think or thwim

The Veyron is the most powerful, quickest accelerating, fastest, and most expensive production car ever made.

8.0 liter, 16 cylinder, 1000 horsepower, 250 mph (400 kmh), all wheel drive, 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, 5.8 mpg (city). $1,400,000 MSRP

When the brakes are applied at speeds over 124 miles per hour, the rear spoiler snaps to vertical to act as an air brake. That must work pretty well. According to Bugatti, the Veyron will decelerate from 250 mph to 0 in under 10 seconds.

According to Wikipedia:

Maintenance will be possible at Bentley dealerships, but repair service will require a flown-in mechanic, whom the company promises will be available 24 hours a day.

Order yours here: CarsDirect.com

:: Signal vs Noise

I’d still rather have a Tesla Roadster, which seems like a bargain all of a sudden.

China’s National Swim Center will be the venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics swimming events. It will seat 17,000.

From Inhabitat:

The skin’s material is just as innovative, its structural properties made possible by a lightweight and transparent Teflon called ETFE. The particular species of Teflon is designed to react to changing light conditions, which will create stunning visual effects for both visitors to the Watercube and to millions of TV spectators.

Soap bubbles were the inspiration for the design. The frame holding the ETFE panels is comprised of steel tubes welded to steel nodes. There are 4000 bubbles in total, but only 15 individual shapes in the walls and 7 in the roof. Those pieces repeat. The ETFE panels are double wall pillows. Each one is permanently inflated with an air pump when it is installed. In the top two construction pictures below you can see that some have been inflated and others have not.

For more details about the design process, check out this article by Tristram Carfrae of Arup, the engineers.

The crazy building in the background is the Beijing National Stadium, also known as the bird’s nest. It will be the venue for the track and field events.

More Watercube images

Google Map of the site

This show is strong.

From Aaron Swartz | Raw Thought:

A couple years ago the Showtime network called Ira Glass, the head and host of This American Life and asked him if he wanted to make a television version of his show. For most people, getting a call from a television network would be a fairly big deal. But not Glass. Every week, his radio show is heard by 1.6 million people. A hit show on Showtime gets half a million. So Glass said no, there was no way their show would work on television. Still, Showtime persisted, asking what it would take to make it work. So Glass thought of every crazy demand that came to mind. And Showtime met them all.

This American Life also has a new website.

Terry Gross interviews Ira Glass about the new show: Fresh Air

Congratulations to the RIAA for being voted the most hated non-governmental organization in America. Haliburton put up a good fight, but just couldn’t grab enough headlines during the final round. If you’re not already familiar with the RIAA because they haven’t sued your kids yet, you can read the spin at their website or I’ll parse it for you:

1) What the RIAA says:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry.

What they mean:

We’re corporate middlemen and lawyers banded together to fight our common enemies: artists and consumers. Before computers and the internet dropped the cost of recording and distribution to zero, we used to made a lot of money providing those services. However, it’s now clear that we’re doomed.

2) What the RIAA says:

Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality.

What they mean:

Our goals are 1) to extend copyright protection as far as we can possibly get away with. 2) force new artists who have no power to hand over the rights to profits from their work to us. 3) keep people from sharing. Sharing is bad.

3) What the RIAA says:

Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world.

What they mean:

Everybody has a damned iPod. Now that there’s competition we can’t figure out how to get you people to keep buying our formulaic overpriced CDs with one good song on them. If we had the creativity to do deal with this shit, we’d be musicians ourselves.

4) What the RIAA says:

RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

What they mean:

Between us, we had this industry by the balls from the 1950s to the 1990s.

5) What the RIAA says:

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies.

What they mean:

Our lobbyists have their heads so far up Congress’ ass, you can’t tell where one organization starts and the other leaves off.

6) What the RIAA says:

The RIAA also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi-Platinum™, and Diamond® sales awards, and recently launched Los Premios De Oro y Platino™, a new award celebrating Latin music sales.

What they mean:

We keep track of who plays what to make sure we get paid.

The RIAA certainly has what it takes to consistently be a contender, and I think we’ll be watching them in the finals again next year.

This year’s results

Here’s this year’s completed bracket. Notice the ease with which the RIAA dismissed it’s early round opponents. Also, check out United Airlines. They came out looking like Google in this crowd.

Looking forward to next year

If the RIAA is going to make it back to the dance next year, they’re going to have to step it up. Viacom clearly has their sights set on the 2008 trophy, and they have already opened up a sizable lead.

