Interesting reading…

by Marshall Brain

Tesla rolls out its long-awaited electric sports car - “The car goes from 0 to 60 mph in just under four seconds and tops out at 125 mph. It goes 225 miles on one charge and can be fully recharged in 3.5 hours, which Tesla officials say should allow most people to drive it to work and back and recharge it at night like a cell phone…”

German Invents Radar Camouflaging Paint - “A German inventor has created a radar-evading camouflage paint in the deserts of the United Arab Emirates. An institute back in Germany tested the paint and discovered — to everyone’s surprise — that it actually works. The German defense industry is starting to take an interest…”

How to Fit a Mansion’s Worth of Crap Into Your Tiny Apartment - “They say that the kitchen is the heart of any home, so that is where we will start. This Circular Kitchen utilizes the same sort of rotating space saving design that you might find in a cabinet or pantry. It only takes up 18 square feet, but it features the storage capacity of 12 cupboards in a conventional kitchen as well as room for essential appliances like a stove (burners above the fridge), dishwasher, sink, and microwave…”

Alaskan Capital Cuts Power Consumption By 40% - “Alaska’s capital city lost its main power transmission lines in a series of avalanches earlier this month, cutting it off from a relatively cheap source of power at a hydroelectric dam, and leaving it to draw from backup generators that cost nearly five times as much. Faced with the tough decision that such a large increase in utility bills can present, the city did what many have speculated the western world is incapable of: they cut back…”

Holy Crap: MacGyver Blockbuster Film Coming! - “Today at Maker Faire 2008, MacGyver creator (and real life inspiration) Lee David Zlotoff announced he has a big budget MacGyver movie in the planning stages…”

NASA scientific visualization studio - “Tools and projects used within NASA for visualizing data…”

Warmer ocean water means less oxygen - “Low-oxygen zones where sea life is threatened or cannot survive are growing as the oceans are heated by global warming, researchers warn…”

Ape Genius reveals depth of animal intelligence - “In controlled laboratory experiments another chimpanzee called Judy quickly learns how to use a complex series of manoeuvres, turning wheels and pulling handles in order, to obtain a piece of fruit from a specially constructed wooden slot machine. But even more remarkably other chimps watch her success and then learn the skill themselves…”

Top 10 Healthy Foods We Never Eat - “There are many healthy foods that never see the inside of a shopping cart or in your fridge. Some you’ve never heard of, and others you’ve simply forgotten about. That’s why we’ve rounded up the best of the bunch…”

10 Things Your Airline Won’t Tell You - “If you’ve flown lately you’ve probably noticed that air travel feels like rush hour on the subway. Indeed, as airlines get more efficient, they’re squeezing more people onto fewer planes…”

Why Airlines Might Abandon Your City - “Nightmare Scenario #1: You’ve got your briefcase in hand, boarding pass in pocket, and your carry-on rolling behind you. You head to the airport with confidence. Except — there are no planes there. Sound crazy? Keep reading…”

MIT Class Calculates Carbon Footprint of “The Man” - “The MIT class, in a paper to be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, estimated that no American, even the homeless and itinerant Buddhist monks, could get their total “share” of energy usage below 130 gigajoules, which is more than twice the global average, and directly correlated with carbon footprint…”

One Guy Who Has Seen It All Doesn’t Like What He Sees Now - “As a boy, he watched his father, a money manager, navigate the Depression. As a financial manager, consultant and financial historian, he personally dealt with the recession of 1958, the bear markets of the 1970s, the 1987 crash, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s and the 2000-2002 bear market that followed the tech-stock bubble. Today’s trouble, the 89-year-old Mr. Bernstein says, is worse than he has seen since the Depression and threatens to roil markets into 2009 and beyond — longer than many people expect.”

Survival Gear That’s Just Crazy Enough to Work - “As technology advances in practically every other aspect of human life, the tools for surviving nature and its disasters remain relatively primitive. Is a Leatherman the best we can do? The problem is that good gear needs to be practical, safe and portable which doesn’t leave much room for robotic mountain-climbing exoskeletons…”

Mozy Delivers Solid Online Backup - “As a work-from-home’r I figured it was high time I implemented a real backup solution. I’d uploaded work docs and other important files to online storage from time to time, and I use Google Docs to write anything that matters, which gives me de facto online backup for those files. But I needed something real…”

Science cool, says Denzel Washington - “Denzel Washington says inner-city schoolkids have to be reminded that scientists are more important than entertainers…”

New Study Debunks Myth That Most Tech Entrepreneurs Are College Kids - “A new study from researchers at Duke University and Harvard University challenges the popular assumption that most technology entrepreneurs are twee college kids launching businesses from their dorm rooms…”

Want to Know When Housing Has Bottomed? Here’s How - “What’s a sound business proposition? making a profit from day one, without the aid of any tax shenanigans. At the real bottom in real estate cycles, you can buy a house or apartment and rent it out at market rates–and make a profit on day one in cash-accounting terms…”

1.1 Million Bee Colonies Dead This Year - “The information provided here was generated by a survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America. They took the survey in January and February this year, and in the process, gathered information from 18% of the colonies in the U.S…”

Common drugs hasten decline in elderly: study - “Elderly people who took commonly prescribed drugs for incontinence, allergy or high blood pressure walked more slowly and were less able to take care of themselves than others not taking the drugs, U.S. researchers said on Saturday…”

Would you join the scramble for an enormous ostrich egg for your breakfast? - “If you’re inordinately fond of eggs, and don’t mind shelling out £15.99, it could be just the news you have been waiting for…”

Solving Our Water Problems - Desalination Using Solar Thermal Power - “In recent years a rash of desalination plants have been proposed for Australian capital cities to meet increasing demand for water and to insure against drought induced supply constraints…”

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