I don't claim the measles vaccines do not work, only that anyone claiming to know is lying to themselves.
If the measles vaccine does not work then why is the rate of cases so much lower than before the vaccine? At this point the vaccine has been given to so many people the evidence that it works is because nobody worries about their child dying or going blind from measles any more... unless there is some reason why this was due to some other factor?
So should it be illegal to go out in public if you have a cold? People with weaker immune systems, such as the elderly, could die if they caught your cold.
A better law to fix this problem would be to allow kids to consent to having vaccinations without parental knowledge. As it is this law will encourage anti-vaxxers to home school and spread their ignorance to the next generation. Allowing kids to consent once they are, say 10, would let you educate them about the advantages of vaccines and then let them have the benefits without their idiot parents getting in the way. It also means that there is no need to force anyone to undergo a medical procedure which they do not want.
I can't be vaccinated, so I need to rely on herd immunity instead. So at what point does your right to avoid vaccinations end, and my right to avoid the unvaccinated begin?
It ends at the point that you force someone else to have a medical procedure for your benefit. Anti-vaxxers are ignorant idiots but you do not cure ignorance or stupidity by making it illegal (tempting though that is)...you cure it through education. However the ironic thing about this law is that it encourages these idiots to home school their kids where they will be able to propagate their ignorance to the next generation.
The moment you force people to have medical procedure you are on a very slippery slope. Vaccines are incredibly safe but there is no zero risk medical procedure: one in every N million vaccines will produce severe complications and sometimes even death. So, to flip the argument around, how many people's lives is it fair to risk to reduce the risk to yourself? Now I realize that this is not entirely fair since, by not having the vaccine the risk if they catch the disease it prevents is far higher but the fact that either way there is some risk means that the proper solution is to educate people about the risks and then let them make their own decision which, will hopefully be to get vaccinated. If not then why stop at forcing vaccinations? Think how many lives could be saved by forced live kidney and liver donation!
The OP got the figures very wrong - there is no way a vaccine with a 1 in 30k chance of death would be approved. However lurking in all that misinformation there is a point struggling to get out. The rate of severe complications and/or death from the Chicken Pox vaccine is probably comparable to the risk of serious complications or death from the disease at least to within the limits of statistical analysis because the risk from either is so incredibly low.
There is also something particular to Chicken Pox which makes the vaccine even less desirable: length of immunity. If you actually catch Chicken Pox you get immunity for life. However if you vaccinate against it you need to continuously remember to get boosters - I believe currently every 10 or 20 years - otherwise your immunity may lapse. What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!
Pushing extremely dubious vaccines like Chicken Pox is a very bad idea. There are very legitimate questions you can ask about the value of this vaccine - it's certainly not dangerous but it is of very questionable benefit. The problem is that idiots then make the illogical leap that if one vaccine is dubious they all must be.
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
Technically it should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance whereas "furthest" means most distant in a figurative sense. For example you say "furthest from the truth" not "farthest from the truth" but "Cape Spear is the farthest east you can go in Canada" not "furthest east". So to summarize: "furthest-most" should not have a hyphen, should not have the 'most' added since it is redundant and finally should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance.
As for the origin of the "cold spot" I understood that it was completely statistically consistent with quantum fluctuations in the early universe. So how about we rule out that explanation first before coming up with multiple universes or other crazy stuff.
If you mention Pol Pot they have no idea who he was, if you mention the Armenian genocide they will also have no idea what that is.
I bet they would if you went to regions concerned. The holocaust is well known in the west because we were all involved in the war that was fought to stop it and many families lost members fighting it. We were far less involved in the Armenian genocide, Pol Pots regime or the countless other genocides (like the more recent one in Uganda). That does not make them any less terrible but it does make them far less a part of our history than WW2.
Honestly, Scientology is a religion founded by a science fiction writer who famously said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."
Isn't this the crux of the debate though: is scientology a religion or just bad science fiction? Indeed perhaps this is a good way to look at it. If scientology is classed as a religion then why not Trekkies or Star Wars fans? There is just as much "religious" fervour in those groups, if not more, and the science fiction is better written.
Properly done, affirmative action simply means getting more of the unrepresented group to apply.
The problem with this approach is that you are making a potentially unwarranted assumption and, even if that assumption is valid this is the wrong way to fix the problem. You assumption is that fewer of one group apply because they are actively discriminated against. This survey challenges the perceived notion that the reason that there are fewer women in science is due to discrimination and suggests that it might actually be reversed. If the reason that one group is under represented is because that group is not interested then there is not a problem. We do not see ballet schools targeting boys because they are underrepresented because its clear that fewer boys are interested in ballet.
