli for instance has 4.2g of protein, 10g of carbs including 3.8g of fiber, 468mg of potassium, 220% of your RDA of vitamin C plus assorted other vitamins and it only has 50 calories so you can eat a lot of it.
Well, schools tend to boil the vitamins out, and fiber is arguable whether it's even necessary.
You can't boil the vitamins out (not all of them anyway) and there is no argument whatsoever about the necessity and benefits of fiber. Not by anyone who has a clue about dietary health.
What is sad is that scientists got paid to "figure" this out. Parents have know this forever.
I coach kids in sports. I can assure you that a LOT of parents do not understand this and you can see the results in their kid's waistlines. Furthermore most of these same parents wouldn't deign to eat a vegetable themselves. Most of the parents of the parents of the kids I coach are fat, out of shape and eat like garbage cans. It's no surprise that the kids end up in the same boat.
Well, why not just reduce the serving size of the "delicious" food on your plate? Three chicken wings + as much broccoli as you like...
Because the result is three consumed chicken wings and a pile of untouched broccoli. If you want the kids to eat veggies it is a bad idea to pile it next to something much yummier. Give me a pile of veggies or a piece of chocolate cake, I know which one I'm going to want to eat first. Kids aren't any different and have less self control. If you give them an attractive bad choice, most of them are going to make that bad choice.
Or, maybe those kids' taste buds are actually signalling them to get the nutritious food first, and eat the unimportant remainder later (or never).
No the child's taste buds are telling them to eat the energy rich foods first. This happens because we evolved in a time when food was scarce and energy rich foods like meat were a prize to be treasured.
What's the nutritious value of broccoli, anyways
20 Seconds on google will answer that question for you. It's quite good for you actually.
Maybe kids are fat because they are being served prepared foods with insane amounts of sugar (as in HFCS)
You mean like chicken tenders? Kids today are fat because they are getting way too much food and way too little exercise. That is the fault of the adults and no one else.
There is nothing new about this tactic. You can get almost anyone to make choices by framing the problem. Child whines that they want a cookie. You don't ask if they wouldn't want an apple instead. You ask do they want an apple or carrots? You frame the issue and give them choices but only the choices you want. The kid is happy because he got to make the choice (or thinks he did) and you are happy because he's eating something that is nutritious.
Politicians do this all the time to (alleged) adults. They frame issues and present a limited menu of options out of which the most appealing option is the one they want you to go for. Works astonishingly effectively
Can't or won't? I would have thought that it would be possible to create a habitat in either that would require nothing incoming.
So far we cannot. We've tried several times and haven't cracked the problem yet. That's not to say we won't figure it out or that the problem is intractable but so far we haven't even figured it out on Earth much less in zero-G. I have some confidence that with enough resources applied we can solve the problem but to date that hasn't happened.
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
WE haven't been to Mars. We've sent tools there. Huge difference.
So why would we send people?
Lots of reasons. We'd learn a ton by doing it. We'd develop a lot of amazing technology. The economic benefits would be enormous. It would advance our knowledge faster than almost anything else we could do including sending more probes. It would be the greatest exploration in human history. It would inspire generations of scientists and engineers.
Need I go on?
The real question is why wouldn't we go there? The only answer to that is because we lack vision or courage or political will. The likely benefits of going greatly outweigh the likely benefits of staying on Earth.
A lot of people here on slashdot are interested in sex, too. That doesn't mean this is the place to discuss it.
It's been discussed plenty here on slashdot. Your userid is low enough you ought to know that. And just because you don't care about a particular topic doesn't mean others aren't interested. I could not care less about vintage video games or bitcoin but it clearly fascinates some folks here. Tesla automobiles are clearly a technology that is of interest to nerds and its pretty easy to argue that it matters.
How about a 4-person electric car with solar panels on the roof that produces more energy than it uses by average per day use* ?
Wake me up when it is a vehicle that is actually useful for anything practical. There isn't enough energy per square foot to power anything but an extremely light vehicle with no frills at all. Certainly nothing remotely comparable to the cars you and I drive and nothing you'd dare drive in inclement weather. It's a nice little project but nothing more.
Except this isn't new technology, we've had hybrids and electrics for a while now.
That doesn't mean it isn't new technology. Granted it is an incremental improvement on existing technology but it is still new and represents what currently is state of the art in electric vehicles.
A while back I wondered if coating a vehicle in solar panels would allow it to run itself.
