If it’s in stock we have it!
| March 25, 2012
Month: March 2012
This Is Why You Don’t Drive Your Porsche Into Wet Cement
| March 25, 2012
An auto journalist on a drive through San Francisco yesterday morning happened to come across the above Porsche 911 right after it plowed into a patch of fresh, wet cement. Yes, this is why people think Porsche 911 drivers are asshats.
Passenger Next to Crying Child Opens Plane’s Emergency Exit Door
| March 25, 2012
Sitting next to a screaming child on an airplane can make someone want to jump out the window. One man aboard a Vietnam Airlines plane Tuesday attempted to take that adage literally. Luckily for all on board, the plane had already landed, but that didn’t stop 29-year-old Le Van Thuan from opening the plane’s window exit and releasing the emergency slide.
A Roller Coaster That’ll Leave You Weightless for Eight Long Seconds
| March 25, 2012
Kingda Ka, the tallest roller coaster on Earth, drops its passengers a life-flashing 418 feet. Ferrari World’s Formula Rossa, the fastest, literally takes riders’ breath away at speeds of up to 150 mph. Though thrilling, these are phenomena of degree, not kind. BRC Imagination Arts, a Southern California design firm, has proposed something entirely new: a ride that creates the sensation of zero gravity for up to eight seconds at a time.
BRC drew its concept from the “Vomit Comet,” the plane NASA uses to train astronauts. The KC-135A aircraft flies a looping parabolic path, creating about 25 seconds of microgravity each time it zips up and over the parabola’s camelback hump. BRC’s proposed theme-park ride would travel a somewhat simpler trajectory—up and then back down a soaring steel edifice, similar to the existing “Superman: Escape from Krypton” coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California. But unlike Superman and other open-car coasters, the vomit-comet ride would be fully enclosed. Rather than the thrill of hurtling forward to one’s perceived doom, riders would enjoy the illusion of floating within a stable chamber.
Microsoft Can Make Your Voice Speak Foreign Languages
| March 24, 2012
Ever wonder what you’d sound like speaking German? Or maybe Mandarin? Microsoft Research has a new technology they’re cooking up which will take the sound of your voice and synthesize it as part a spoken language translator.
According to MIT’s Technology Review, the system in it’s current form requires an hour of training (which, presumably, means an hour of you talking to a computer), and can translate between 26 different languages.
Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel
| March 24, 2012
Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology. But in fact, they’re so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps.
The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It’s figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder.