The second problem is that affirmative action reinforces the very prejudice that it is designed to address. By lowering standards for one group over another those that get the positions will, on average, be weaker than most. These people will then be used by some to justify their prejudice. In addition the very fact that affirmative action means being prejudiced can be pointed to as an example of why such a prejudice is "ok".
Affirmative action is nothing more than an attempt at a quick fix to the symptoms of a problem which can only be properly cured through education. It's like taking an aspirin and hoping it will cure something like TB: it might bring temporary quick relief from the symptoms but the underlying disease is just masked and still needs to be cured by antibiotics...and in the meantime the person with TB feels fine and spreads the disease to others.
Actually that vast majority of the world uses litres (l). Only the US (on the rare occasions it uses them), Canada and Australia typically use the capital 'L' for the abbreviated symbol. While both are now accepted abbreviations the original rule was that only SI units named after a person had a capital letter for an abbreviation although in the case of 'l' there is easy confusion with '1' in some fonts which is why some countries adopted the capital letter.
I don't think that showers are the problem. Try the insistence on a bright green lawn surrounded by trees, bushes and flowers. Growing that in the middle of what is effectively a desert takes a lot more water than one shower a day.
If the average family in Canada tried to grow tropical plants in their gardens using heat lamps in the winter to stop them from dying we would soon be having a major electricity crisis (well at least until the global warming from burning all that coal kicked in). If the average family in California expects to have a lush, green garden then you should expect to have a water crisis.
imagine a life and civilization evolving, looking out at their immediate galactic neighborhood, becoming aware that this weird night sky shape that their ancient ancestors worshiped is a supermassive black hole... and then growing an awareness of what that means for their future
Imagine a life and civilization evolving, looking out at their immediate galactic neighbourhood, becoming aware that this glowing ball of light that their ancient ancestors worshiped is a star... and then growing an awareness of what that means for their future in a couple of billion years when it has heated up enough to terminate all life on their planet.
We don't need to do a thought experiment because we are in almost exactly the same predicament. It might be a couple of billion years rather than a few tens of millions but frankly it doesn't matter either way: on those timescales either we develop the technology to solve the problem or we go extinct. Besides I'd expect any planet close enough to the accretion disk to see it as a disk with the naked eye will be getting fried by the high energy x-rays it emits which is how we detect black holes from half way across the galaxy or even further.
If they're banned from certain US technology and for purpose, then any route around that through any 3rd party would be illegal.
I doubt it would be illegal in China since the Chinese government makes the laws there. Besides governments are known to break even their own laws when it comes to anything they deem to be national security...unless torture is now legal in the US?
Indeed there are smart people but that does not mean that they always get the right answer. In my own field of particle physics there was an experiment a few years ago that persuaded itself that they had evidence of faster than light neutrinos. Everyone outside that experiment, without the expert knowledge of the detector which this group had, decided that this had to be due to a mistake and sure enough it turned out that they did not have a GPS cable plugged in correctly.
Moral of the story: being smart does not make you immune from coming up with stupid ideas. It is never wrong to question new ideas which appear to have flaws. If there is a good reason why such criticisms are wrong the experts should be able to explain why.
...few jetliners crash due to mechanical or a computer system error.
True but isn't that precisely because they have a pilot on board? How many times is there a mechanical glitch or system failure which leads to no serious problem at all because the pilots takeover and do things manually? How many times is there a situation where the pilots can do something creative to save the plane like landing on the Hudson river?
I did not argue that lithium was not a fire hazard only that, in the right circumstances, aluminium can be as well so there is still a need to be careful.
...and does autonomous traffic avoidance in the crowded skies on approach to a busy airport? There are planes in holding patterns, on approach to land, transitioning between the too, taking off etc. etc. Even with fantastically well trained, intelligent human pilots onboard we need central coordination to avoid disaster otherwise why would we have air traffic control? How much more likely would disaster be if all those planes suddenly found themselves without a pilot?
It's worse than that - all they need to do is jam it which would be trivially easy to do. For example if you put powerful transmitters into a van, parked it somewhere on the approach path to a busy airport and turned it on you would suddenly have craft who were on approach lose all control and by the time authorities tracked down the van and shut it off who knows how many planes would have crashed.