Short answer is no. There isn't enough solar energy hitting a square foot of ground even on the sunniest of days to power anything remotely the weight of a modern car. I think most places get something like 10-30kwh of solar energy per square foot per year. A Tesla has a 90kwh battery in it. So even if you coated it in perfectly efficient solar cells you wouldn't get more than a few feet.
I think something like 4 mWh of solar energy hit the roof of your average gas station a sunny day
Don't know where you got your "data" but that is wrong. One square foot of roof gets about 10-30KWh per YEAR. Even if the roof is 1000 square feet (100x100) that means it will get about 82 KWh per day on a nice sunny day. That isn't even enough to charge one Tesla fully per day. It might offset their costs slightly but it's hardly going to make a huge dent.
I'd rather have a car that goes from 0 to 60 in 6.4 seconds and goes 500 miles. 250 miles just doesn't cut in some parts of the US (out West).
It won't be long before it's not an either/or decision. Right now the state of the art is at 250 miles. I expect to see electric vehicles with a 500+ mile range in the next few years. The folks at Tesla have already been talking about vehicles with 700+ mile range. In the mean time there are hybrid cars with good 0-60 times on the market today which can go much further than 250 miles without refueling.
Such over-design tends to spectacularly and expensively fail as cars get older or get into accidents.
Not really a relevant concern when you are talking about a $100K+ vehicle. A bit of exuberant design is expected to justify the price tag. I'm guessing you aren't really into the luxury car market much.
With multiple hinges, sensors, control units that all could potentially fail, you will end up with a used car without functioning doors. Who wants that? On other hand, simple hinge just keep working.
Yes but simple isn't necessarily interesting. Nobody buys a supercar because they want simple basic transportation. They want a bit of panache, otherwise there is no point.
So you think, "I will lease for 4 years, and will never see these problems". Well, resale value is affected by reliability, and as a result costs of these failures will be baked into your lease costs.
Buying a car like this is not a decision driven by expected resale value. You buy a car like this because you have the disposable income and you want to own one.
Why is this a story on slashdot anyway? Jalopnik, sure.... but this isn't news for nerds, and not really even news that matters. It's just a new model press release.
Speaking as a nerd I find it fascinating. Please remember that nerds aren't just computer programmers. Some of us are interested in technology that doesn't have a keyboard and mouse. Furthermore it DOES matter. Tesla is having some fascinating effects on the car industry and they are proving that all electric vehicles are a viable commercial technology. In case you hadn't noticed a lot of people here on slashdot are very interested in what Tesla is doing.
Worrying about the off road capabilities on a $130,000 car is kind of silly.
That depends on why you bought it. A Bowler EXR costs more than that but is awesome offroad. A Mercedes G class is pretty legit offroad too and is in that price bracket and people do drive them offroad.
Trust me, that's not what people are using them for.
Mostly you are correct. But the claim was that the Model X was superior to the Mercedes G class in every way which is easily and demonstrably not true.
I, who makes probably 4 times what they make, drives a completely stock Prius and saves every dollar from the gas I don't buy and wheels and tires I don't buy
Maybe but they probably actually enjoy driving their car. If you drive a Prius it's clear you don't care about enjoying the ride.
But given their car pricing, the base model X would be price competitive with the Mercedes G class, and the Tesla would out class the Mercedes in just about every way (including looks).
We'll have to disagree about the looks. I think the G class is sharp and crossover style SUVs look kind of silly. They're simply too much of a compromise and I don't really understand the point of them. If you want a truck, get a truck. The crossovers don't have the space of a real truck but don't have the handling of a comparable sedan. Plus I have yet to see a crossover SUV that is worth a crap if you leave the pavement. The Model X is about as good looking a crossover as I've seen but that's kind of damning with faint praise.
Plus the G class has legitimate off road chops. I'm pretty dubious the Model X would be worth a crap off road. It's clearly designed to be a high performance on-road vehicle. The G class is a go anywhere vehicle and it looks as good around town as it does off road.
...except super capacitors are designed to charge/discharge rapidly... so I'm confused as to the point you are making.
Simple version. Failure = easy. Explosion = hard.
An explosion is a difficult thing to do even if you are trying to get one. It requires a rather fussy set of circumstances to be possible. Explosions by accident are exceptionally rare.
Accidental discharge wouldn't result in an explosion per se, but could start fires and would definitely be lethal to someone who discharged a super capacitor accidentally through themselves.
Which is why you design the system to make accidental discharge difficult to achieve. The mechanics of this are well understood. You could easily cause a rapid discharge of a car battery but in practice it isn't a big problem.
