This article in the Washington Post has been picked up everywhere:

Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

From the article:

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry [RIAA] maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read that,” says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”

This is an attempt to redefine the nature of a CD. And it is the second attempt to do this. Sony made the first attempt to redefine the CD back in October:

Sony BMG’s chief anti-piracy lawyer: “Copying” music you own is “stealing”

From the article:

Pariser [Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG] has a very broad definition of “stealing.” When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” she said.

Countless studies have shown that the majority of music on portable music players like the iPod comes from sources other than download services. For most people, that music is comprised primarily of songs “ripped” from CD collections to MP3 or some other comparable format. Indeed, most portable music players comes with software (like iTunes) which is designed to facilitate the easy ripping of CDs. According to Pariser’s view, this is stealing.

Up until this year, the “fair use” idea had prevailed. The idea went like this: If you bought the CD, you “owned” a song and it was OK for you, personally, to put the song on different devices you owned. So you could listen to the song on your CD player, rip the song into your computer and then transfer the song to your MP3 player or iPod. As long as you didn’t give the song away to others (or sell it to others), you were within your rights. The “fair use” idea was so pervasive that both Apple’s iTunes software and Microsoft’s media player software will automatically rip CDs for you to put the songs on your hard disk.

Why might the music industry want to redefine the CD and make ripping illegal? Perhaps because the movie industry [MPAA] has been effective in making DVD ripping illegal. Unlike CDs, there is no easy, legal way (from Apple, Microsoft or anyone else) to rip a DVD. It appears that the music industry is going to now try to retroactively apply that same thinking to the CD.

Will they be successful? That will be something to watch in 2008. We will know that they were successful when we see ripping removed from iTunes and media player.

Here are 40 photographs that changed the world, along with a description that explains why each one was able to do that:

Photographs that changed the world

There are some amazing photos in the portfolio, and many of them truly did “change the world.”

It makes you wonder if there will ever be “100 YouTube Videos that changed the world.” Probably not. Why is that?

[See prevous MYT]

The Ekranoplan, a Russian airplane that in its largest form was known as the Caspian Sea Monster. The video is in the wrong language, but the pictures tell the story:

The plane is actually visible in Google Earth here:

View Larger Map

The Ekranoplan represents a “wing in ground effect” design. By flying close to the surface of the ocean, the wings are able to take advantage of ground effect and they are much more efficient at creating lift. The efficiency is one big advatage, and it allows for very large aircraft. From a military standpoint, the planes are “flying below the radar” so they are harder to detect.

For more info see:

- Ekranoplans

- Introduction to WIG technology

- The Russian Connection

[See #17]

This years the North American International Auto Show (AKA the Detroit Auto Show) runs from January 19 to 27, 2008. Here are some of the concept cars that will appear:

- Mazda Furai - sexy

- Honda CR-Z - hybrid

- Mitsubishi Concept-ZT - diesel supercar

- Audi R8 - supercar

- Land Rover LRX - SUV

- Chrysler ecoVoyager, Dodge ZEO, Jeep Renegade

- Toyota A-BAT - pickup (see also: slide show)

- Nissan Forum - transparent minivan

Beautiful moon photos

[See previous TIM]

The F-35 is a replacement for the Harrier jump jet, and the newest prototypes came out last week:

Latest F-35 prototype nears takeoff

It is a jet fighter that is able to hover and land vertically, as seen in this video:

One of the most interesting parts of the F-35 is the engine and fan system. There is a single jet engine at the back that can power the plane when it is flying. During hover, the nozzle of this engine rotates down, and a front fan (powered by a drive shaft) provides even more thrust. This video gives you a cut-away view of the engine:

Another interesting thing about the F-35 is a new flight helmet for the pilots described here:

Combat Helmet: F-35 Helmet Display System To Scare the Bejeezus Out of Enemies

You can learn more about the F-35 here:

- F-35 Lightning II - Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

- F-35 Program

This video lets you see exactly why PS3 games look so much more realistic than PS2 games:

It all has to do with the amount of computational power available in the console. The PS3 processor has the ability to handle something like 200 billion FLOPS (floating point operations per second). The PS2 processor could handle less than 10 billion FLOPS. For more information on the PS3 processor see:

Cell Architecture Explained

Even if you don’t care one bit about the coding of a ray tracing engine, click on this article and look at the progression of pictures, which become stunning:

Building a Ray-Tracing 3D Renderer from Scratch Over a Weekend

In the article he shows his steps, starting from a single line of code and working up to a complete ray tracing engine. The code for the images is available, and the program is only about 800 lines long. It is amazing that so little code can create such rich and realistic images.