Remote control planes with passengers on are a stupendously bad idea. There is no way I'm flying on a plane which is not under the control of someone onboard whose life also depends on the plane landing safely. Even with such a strong motivation as that we have seen disaster happen - how much more likely will it be if the pilots are sitting remotely and have even less at stake? Suddenly things like disgruntled employees crashing planes becomes imaginable.
Interesting. My take on the problems with the US system of government (as a non-US citizen who lived there for a few years) is slightly different. When it was setup the US government seemed to be an incredibly well designed system: it could cope with the poor communications and for the first time in a modern democracy power really did rest in the hands of the people and not the aristocracy and those commoners of whom they approved.
The problem as I see it is that the US governmental system is far, far too rigid and impossible to change to adapt to modern realities e.g. there is no need for a college of electors with modern communications, you no longer need a well regulated militia to defend against invasion etc. However updating archaic rules like that requires so much support from everywhere that it is all but impossible and things like the constitution are used by large corporations with armies of lawyers to overturn laws which they don't like. The result is a government which is frustrated in its ability to do what it thinks is needed and a people who are frustrated by their government's inability to do what is needed.
I think this is one of the perils of being first: they did not know that the system would work so they put lots of safeguards and protections into the system to stop mob rule which make the system too inflexible. Once we knew that the will of the people tended to be more tempered and did not result in chaotic mob rule governing systems, such as those in Europe, which were flexible enough to change could bring onboard the parts of the US system which work without importing the inflexibility. Not that they are without their own flaws but, when those flaws get large enough, there is the potential for self reform which the US, in practical terms, lacks.
You can light steel wool with a common cigarette lighter. We should definitely stop making firetrucks out of steel.
Aluminium is actually far more flammable than steel. This is why they stopped using it for the superstructure of warships and you will not see aluminium armour. Aluminium is highly reactive but what stops it burning is that it very rapidly forms an inert, oxide layer in air which, unlike iron that has rust, remains strongly attached to the metal. However under the right conditions you can overcome this and then aluminium burns which is clearly not the case for steel.
However I expect that it will be a lot safer in a battery than lithium because of the protective oxide layer...unless the battery technology circumvents the formation of this layer in someway to make the battery function.
No actually I confused the melting point of carbon dioxide (well actually a sublimation point) with that of alcohol. Talking of scientific illiteracy though you seem to be pretty good with numerology.;-)
So far the beams are just at the injection energy of 450 GeV from the SPS and you can see some splash event in ATLAS here. The real test will be when they ramp the magnets up to 11kA currents for the 6.5 TeV beams. Hopefully this time our understanding of the universe will break before the machine.
Instead of responding with anger and vitriol how about we talk rationally? I'm interested in electric cars and would love to own one once they make economic and practical sense. However given the comments it seems that the warranty on the transmission is far more conservative than that on the battery pack so the ratio is still about 2-3 times longer life for the transmission only it is ~8 years vs. 20.
On top of this the study you linked to made no mention of aging effects without regard to use: battery capacity declines with age and that decline is non-linear with time. If the current technology is post 2008 then I doubt they will have a good understanding of the aging yet and will be using projections which can be inaccurate.
However I admit that I am surprised by the far longer lifetime for batteries that they are claiming which is great. Sadly though this page tells me that they still have a way to go yet. If leaving the battery at -30C or below for a day will invalidate the warranty then the car is still useless for those of us who live in Canada.
Lastly though even at 8 years (with degraded capacity) the "fuel" cost is still significant. At 100k miles for a $20k pack (using the figures from the OP) and assuming $0.10/kWh and that 85kWh=265miles that works out at $0.232/mile. If I assume 30mpg for a petrol powered car that works out at a cost of $6.96 per gallon-equivalent or $1.83/litre which is 2.5 times the current cost of petrol in the US (according to Google)...and that's before we factor in the longer life of the transmission.
So my numbers may have been off but the conclusion is still the same. At the current cost of petrol in the US ($0.70/litre in March 2015) you save ~5.66 cents/mile on fuel so the price per kWh of a battery needs to drop to $66/kWh to match the cost of petrol over a 100k mile lifetime.
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I don't claim the measles vaccines do not work, only that anyone claiming to know is lying to themselves.
If the measles vaccine does not work then why is the rate of cases so much lower than before the vaccine? At this point the vaccine has been given to so many people the evidence that it works is because nobody worries about their child dying or going blind from measles any more... unless there is some reason why this was due to some other factor?