Things like economies, law/morality, and mathematics are more or less intractable for science, and it cannot make many statements about supernatural beliefs.
Economics is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Don't know where you got the idea that it isn't. Economics is studied using the scientific method very effectively. It is a difficult field of study because of its complexity but that is no different from any number of other scientific fields such as meteorology, ecology, geology and others.
Science frequently informs and underpins laws and morals. It also can study their effects.
Mathematics is really a language used by scientists to describe the world. It describes the world around us with uncanny precision. It's not a science but virtually every scientific inquiry utilizes math.
Religion is (perhaps surprisingly) fairly rational, as in rationalism.
Religion is by definition NOT rational. It is faith in an unfalsifiable concept. What rationality it does have is largely argued from false or unprovable premises. Furthermore religions do not restrict themselves to purely logical conclusions from their premises. They frequently cherry pick arguments to support whatever view they wish to hold at the time. No, I disagree that religion is a form of rationalism.
Where religion makes statements about the observable world, it can and often does conflict with empirical truth. Sometimes these things are called miracles.
Those of us who are not beholden to religions call them fictional stories or sometimes unexplained phenomena instead of miracles.
science tells you how the world works. religion tells you how to live in the world
I don't follow a religion and don't need one to tell me how to live in the world. Billions of people around the world do not utilize or require religion to tell them how to conduct their lives. QED your argument is bogus.
of course there will be people who will insist religion and science do conflict.
They frequently do because the religious zealots continue to try to push their unsubstantiated beliefs into science. They keep trying to push creationism into science classrooms. They keep trying to interfere with genetic research and reproductive science. They try to deny the evidence of evolution and push their theology into textbooks. It happens constantly.
science and religion simply do not conflict. they examine entirely different realms that do not interact.
Demonstrably false. The conflict regularly and interact frequently. Mostly of the conflict is from religious people trying to force their beliefs on others and scientific people defending society from their lunacy.
Catholic theology has always been tolerant and accepting of science.... The church, however, has persecuted scientists many times, and surpressed scientific inquiry.
That is a distinction without a difference. Theology is not independent of the church, particularly in a hierarchical organization like the catholic church. Some may wander into other forms of theology but that is a different issue. And no, they have demonstrably not always been tolerant of science. Even today the catholic church has an uneasy relationship with science despite their occasional claims to the contrary. Church doctrine routinely contradicts scientific evidence and interferes with scientific inquiry, particularly when it comes to reproductive science and genetics in recent years.
Do you have any comprehension of the amount of energy stored in a 3-oz bottle of distilled water?. E=mc^2. If I didn't slip a decimal, the blast radius should run to approximately 6 miles.
Exactly my point. The energy density of a substance is almost irrelevant to the discussion. What matters is whether there is a means to release that energy catastrophically. In most cases there is no easy way to do it. We don't see cell phones detonating. We don't see cars exploding. We don't see laptop batteries going ka-boom. Worst case we normally see is a comparatively gentle and slow combustion. Damaging sure but hardly an explosion.
Imagine being able to recharge your car faster than you could fill it up with gas.
Not quite that simple. There is a serious heat issue to deal with when you are transferring that much electric power over wires even if the power is available. Filling up something like a Tesla safely in less than 3 minutes is not as easy as it sounds. You can't just pump more juice over the same wires. You start getting into needing superconductors to handle the juice unless you have wires the thickness of your arm.
Stations could add solar panels for some additional "free" electricity, etc.
That would be a LOT of solar panels. I'm not sure you appreciate the amount of power we are talking about here. A few solar panels on the roof would add so little power it would barely be measurable.
Slashdot Mirror
Snails, frogs... do we really want the children of America to start eating like the French?
Well since the French are renowned for having some of the best cuisine in the world that sounds like a very good idea.
Plus if you think French cuisine is heavy on snails and frogs you really need learn something about French cooking. That's like saying that US cuisine is based on Rocky Mountain oysters. Yeah, some people eat it but it's not exactly a diet staple.
There will be more Tesla Model X sold at $120K than at $130K.
That is not necessarily true. While that is normally true for most markets there are exceptions. I explain below.
As such, the expense of putting lambo doors on one will price someone out of buying it.