If you would like to understand the code, an article like this is helpful:

Ray Tracing: Graphics for the Masses

The article walks through the basic equations and includes links to other ray tracing packages.

The traditional problem with ray tracing has been the computation time, which can be hours or days per image (depending on the complexity of the image and the amount of detail desired). But as computers get faster, the idea of real-time ray tracing becomes imaginable. This video talks about one real-time implementation using three PS3 gaming consoles to provide the computation:

In this next video, the image is much simpler, but all of the computation is being done on a single GPU in real time:

From the description:

XRTRay is a simple real time ray tracer. There is nothing advanced about it. Just a simple basic ray tracer on the GPU rather than the CPU. This project was created to show people that real time ray tracing is possible. This was done on a home PC with a 2.2 Ghz AMD single processor and GeForce 6800 GT.

This project is long dead and I moved onto another project but if you are interested in picking this up, head over to: http://scyanidegaming.com.

In ten years, we will be able to buy game consoles that are 20 times more powerful than today’s PS3. At that point, games will be able to use real-time ray tracing with ease and they will look even more realistic than they do today.

Attention to all who enter here

[See previous TIM]

What happens when you set off 1,000,000 pounds of dynamite to simulate a nuclear explosion?

See also: How Dynamite Works

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep - “In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness…”

The Death of High Fidelity - “Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse…”

Breakthrough battery could boost electric cars - “A new battery that can be recharged to 90 percent capacity in under five minutes and lasts 10 years will start shipping in March, Toshiba Corp. announced this week, hailing it as “a new energy solution” for cleaner transportation…”

What a Tiger Sees - “The mystery of how a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo managed to escape from its cage, kill one visitor and maul two others is getting clearer…”

New efficient bulb sees the light - “A new type of super-efficient household light bulb is being developed which could spell the end of regular bulbs…”

Don’t Fool Yourself, Playing Wii Tennis Won’t Keep You Fit - “Think working up a sweat playing Nintendo Wii Tennis is a substitute for exercise, think again. Wii jocks will have to hit the treadmill like everyone else if they want to stay fit…”

Brain Diseases I Would Like to Have - Includes a discussion of photographic memory, Tertiary Neurosyphilis, Synesthesia, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Hypergraphia, etc.

The 10 Funniest Sites on the Internet - “Along with sex and shopping, comedy is one of the biggest drivers of traffic on the Web. Especially now that a lot of regular people know how to post their homemade video and audio to the Web (along with clips from TV or radio), there’s an awful lot of funny stuff online. After months of exhaustive research, including lie-detector tests performed on laboratory rats, we’ve gathered a list of the funniest sites on the Web…”

Don’t Fear Starbucks - “Why the franchise actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses…”

The 7 Ultimate Achievements In Endurance Running - “For those that run or don’t run you have to respect these athletes and the achievements they’ve accomplished. Every time you go out for that 5 mile run and come in exhausted, think of what it takes to do these…”

Broadband TV - Advances rattle cable companies - “About one-third of people who subscribe to cable TV or satellite services said they would drop that service if they could get TV shows they wanted over a broadband computer connection, paying a flat fee…”

Japan Mines `Flammable Ice,’ Flirts With Environmental Disaster - “Japan is joining the U.S. and Canada in test drilling for methane even as scientists express concerns about any uncontrolled release of the frozen chemical. Some researchers blame the greenhouse gas for triggering a global firestorm that helped wipe out the dinosaurs…”

56 wonders of the modern world

How the Oceans Once Ended Global Warming - “Last time Earth suffered a carbon-induced fever, it was the oceans that helped saved the day, say marine scientists in California…”

Will The iPod Kill Blockbuster? - “Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs’ tiny iPod has turned his company into a category killer for the digital era–first wiping out music stores and now, potentially, the corner video store…”

[See previous IR]

Back in October we spent some time talking about predictions. In particular there was this post:

Is it possible to predict the future?

It had a lot of doom and gloom, like world famine and a climate catastrophe.