How about my freedom to spread dangerous germs?
So should it be illegal to go out in public if you have a cold? People with weaker immune systems, such as the elderly, could die if they caught your cold.
A better law to fix this problem would be to allow kids to consent to having vaccinations without parental knowledge. As it is this law will encourage anti-vaxxers to home school and spread their ignorance to the next generation. Allowing kids to consent once they are, say 10, would let you educate them about the advantages of vaccines and then let them have the benefits without their idiot parents getting in the way. It also means that there is no need to force anyone to undergo a medical procedure which they do not want.
I can't be vaccinated, so I need to rely on herd immunity instead. So at what point does your right to avoid vaccinations end, and my right to avoid the unvaccinated begin?
It ends at the point that you force someone else to have a medical procedure for your benefit. Anti-vaxxers are ignorant idiots but you do not cure ignorance or stupidity by making it illegal (tempting though that is)...you cure it through education. However the ironic thing about this law is that it encourages these idiots to home school their kids where they will be able to propagate their ignorance to the next generation.
The moment you force people to have medical procedure you are on a very slippery slope. Vaccines are incredibly safe but there is no zero risk medical procedure: one in every N million vaccines will produce severe complications and sometimes even death. So, to flip the argument around, how many people's lives is it fair to risk to reduce the risk to yourself? Now I realize that this is not entirely fair since, by not having the vaccine the risk if they catch the disease it prevents is far higher but the fact that either way there is some risk means that the proper solution is to educate people about the risks and then let them make their own decision which, will hopefully be to get vaccinated. If not then why stop at forcing vaccinations? Think how many lives could be saved by forced live kidney and liver donation!
The OP got the figures very wrong - there is no way a vaccine with a 1 in 30k chance of death would be approved. However lurking in all that misinformation there is a point struggling to get out. The rate of severe complications and/or death from the Chicken Pox vaccine is probably comparable to the risk of serious complications or death from the disease at least to within the limits of statistical analysis because the risk from either is so incredibly low.
There is also something particular to Chicken Pox which makes the vaccine even less desirable: length of immunity. If you actually catch Chicken Pox you get immunity for life. However if you vaccinate against it you need to continuously remember to get boosters - I believe currently every 10 or 20 years - otherwise your immunity may lapse. What is bad about this is that Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox. So in this case taking the vaccine to protect against a very mild childhood disease may lead to an increased chance of a more serious disease later in life...unless you set a 20 year alarm so you never forget a booster shot!
Pushing extremely dubious vaccines like Chicken Pox is a very bad idea. There are very legitimate questions you can ask about the value of this vaccine - it's certainly not dangerous but it is of very questionable benefit. The problem is that idiots then make the illogical leap that if one vaccine is dubious they all must be.
Surely the more appropriate answer would have been: "That? Oh it's nothing.".
Furthest-most? When "furthest" is just not far enough?
Technically it should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance whereas "furthest" means most distant in a figurative sense. For example you say "furthest from the truth" not "farthest from the truth" but "Cape Spear is the farthest east you can go in Canada" not "furthest east". So to summarize: "furthest-most" should not have a hyphen, should not have the 'most' added since it is redundant and finally should actually be "farthest" since it refers to a physical distance.
As for the origin of the "cold spot" I understood that it was completely statistically consistent with quantum fluctuations in the early universe. So how about we rule out that explanation first before coming up with multiple universes or other crazy stuff.
If you mention Pol Pot they have no idea who he was, if you mention the Armenian genocide they will also have no idea what that is.
I bet they would if you went to regions concerned. The holocaust is well known in the west because we were all involved in the war that was fought to stop it and many families lost members fighting it. We were far less involved in the Armenian genocide, Pol Pots regime or the countless other genocides (like the more recent one in Uganda). That does not make them any less terrible but it does make them far less a part of our history than WW2.
Honestly, Scientology is a religion founded by a science fiction writer who famously said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."
Isn't this the crux of the debate though: is scientology a religion or just bad science fiction? Indeed perhaps this is a good way to look at it. If scientology is classed as a religion then why not Trekkies or Star Wars fans? There is just as much "religious" fervour in those groups, if not more, and the science fiction is better written.
Properly done, affirmative action simply means getting more of the unrepresented group to apply.