That argument doesn't always work when you are talking about high end luxury cars. I used to be in the business back when I owned an auction company. High end car markets are more like selling artwork than anything else. Utility is NOT the primary concern among buyers of these vehicles. This is not a purchase being made for practical reasons. Without the fancy doors it is entirely possible that they would actually sell less cars overall than if they made it simpler and lowered the price a bit. People buy these vehicles for many of the same sorts of reasons people buy expensive artwork. Fun, conspicuous consumption, investment, etc. While the Model X has a fair amount of utility the buying equation is more complicated than for a $30K family sedan. The difference in price between a car selling for $120K versus $130K is relatively inconsequential for buyers interested in products at that price point. Not to say it doesn't matter at all but the usual expectations don't necessarily hold.
Seems as though they are just vitamins, water and fiber.
And protein and carbohydrates and sometimes even fat. Plus sodium, potassium and plenty of other stuff that is good for you. If veggies were just vitamins, water and fiber it would be impossible to live on a vegetable only diet. One serving of broccoli for instance has 4.2g of protein, 10g of carbs including 3.8g of fiber, 468mg of potassium, 220% of your RDA of vitamin C plus assorted other vitamins and it only has 50 calories so you can eat a lot of it.
Well, schools tend to boil the vitamins out, and fiber is arguable whether it's even necessary.
You can't boil the vitamins out (not all of them anyway) and there is no argument whatsoever about the necessity and benefits of fiber. Not by anyone who has a clue about dietary health.
What is sad is that scientists got paid to "figure" this out. Parents have know this forever.
I coach kids in sports. I can assure you that a LOT of parents do not understand this and you can see the results in their kid's waistlines. Furthermore most of these same parents wouldn't deign to eat a vegetable themselves. Most of the parents of the parents of the kids I coach are fat, out of shape and eat like garbage cans. It's no surprise that the kids end up in the same boat.
Well, why not just reduce the serving size of the "delicious" food on your plate? Three chicken wings + as much broccoli as you like...
Because the result is three consumed chicken wings and a pile of untouched broccoli. If you want the kids to eat veggies it is a bad idea to pile it next to something much yummier. Give me a pile of veggies or a piece of chocolate cake, I know which one I'm going to want to eat first. Kids aren't any different and have less self control. If you give them an attractive bad choice, most of them are going to make that bad choice.
Or, maybe those kids' taste buds are actually signalling them to get the nutritious food first, and eat the unimportant remainder later (or never).
No the child's taste buds are telling them to eat the energy rich foods first. This happens because we evolved in a time when food was scarce and energy rich foods like meat were a prize to be treasured.
What's the nutritious value of broccoli, anyways
20 Seconds on google will answer that question for you. It's quite good for you actually.
Maybe kids are fat because they are being served prepared foods with insane amounts of sugar (as in HFCS)
You mean like chicken tenders? Kids today are fat because they are getting way too much food and way too little exercise. That is the fault of the adults and no one else.
There is nothing new about this tactic. You can get almost anyone to make choices by framing the problem. Child whines that they want a cookie. You don't ask if they wouldn't want an apple instead. You ask do they want an apple or carrots? You frame the issue and give them choices but only the choices you want. The kid is happy because he got to make the choice (or thinks he did) and you are happy because he's eating something that is nutritious.
Politicians do this all the time to (alleged) adults. They frame issues and present a limited menu of options out of which the most appealing option is the one they want you to go for. Works astonishingly effectively
Can't or won't? I would have thought that it would be possible to create a habitat in either that would require nothing incoming.
So far we cannot. We've tried several times and haven't cracked the problem yet. That's not to say we won't figure it out or that the problem is intractable but so far we haven't even figured it out on Earth much less in zero-G. I have some confidence that with enough resources applied we can solve the problem but to date that hasn't happened.
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
WE haven't been to Mars. We've sent tools there. Huge difference.
So why would we send people?
Lots of reasons. We'd learn a ton by doing it. We'd develop a lot of amazing technology. The economic benefits would be enormous. It would advance our knowledge faster than almost anything else we could do including sending more probes. It would be the greatest exploration in human history. It would inspire generations of scientists and engineers.
Need I go on?
The real question is why wouldn't we go there? The only answer to that is because we lack vision or courage or political will. The likely benefits of going greatly outweigh the likely benefits of staying on Earth.
A lot of people here on slashdot are interested in sex, too. That doesn't mean this is the place to discuss it.
It's been discussed plenty here on slashdot. Your userid is low enough you ought to know that. And just because you don't care about a particular topic doesn't mean others aren't interested. I could not care less about vintage video games or bitcoin but it clearly fascinates some folks here. Tesla automobiles are clearly a technology that is of interest to nerds and its pretty easy to argue that it matters.