There was also this prediction from Fortune magazine:

An amazing prediction for us to check a year or two from now

It talked about a stock market meltdown, and then there was this political prediction:

A meltdown for Rudy Giuliani

Now it is the time of year when people start making their predictions for 2008. And there are a lot them. Especially on the tecnology front. For example, Economist.com offers three tech predictions here:

Technology in 2008

[See also this rebuttal]

PC Magazine has its 2008 predictions here:

Tech Predictions for 2008

CNet offers its top 5 predictions for 2008 in video form:

Some of these are no-brainers - you simply look at trends in 2007 and you can see what will happen in 2008. For example, PC Magazine predicts: “Next year we will see a real push to create “basic PCs,” bare-bones computers priced around $275 to $350 and targeted at emerging markets.” It’s not clear why they limit it to “emerging markets” - this trend will sweep the U.S. as well. The Eee PC alone (priced at $350 to $400) is expected to sell something like 4 million copies in 2008, and there will be lots of variations on that theme from other manufacturers (see this post on the CloudBook and this post on the future of Windows for details). Wal-Mart already has several desktop models priced between $200 and $300 (one running Linux, one XP and one Vista), and these machines have everything a “typical PC user” needs.

But out of all of the predictions acticles I’ve seen, this is one is probably the most interesting:

Saxo Bank’s Outrageous Predictions 2008

Saxo is a large (1,200 employees) Internet bank based in Copenhagen. And some of their 2007 predictions were pretty good. Here are the predictions that apply to the United States:

1) Ron Paul elected President of the United States

2) S&P500 falls 25% from its 2007 high to 1182 (today it will open at 1,476)

6) At least three of the largest 10 US homebuilders will go bankrupt

7) Chinese stock market falls 40% by late summer

Grain Prices to double – again!

9) World oil prices accelerate to $175

In 365 days, we will know how close or far all of these predictions are from the mark…

Let’s imagine that you are sitting at home, there is nothing to do, and there is absolutely nothing on TV. Or let’s imagine that you are stuck in an airport with a laptop, a wifi connection and nothing to do. Then you might wish to avail yourself of this article:

10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube (Smart Video Collections)

It lists a set of 10 “intellectually redeemable video collections” on YouTube that you can turn to in your time of need.

A friend suggests another possibility: Joost.com. He was looking for a documentary that was not available on YouTube. But it was available on Joost. His comment:

It’s quick to set up and the interface is attractive and slick (but not particularly intuitive) and they have a ton of programming from different genres and networks. The National Geographic channels must have over a hundred full length shows… And registration is a snap. It takes about two minutes to make a user name and add your full name and age. You don’t even have to configure the software.

What if you don’t care about stimulating your brain, and just need something to do? An option in that situation would be NetFlix, although you need a really good (meaning fast) wifi connection, a Windows PC, a little patience and a NetFlix account to do it. NetFlix offers a service where you can stream movies over the Internet to your laptop. Their catalog contains about 5,000 movies, as well as a number of TV shows like “Heroes”, “30 Rock” and “The Office”. The 5,000 movies include some hits like the Matrix, but also a lot of older films you have never heard of. You pay about $1 per hour for the stream.

Finally there is NBC.com, where you can find free video streaming of recent episodes of 18 NBC programs including “Heroes”, “30 Rock” and “The Office”.

The personal blimp:

It’s interesting because it combines hot air balloon technology with a blimp body. For more info visit: http://www.personalblimp.com/

See also:

- How Blimps Work

- How Hot Air Balloons Work

[See #16]

Here are two takes on the movies we all should have seen in 2007:

1) The Definitive Top 25 Movies of 2007 - “When I was brainstorming this list, I decided that both the movie critics and mainstream audiences both should be represented. Rotten Tomatoes represents the biggest repository of critical response, while the Internet Movie Database has the largest user rated database. We averaged the two together and compiled the definitive listing of the top 25 movies of 2007…”

2) The Best 19 Movies You Didn’t See in 2007 - “No one really has enough time (or money) to see every movie released every year, but shamefully too many great films are left in the dust. Sure, maybe you’ll see a couple of those indies that are making the rounds on the year-end top ten lists, but even those critics missed a few good ones. This is about those movies that were phenomenal yet hardly anyone saw, so now we’re giving them one final moment in the spotlight…”

See also: The 100 best movies of all time:

See also: HowStuffWorks movie channel

For some reason, if you look at cancer treatments, broccoli keeps coming up over and over again:

Now even scientists say broccoli can cure cancer, not just prevent it

From the article:

The FDA has long frowned upon anyone claiming that vegetables or superfoods cure cancer. It’s been okay to say they “prevent” cancer, but a cure is apparently reserved only for the realm of drugs, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation (none of which actually cure anything, in reality). That’s why this article is so interesting: it claims that compounds from broccoli could be used in a cure for cancer. And it’s not just broccoli, it’s other foods, too: cabbage, mustard greens, turnips and more…

Diet and Cancer Prevention: New Evidence for the Protective Effects of Fruits and Veggies

From the article:

Today, researchers present new data that demonstrate how diets full of raw vegetables — particularly broccoli sprouts — and black raspberries could prevent or slow the growth of some common forms of cancer…

See also: I quit the cancer treatment and got better my own way - “I changed my diet straight away, very dramatically. I started on a strict macrobiotic diet — a vegan diet really. It focuses on grains, primarily brown rice. It also involves eating a lot of vegetables, such as carrots and broccoli, and apples and a small amount of nuts. It meant giving up dairy products and meat.”

See also: Broccoli and tomatoes shrink prostate cancer:

See also: How Cancer Works

[See previous PSA]

Drugs to build up that mental muscle - “Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions…” See also: How Caffeine Works

World’s Biggest Building Coming to Moscow: Crystal Island - At 27 million square feet (about 1 square mile) of floor space, it will be the world’s largest building by far. See also: World’s tallest building and The New Tallest Building in the World

Email in the 18th century - “More than 200 years ago it was already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the speed of an aeroplane – wireless and without need for electricity…” See also: How Email Works

Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage - “This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping. Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary…” See also: How Anti-shoplifting Devices Work

State of the Unions - “Once upon a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also had a strong union movement. These two facts were connected. Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers, gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers. They also provided an important counterbalance to the political influence of corporations and the economic elite…” See also: How Unions Work

The Spectrum Swindle - A look at the FCC and spectrum auctions.

Small, Strange and Surreal: 3 of the Most Bizarre Micronations in the World - “Have you ever wanted to rule your very own country? A micronation is an area of land claimed by one or more persons to be independent from any major recognized nation in the world…” See also: How the United Nations Work

Top 10 Coolest Laptop Concepts

FBI planning world’s largest biometric database - “The FBI has announced it plans to assemble the world’s largest biometric database, nicknamed the Next Generation Identification system. Currently, the FBI stores fingerprints, facial features, and palm print characteristics at its facilities in Washington DC. The agency’s $1 billion dollar database, however, will hold far more information on any given person…” See also: How the FBI Works

BrainyHistory.com - A database showing thousands of historical events.

Best picture quality with 6 megapixels! - “A digital camera with 12 million pixels is better than one with 6 million. ‘That is correct’ is what you would probably say because you’ve always heard more pixels are better. It’s not true…”

Meet Google: Search Giant, Monopolist Extraordinaire - “I owe Microsoft thanks because I learned more about what Google’s position in the market will look like once it tucks in DoubleClick from Microsoft than from what Google offered. But the best part of these documents is not the detail, it’s the prognostications that could shed light on just how ingenious (and perhaps, insidious) Google’s ad plans are with DoubleClick…”

[See previous IR]

See this page for a list of 20 speed improvements for Windows XP:

Make Your Windows Fast As Never Before!

It includes things like:
1) DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES
2) DISABLE PERFORMANCE COUNTERS
3) SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING
4) IMPROVE XP SHUTDOWN SPEED
5) DISABLE UNNECESSARY SERVICES

See also: How to set up your new computer

[See also: Ways to speed up your computer #1 through #5]

A cluster balloon is a collection of small (say 3 to 4 feet in diameter) helium balloons. If your cluster has enough ballons, you create the lift you need to get a person into the air. Here is a nice photo montage:

Introduction to Cluster Ballooning

To go up you drop ballast. To go down, you release one or more balloons (or pop them with a BB gun). The article puts it this way:

To control the altitude of the cluster balloon, the pilot takes off with more balloons than needed to lift his or her weight, and carries ballast (water or sand) to balance out most of this excess lift. To level out or descend, the pilot releases or bursts balloons. To slow the descent or ascend again, the pilot releases ballast. The number of times the cluster balloon can ascend or descend is limited by the amount of ballast and extra balloons carried. The balloon may also gain a certain amount of lift during the flight due to solar heating of the balloons.