The problem with this approach is that you are making a potentially unwarranted assumption and, even if that assumption is valid this is the wrong way to fix the problem. You assumption is that fewer of one group apply because they are actively discriminated against. This survey challenges the perceived notion that the reason that there are fewer women in science is due to discrimination and suggests that it might actually be reversed. If the reason that one group is under represented is because that group is not interested then there is not a problem. We do not see ballet schools targeting boys because they are underrepresented because its clear that fewer boys are interested in ballet.
The second problem is that affirmative action reinforces the very prejudice that it is designed to address. By lowering standards for one group over another those that get the positions will, on average, be weaker than most. These people will then be used by some to justify their prejudice. In addition the very fact that affirmative action means being prejudiced can be pointed to as an example of why such a prejudice is "ok".
Affirmative action is nothing more than an attempt at a quick fix to the symptoms of a problem which can only be properly cured through education. It's like taking an aspirin and hoping it will cure something like TB: it might bring temporary quick relief from the symptoms but the underlying disease is just masked and still needs to be cured by antibiotics...and in the meantime the person with TB feels fine and spreads the disease to others.
The rest of the civilized world use litres (L)
Actually that vast majority of the world uses litres (l). Only the US (on the rare occasions it uses them), Canada and Australia typically use the capital 'L' for the abbreviated symbol. While both are now accepted abbreviations the original rule was that only SI units named after a person had a capital letter for an abbreviation although in the case of 'l' there is easy confusion with '1' in some fonts which is why some countries adopted the capital letter.
I don't think that showers are the problem. Try the insistence on a bright green lawn surrounded by trees, bushes and flowers. Growing that in the middle of what is effectively a desert takes a lot more water than one shower a day.
If the average family in Canada tried to grow tropical plants in their gardens using heat lamps in the winter to stop them from dying we would soon be having a major electricity crisis (well at least until the global warming from burning all that coal kicked in). If the average family in California expects to have a lush, green garden then you should expect to have a water crisis.
imagine a life and civilization evolving, looking out at their immediate galactic neighborhood, becoming aware that this weird night sky shape that their ancient ancestors worshiped is a supermassive black hole... and then growing an awareness of what that means for their future
Imagine a life and civilization evolving, looking out at their immediate galactic neighbourhood, becoming aware that this glowing ball of light that their ancient ancestors worshiped is a star... and then growing an awareness of what that means for their future in a couple of billion years when it has heated up enough to terminate all life on their planet.
We don't need to do a thought experiment because we are in almost exactly the same predicament. It might be a couple of billion years rather than a few tens of millions but frankly it doesn't matter either way: on those timescales either we develop the technology to solve the problem or we go extinct. Besides I'd expect any planet close enough to the accretion disk to see it as a disk with the naked eye will be getting fried by the high energy x-rays it emits which is how we detect black holes from half way across the galaxy or even further.
If they're banned from certain US technology and for purpose, then any route around that through any 3rd party would be illegal.
I doubt it would be illegal in China since the Chinese government makes the laws there. Besides governments are known to break even their own laws when it comes to anything they deem to be national security...unless torture is now legal in the US?
As a low lying country Holland is at risk due to rising sea levels. Clearly being tall enough to keep your head above water is an advantage. ;-)
Listen, there are smart people in these fields.
Indeed there are smart people but that does not mean that they always get the right answer. In my own field of particle physics there was an experiment a few years ago that persuaded itself that they had evidence of faster than light neutrinos. Everyone outside that experiment, without the expert knowledge of the detector which this group had, decided that this had to be due to a mistake and sure enough it turned out that they did not have a GPS cable plugged in correctly.
Moral of the story: being smart does not make you immune from coming up with stupid ideas. It is never wrong to question new ideas which appear to have flaws. If there is a good reason why such criticisms are wrong the experts should be able to explain why.
...few jetliners crash due to mechanical or a computer system error.
True but isn't that precisely because they have a pilot on board? How many times is there a mechanical glitch or system failure which leads to no serious problem at all because the pilots takeover and do things manually? How many times is there a situation where the pilots can do something creative to save the plane like landing on the Hudson river?
And you know what can do it? Lithium.
I did not argue that lithium was not a fire hazard only that, in the right circumstances, aluminium can be as well so there is still a need to be careful.
Right, as if autoland doesn't exist?
someone WILL hack into it.
It's worse than that - all they need to do is jam it which would be trivially easy to do. For example if you put powerful transmitters into a van, parked it somewhere on the approach path to a busy airport and turned it on you would suddenly have craft who were on approach lose all control and by the time authorities tracked down the van and shut it off who knows how many planes would have crashed.