How about a 4-person electric car with solar panels on the roof that produces more energy than it uses by average per day use* ?
Wake me up when it is a vehicle that is actually useful for anything practical. There isn't enough energy per square foot to power anything but an extremely light vehicle with no frills at all. Certainly nothing remotely comparable to the cars you and I drive and nothing you'd dare drive in inclement weather. It's a nice little project but nothing more.
Except this isn't new technology, we've had hybrids and electrics for a while now.
That doesn't mean it isn't new technology. Granted it is an incremental improvement on existing technology but it is still new and represents what currently is state of the art in electric vehicles.
A while back I wondered if coating a vehicle in solar panels would allow it to run itself.
Short answer is no. There isn't enough solar energy hitting a square foot of ground even on the sunniest of days to power anything remotely the weight of a modern car. I think most places get something like 10-30kwh of solar energy per square foot per year. A Tesla has a 90kwh battery in it. So even if you coated it in perfectly efficient solar cells you wouldn't get more than a few feet.
I think something like 4 mWh of solar energy hit the roof of your average gas station a sunny day
Don't know where you got your "data" but that is wrong. One square foot of roof gets about 10-30KWh per YEAR. Even if the roof is 1000 square feet (100x100) that means it will get about 82 KWh per day on a nice sunny day. That isn't even enough to charge one Tesla fully per day. It might offset their costs slightly but it's hardly going to make a huge dent.
I'd rather have a car that goes from 0 to 60 in 6.4 seconds and goes 500 miles. 250 miles just doesn't cut in some parts of the US (out West).
It won't be long before it's not an either/or decision. Right now the state of the art is at 250 miles. I expect to see electric vehicles with a 500+ mile range in the next few years. The folks at Tesla have already been talking about vehicles with 700+ mile range. In the mean time there are hybrid cars with good 0-60 times on the market today which can go much further than 250 miles without refueling.
Such over-design tends to spectacularly and expensively fail as cars get older or get into accidents.
Not really a relevant concern when you are talking about a $100K+ vehicle. A bit of exuberant design is expected to justify the price tag. I'm guessing you aren't really into the luxury car market much.
With multiple hinges, sensors, control units that all could potentially fail, you will end up with a used car without functioning doors. Who wants that? On other hand, simple hinge just keep working.
Yes but simple isn't necessarily interesting. Nobody buys a supercar because they want simple basic transportation. They want a bit of panache, otherwise there is no point.
So you think, "I will lease for 4 years, and will never see these problems". Well, resale value is affected by reliability, and as a result costs of these failures will be baked into your lease costs.
Buying a car like this is not a decision driven by expected resale value. You buy a car like this because you have the disposable income and you want to own one.
Why is this a story on slashdot anyway? Jalopnik, sure.... but this isn't news for nerds, and not really even news that matters. It's just a new model press release.
Speaking as a nerd I find it fascinating. Please remember that nerds aren't just computer programmers. Some of us are interested in technology that doesn't have a keyboard and mouse. Furthermore it DOES matter. Tesla is having some fascinating effects on the car industry and they are proving that all electric vehicles are a viable commercial technology. In case you hadn't noticed a lot of people here on slashdot are very interested in what Tesla is doing.
Worrying about the off road capabilities on a $130,000 car is kind of silly.
That depends on why you bought it. A Bowler EXR costs more than that but is awesome offroad. A Mercedes G class is pretty legit offroad too and is in that price bracket and people do drive them offroad.
Trust me, that's not what people are using them for.
Mostly you are correct. But the claim was that the Model X was superior to the Mercedes G class in every way which is easily and demonstrably not true.
I, who makes probably 4 times what they make, drives a completely stock Prius and saves every dollar from the gas I don't buy and wheels and tires I don't buy
Maybe but they probably actually enjoy driving their car. If you drive a Prius it's clear you don't care about enjoying the ride.
But given their car pricing, the base model X would be price competitive with the Mercedes G class, and the Tesla would out class the Mercedes in just about every way (including looks).
We'll have to disagree about the looks. I think the G class is sharp and crossover style SUVs look kind of silly. They're simply too much of a compromise and I don't really understand the point of them. If you want a truck, get a truck. The crossovers don't have the space of a real truck but don't have the handling of a comparable sedan. Plus I have yet to see a crossover SUV that is worth a crap if you leave the pavement. The Model X is about as good looking a crossover as I've seen but that's kind of damning with faint praise.