And a video showing a typical launch and flight:

He made it 200 miles and went as high as 13,000 feet:

For more info see: How Helium Balloons Work

A friend sent me this article, which talks about a really interesting problem - how do you mark toxic places like nuclear waste sites so that people leave them alone thousands of years from now? Keep in mind the fact that civilizations can collapse, civilizations can be lost and forgotten, languages disappear, etc.:

Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

From the article:

We developed the following criteria for the marking system:

1) The site must be marked. Aside from the legal requirement, the site will be indelibly imprinted by the human activity associated with waste disposal. We must complete the process by explaining what has been done and why.

2) The site must be marked in such a manner that its purpose cannot be mistaken.

3) Other nuclear waste disposal sites must be marked in a similar manner within the U.S. and preferably world-wide.

4) A marking system must be utilized. By this we mean that components of the marking system relate to one another is such a way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

5) Redundancy must play a preeminent role in the marking system design. The designs considered here have redundancy in terms of message levels, marking system componenets, materials, and modes of communication.

6) Each component of the marking system should be made of material(s) with little intrinsic value. The destructive (or recycling) nature of people will pose a serious threat to the marking system.

7) The components of the marking system should be tested during the next few decades while the WIPP is in operation, not only for the longevity of the materials but for the pan-cultural nature of the message. In other words, as with the repository design itself, the team was comfortable with the thought of designing a marking system that would last 10,000 years if left undisturbed. Our efforts focused on making it understandable while providing minimal incentive to disturb it. We also consider a public information effort a necessary part of the marking system design. A system that is not understood today has no chance of being understood in the far future.

Figures 4.3-1 through 4.3-18 provide a basic description of our most developed design and other design options

Think about it, and then see the figures and read the text for some of the ideas of this expert panel.

See also - Short term and long term storage of nuclear waste:

For more info see: How Nulcear Power Works

What were the greatest things that 2007 brought us in computing and gadgets? Here are three prespectives:

1) The Year in Hardware - “The Past 12 Months Have Featured Touch Screens, Context-Aware Gadgets, Autonomous Vehicles and Brain-Computer Interfaces”

2) PC Magazine’s Top Stories of 2007 - “Much has happened in tech this year—Vista, the Apple iPhone, and much more. Here’s a look at the stories and topics you wanted to read about in 2007.”

3) 2007’s coolest gadgets - “The end of the year provides us with the perfect excuse to look back at some of the coolest gadgets that have come out of the consumer electronics giants of east Asia in the last year.”

So what is everyone talking about?

1) The iPhone, obviously (see How the iphone works)
2) The OLED TV (see How OLEDs Work)
3) The Toshiba Dynabook (World’s lightest full feature laptop)
4) The Asus Eee PC (the cheapest Linux laptop) as well as the OLPC and the Classmate PC
5) Blue-ray stuff, which went mainstream this year
6) Hard disk and high-def camcorders
7) Multi-core microprocessors
Brain-computer interfaces
9) Robot cars able to drive in urban environments
10) Vista, Leopard and Ubuntu

World’s smallest jet airplane - the BD-5:

Wingspan is 16 feet. Weight is 430 pounds empty.

See also:

- Building a BD-5

- BD-5J “Acrostar” Microjet

- BD Micro

[See #15]

To catch a thief

[See previous TIM]

The headline: Japan to drop humpback whale hunt: “Japan dropped the planned taking of 50 humpbacks — which have been off-limits to commercial hunting since 1966 — at the behest of the United States, the chair of the International Whaling Commission”

50 doesn’t sound like many, but there are perhaps 30,000 humpback whales worldwide. So Japan was planning to kill 0.17% of all humpback whales. To put it in perspective, assume that there are 6.6 billion humans on earth and you killed the same percentage. Killing 0.17% of the human population would be 11.2 million people. In other words, the population of a city like New York or LA.

Here’s what was saved:

See also:

- More info on humpback whales

- American Cetacean Society Fact Sheet

- How Whales Work

Last week we talked about Desktop Tower Defense being named the game of the year. Here’s about 50 more along similar lines:

Turret Defense Games

[See previous games]

This is probably better titled “danger with chemistry” - but watching the video is harmless. It shows one way to fill a balloon with hydrogen:

The reaction is between aluminum and hydrogen chloride, releasing the hydrogen as a gas. The hydrogen chloride comes from household drain cleaner. You can find more detail on the reaction here:

Hydrogen production

An economic analysis is also needed here: isn’t it cheaper to just buy the tank of party helium at Wal-Mart and fill the balloons that way?