Remote control planes with passengers on are a stupendously bad idea. There is no way I'm flying on a plane which is not under the control of someone onboard whose life also depends on the plane landing safely. Even with such a strong motivation as that we have seen disaster happen - how much more likely will it be if the pilots are sitting remotely and have even less at stake? Suddenly things like disgruntled employees crashing planes becomes imaginable.
Interesting. My take on the problems with the US system of government (as a non-US citizen who lived there for a few years) is slightly different. When it was setup the US government seemed to be an incredibly well designed system: it could cope with the poor communications and for the first time in a modern democracy power really did rest in the hands of the people and not the aristocracy and those commoners of whom they approved.
The problem as I see it is that the US governmental system is far, far too rigid and impossible to change to adapt to modern realities e.g. there is no need for a college of electors with modern communications, you no longer need a well regulated militia to defend against invasion etc. However updating archaic rules like that requires so much support from everywhere that it is all but impossible and things like the constitution are used by large corporations with armies of lawyers to overturn laws which they don't like. The result is a government which is frustrated in its ability to do what it thinks is needed and a people who are frustrated by their government's inability to do what is needed.
I think this is one of the perils of being first: they did not know that the system would work so they put lots of safeguards and protections into the system to stop mob rule which make the system too inflexible. Once we knew that the will of the people tended to be more tempered and did not result in chaotic mob rule governing systems, such as those in Europe, which were flexible enough to change could bring onboard the parts of the US system which work without importing the inflexibility. Not that they are without their own flaws but, when those flaws get large enough, there is the potential for self reform which the US, in practical terms, lacks.
You can light steel wool with a common cigarette lighter. We should definitely stop making firetrucks out of steel.
Aluminium is actually far more flammable than steel. This is why they stopped using it for the superstructure of warships and you will not see aluminium armour. Aluminium is highly reactive but what stops it burning is that it very rapidly forms an inert, oxide layer in air which, unlike iron that has rust, remains strongly attached to the metal. However under the right conditions you can overcome this and then aluminium burns which is clearly not the case for steel.
However I expect that it will be a lot safer in a battery than lithium because of the protective oxide layer...unless the battery technology circumvents the formation of this layer in someway to make the battery function.
but since when does anyone measure density in mass/length units?
That's clear evidence of one dimensional thinking. ;-)
No actually I confused the melting point of carbon dioxide (well actually a sublimation point) with that of alcohol. Talking of scientific illiteracy though you seem to be pretty good with numerology. ;-)
So far the beams are just at the injection energy of 450 GeV from the SPS and you can see some splash event in ATLAS here. The real test will be when they ramp the magnets up to 11kA currents for the 6.5 TeV beams. Hopefully this time our understanding of the universe will break before the machine.
Instead of responding with anger and vitriol how about we talk rationally? I'm interested in electric cars and would love to own one once they make economic and practical sense. However given the comments it seems that the warranty on the transmission is far more conservative than that on the battery pack so the ratio is still about 2-3 times longer life for the transmission only it is ~8 years vs. 20.
On top of this the study you linked to made no mention of aging effects without regard to use: battery capacity declines with age and that decline is non-linear with time. If the current technology is post 2008 then I doubt they will have a good understanding of the aging yet and will be using projections which can be inaccurate.
However I admit that I am surprised by the far longer lifetime for batteries that they are claiming which is great. Sadly though this page tells me that they still have a way to go yet. If leaving the battery at -30C or below for a day will invalidate the warranty then the car is still useless for those of us who live in Canada.
Lastly though even at 8 years (with degraded capacity) the "fuel" cost is still significant. At 100k miles for a $20k pack (using the figures from the OP) and assuming $0.10/kWh and that 85kWh=265miles that works out at $0.232/mile. If I assume 30mpg for a petrol powered car that works out at a cost of $6.96 per gallon-equivalent or $1.83/litre which is 2.5 times the current cost of petrol in the US (according to Google)...and that's before we factor in the longer life of the transmission.
So my numbers may have been off but the conclusion is still the same. At the current cost of petrol in the US ($0.70/litre in March 2015) you save ~5.66 cents/mile on fuel so the price per kWh of a battery needs to drop to $66/kWh to match the cost of petrol over a 100k mile lifetime.
Oops - sorry the freezing point of pure alcohol is apparently -114C...that's even cold by Canadian standards!