1200hp "Super Veyron" Winds The Rumor Mill Again
A car as powerful as the Bugatti Veyron can do a great many things. Crest the 400 km/h mark. Burn through fuel and rubber faster than a jumbo jet on take-off with the parking brake engaged. But how about stop time? Maybe if you lay down all that twist in the opposite direction off the earth's rotation. Or bring back a rumor that first reared its head some four years ago. We're talking about the long-rumored 1,200-horsepower "super Veyron." Its arrival has been anticipated for years, and now accounts from Germany are bringing it back to life. According to the reports, Professor Ferdinand Piëch – the former Volkswagen chairman, Porsche heir and father of the Veyron – recently delivered a lecture at the Vienna University of Technology, wherein he briefly alluded to the emergence of the 1,200-hp Veyron, but revealed no further details.
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The Blueprint To All Our Data Is Hidden Inside This Mountain Fortress
In the snowy Swiss Alps, behind a three and a half ton door that could withstand a nuclear attack and beyond a maze of passageways, scientists are depositing a capsule containing everything future generations will need to decipher our data. The facility is the Swiss Fort Knox (really, that's what it's called) and the researchers are those of Planets, a project funded partially by the European Union with the aim of ensuring "long-term access to our digital cultural and scientific assets." As one of the project's leaders noted, Einstein's paper notes are still readable today; Stephen Hawking's digital ones, seven decades on, might not be.
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Electric Motorcycle Race Becomes a Dogfight
Seasoned pro Shawn Higbee won North America’s first-ever electric motorcycle grand prix today in a race that was tighter than the finish would suggest. Ten riders competed in the 25-mile race around Infineon Raceway, but all the action was at the front of the pack. The 11-lap race was a dogfight most of the way as polesitter Higbee (No. 22) and Michael Barnes (No. 80) repeatedly traded the lead. Higbee would take the lead in the turns, only to have Barnes pull away on the straights. Everyone knew the race would come down to battery management, and in the end Higbee did the better job. “Michael snapped off the line a little quicker than I thought” to start the race, Higbee said. “It made me nervous. It became a strategy race, like an endurance race. I kept an eye on the volt meter to make sure I’d have the range to finish.” It paid off when the power management safety override on Barnes’ bike tripped, bringing the bike to a stop on lap 9 until Barnes could reset it.
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A Look at Jim Henson’s Muppet Geeks
Twenty years ago this past weekend, a shining figure from many of our childhoods passed away. Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets and countless films and television shows, died at the age of 53 after suffering organ failure due to a severe infection of Streptococcus pyrogenes. I remember finding out the news at school and being devastated—so much of Henson’s work had defined my early childhood, and he was gone. But, through the years I’ve realized while Henson may no longer be with us, his legacy lives on, both in the work he did and the work he inspired. Still, have you ever stopped to notice just how geeky the whole Muppet crew was? Just looking around at the work Henson did it’s hard to think that he could have been anything other than a geek. Only a geek would have the kind of drive to create such whimsical, offbeat, hilarious, and often touching characters (not to mention with such an eye for pop culture and bizarre humor). But I think his understanding of the many kinds of geeks goes far beyond the surface. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see that Henson and his team portrayed a wide variety of geeks within the Muppet spectrum.
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