Unless your goal is an explosion - in that case, hydrogen is preferred:

See also: How the hydrogen economy might work

[See previous FWC]

Photos:

In Pictures: Snow sculpture festival

Video:

[See previous IM]

Single brain cell’s power shown - “There could be enough computing ability in just one brain cell to allow humans and animals to feel, a study suggests…” See also: How the brain works

Guy Builds World’s Smallest 4-Stroke V12 Engine, is Aircooled (Video) - “Despite it being designed for R/C models, this 4-stroke V12 engine is touted as the world’s smallest. Featuring a 21mm bore, 87cc displacement, air cooling, and two camshafts…” See also: How a car engine works

10-Year Chinese Haunting Finally Debunked - “Anyone who ever lived in the house, heard horribly spooky sounds coming from somewhere in the house. In ten years, the house has been sold to four different owners, and soon after each moved in, they moved out because of the haunting…” See also: How ghosts work

Top 25 Linux 3D games - “Great list with 25 3D games for Linux.”

MIT Asks: How Would Extraterrestrial Astronomers Study Earth? - “As astronomers become more adept at hunting for, and finding, exoplanets orbiting stars beyond the Solar System, an international team of astronomers has figured out just what alien eyes might see using the increasingly sophisticated technologies being developed on Earth… ” See also: How telescopes work

Police Begin Fingerprinting on Traffic Stops - “If you’re caught speeding or playing your music too loud, or other crimes for which you might receive a citation, Green Bay police officers will ask for your drivers license and your finger. You’ll be fingerprinted right there on the spot. The fingerprint appears right next to the amount of the fine…” See also: How fingerprint scanners work

Cruficied By Your House - “While the uncontrolled creation of money isn’t limited to the housing bubble, or what is laughably called “sub-prime”, since the problems extend far past sub-prime, understanding how real-estate and housing work is integral to understanding the impact, because for most Americans their home is the most important asset they own…” See also: How Mortgages work

No Dice for Slow Roll? - “When light from the big bang cooled, it left microwave radiation spread throughout space. This fiery glow holds clues to the characteristics of the early universe and the secrets of its formation. Now, a team of researchers has announced that temperature fluctuations in the glow clash with one well-accepted theory of how the universe formed. The findings–presented here at a cosmology conference this week–are still preliminary, but if confirmed, they could change cosmologists’ understanding of the moments immediately after the big bang…”

What does the future hold for supercars with new fuel economy rules? - “As the 2009 Corvette ZR1 was unveiled on the very same day that President Bush signed into law a new energy bill, the obvious question is where do we go from here? The most prominent part of the bill was the first increase in corporate average fuel economy requirements in over two decades…” See also: 2009 Corvette ZR1

8-year-olds should test my code - “Even if I was trying to break the program, I wouldn’t have considered the combination of commands that Brian executed. If only I could get a room filled with 8-year-olds to test my code…” See also: How C programming works

Air Force Will Be Coal-Powered by 2011 - “The United States Air Force is well on their way to becoming coal-powered. On Monday, the USAF carried out a transcontinental test flight using a 50-50 blend of standard jet fuel and coal-based ’synfuel’…” See also: How gasoline works

Heal thyself: One doctor’s personal experiment - “I believed the best thing to do was attack the cancer from multiple angles at once, using a range of drugs. But in order to do that, I needed to find an oncologist who was willing to push the envelope with me…” See also: How cancer works

[See previous IR]

This appears to be the entire movie, “Who killed the electric car?” now available online for free:

We’ll see how long it lasts…

See also: The Chevrolet Volt: What is wrong with this picture?

See also: How electric cars work

If you have a friend who runs marathons, you know that he/she has a “low resting heart rate”. What this means is that, when your friend is sitting on the couch watching TV, his/her heart beats much more slowly than the heart of a “normal person”. A normal resting pulse is 70 to 75 beats per minutes. An athlete in great shape can cut that number in half.

Why do athletes have low resting heart rates? This article has the answer:

Heart rate and cardiovascular efficiency

Cardiovascular efficiency depends on a number of factors. One measure is called stroke volume, which is the volume of blood pumped per heartbeat. A fit individual has a larger stroke volume, which means a greater volume of oxygen is delivered to the body per heartbeat. This is also the reason fit people have a lower resting heart rate. As mentioned, muscles reqire a given amount of fuel, even at rest, which doesn’t change with exercise training. Because exercise training has increased the volume of oxygen that can be delivered to muscles per heartbeat, the heart needs to beat less to do the same job. Therefore, the heart rate is lowered.

For more info see How your heart works

[See previous GQ]