Plus the G class has legitimate off road chops. I'm pretty dubious the Model X would be worth a crap off road. It's clearly designed to be a high performance on-road vehicle. The G class is a go anywhere vehicle and it looks as good around town as it does off road.
...except super capacitors are designed to charge/discharge rapidly... so I'm confused as to the point you are making.
Simple version. Failure = easy. Explosion = hard.
An explosion is a difficult thing to do even if you are trying to get one. It requires a rather fussy set of circumstances to be possible. Explosions by accident are exceptionally rare.
Accidental discharge wouldn't result in an explosion per se, but could start fires and would definitely be lethal to someone who discharged a super capacitor accidentally through themselves.
Which is why you design the system to make accidental discharge difficult to achieve. The mechanics of this are well understood. You could easily cause a rapid discharge of a car battery but in practice it isn't a big problem.
Things like economies, law/morality, and mathematics are more or less intractable for science, and it cannot make many statements about supernatural beliefs.
Economics is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Don't know where you got the idea that it isn't. Economics is studied using the scientific method very effectively. It is a difficult field of study because of its complexity but that is no different from any number of other scientific fields such as meteorology, ecology, geology and others.
Science frequently informs and underpins laws and morals. It also can study their effects.
Mathematics is really a language used by scientists to describe the world. It describes the world around us with uncanny precision. It's not a science but virtually every scientific inquiry utilizes math.
Religion is (perhaps surprisingly) fairly rational, as in rationalism.
Religion is by definition NOT rational. It is faith in an unfalsifiable concept. What rationality it does have is largely argued from false or unprovable premises. Furthermore religions do not restrict themselves to purely logical conclusions from their premises. They frequently cherry pick arguments to support whatever view they wish to hold at the time. No, I disagree that religion is a form of rationalism.
Where religion makes statements about the observable world, it can and often does conflict with empirical truth. Sometimes these things are called miracles.
Those of us who are not beholden to religions call them fictional stories or sometimes unexplained phenomena instead of miracles.
science tells you how the world works. religion tells you how to live in the world
I don't follow a religion and don't need one to tell me how to live in the world. Billions of people around the world do not utilize or require religion to tell them how to conduct their lives. QED your argument is bogus.
of course there will be people who will insist religion and science do conflict.
They frequently do because the religious zealots continue to try to push their unsubstantiated beliefs into science. They keep trying to push creationism into science classrooms. They keep trying to interfere with genetic research and reproductive science. They try to deny the evidence of evolution and push their theology into textbooks. It happens constantly.
science and religion simply do not conflict. they examine entirely different realms that do not interact.
Demonstrably false. The conflict regularly and interact frequently. Mostly of the conflict is from religious people trying to force their beliefs on others and scientific people defending society from their lunacy.
Catholic theology has always been tolerant and accepting of science. ... The church, however, has persecuted scientists many times, and surpressed scientific inquiry.
That is a distinction without a difference. Theology is not independent of the church, particularly in a hierarchical organization like the catholic church. Some may wander into other forms of theology but that is a different issue. And no, they have demonstrably not always been tolerant of science. Even today the catholic church has an uneasy relationship with science despite their occasional claims to the contrary. Church doctrine routinely contradicts scientific evidence and interferes with scientific inquiry, particularly when it comes to reproductive science and genetics in recent years.
Do you have any comprehension of the amount of energy stored in a 3-oz bottle of distilled water?. E=mc^2. If I didn't slip a decimal, the blast radius should run to approximately 6 miles.
Exactly my point. The energy density of a substance is almost irrelevant to the discussion. What matters is whether there is a means to release that energy catastrophically. In most cases there is no easy way to do it. We don't see cell phones detonating. We don't see cars exploding. We don't see laptop batteries going ka-boom. Worst case we normally see is a comparatively gentle and slow combustion. Damaging sure but hardly an explosion.
Why can't we use these things in cars?
We already do use them in cars.
Imagine being able to recharge your car faster than you could fill it up with gas.
Not quite that simple. There is a serious heat issue to deal with when you are transferring that much electric power over wires even if the power is available. Filling up something like a Tesla safely in less than 3 minutes is not as easy as it sounds. You can't just pump more juice over the same wires. You start getting into needing superconductors to handle the juice unless you have wires the thickness of your arm.
Stations could add solar panels for some additional "free" electricity, etc.
That would be a LOT of solar panels. I'm not sure you appreciate the amount of power we are talking about here. A few solar panels on the roof would add so little power it would barely be measurable.