The problem for the RIAA is how to top a stunning year of lawsuits against 12 year old cancer patients and grandmothers. It won’t be easy, but I have an idea: the RIAA should hire Dick Cheney. Think about it. He’s the guy that made Haliburton who they are today, and if the Bush Administration played in this league, no one else would have scored a vote.

With Cheney at the helm the RIAA would be unstoppable. I don’t think the word “dynasty” is too strong. We’re talking a John Wooden/UCLA 1964-1975 championship run. It would be a thing of evil beauty.

Thanks to Consumerist.com for sponsoring the tournament, and good luck to all the participants next year. It looks to be another great year for the fans.

Really Funny Related Stuff

Brian Briggs | RIAA Updates Mission Statement to Reflect Priorities
Brian Briggs | RIAA Lawsuit Decision Flowchart

Really Insightful Related Stuff

Bob Lefsetz | Giving It Away

:: /.

Expect to see longer and fancier words on this blog starting today as I followed the advice of Rick at Lifehacker and installed WordWeb. Now when I [Ctrl] + right click any word in any program WordWeb pops up with dictionary and thesaurus entries for that word.

Rick was right. The program is the best thing since beef jerky, but their licensing agreement is even better:

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if

* You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
* AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

If you do not qualify you must uninstall the program after the 30-day trial period or purchase WordWeb Pro. The license is designed to provide a small incentive for people with massively unsustainable emissions to cut down.

Inspired, I’m updating the EULA for this blog. You may read anything here free of charge unless you are an asshole. If you fail to meet this minimum qualification you’ll need to go read something else. Start here. By reading this post you agree to the terms of this license. Also, turn out the lights if you’re not going to be in the room, and don’t meditate in the refrigerator.

The multitouch interface isn’t even available yet, and it’s almost obsolete. Check out Emotiv Systems previously top secret neural interface for gaming.

Here’s a demo. Sorry about the horrible sound.

It’s a little rough, but still, that’s some impressive mind reading for a hat.

:: Linkbunnies

I wouldn’t want to be around when a piece of space junk cut through that cable and the bottom half fell back to Earth. Other than that, these things seem to have merit.

There’s a $4,000,000 dollar prize competition called Elevator 2010. They say we’ll need a cable with a tensile strength of 100 GPa to make this work. In theory carbon nanotubes can do that, but currently we’re only able to build cables in the 3-5 GPa range. They also claim the cable will be light and paper thin, so air friction would keep a falling cable from gaining enough speed to be a problem.

The cable would be 62,000 miles long. Satellites in geosynchronous orbit (stationary relative to Earth) are generally at 25,000 miles, but the extra length would make the end of that cable useful for slinging things to Mars or other distant destinations. Imagine swinging a ball on the end of a string.

The site also says the climbers would travel at 120 mph. That would be a 9 day journey to put something in geosynchronous orbit and a 22 day journey to the end of the cable. The system could carry one 15 ton payload per day and multiple climbers would be on the cable at once. They say this about getting them back down:

Multiple Space Elevators are possible, though there are some technical arguments against it. We believe this issue will end up being a political rather than a technocal one. In the initial years, there will be much more “up” traffic than “down” traffic, so even if there is only one Space Elevator, it will be possible to declare a “down” week every couple of month to accomodate such traffic.

It’s interesting to note that their spelling is worse than mine.

There’s another proposal called a space fountain where pellets are shot up from the Earth inside a tube. The kinetic energy of the pellets keeps the tube erect. However, if the stream of pellets were to stop due to power failure, mechanical failure, or sabotage the tube would come crashing to earth, making this one of the top four or five dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard. This proposal came from some very smart guys, and they did include redundant power supplies and redundant pellet guns. However, they were clearly smoking crack, and should not be taken seriously.

Update:
Also check out the LiftPort Group. They’ve got an informative forum and newsletter.

:: Fresh Creation

From Dave Chappelle | For What It’s Worth. The entire show is at Google Video.

:: Smashing Telly

James Randi from an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interview:

I investigated for my book The Faith Healers, 104 cases of people who said they had been healed by faith healers or about whom it was said they were healed. And I found out those 104 people belonged to three classes: first class is people who never had the disease that they thought they did…

The second class of people that I examined in those 104 people, were people who still had the diseases of which they said they’d been healed…

The third class of people was even sadder. They were people who were already dead by the time I got around to interview them…

I can’t say that faith healing has never worked or that it doesn’t ever work. All I can say is my experience is 100% failure.

Uri Geller and Peter Popoff:

Randi teamed up with Johnny Carson to call these two out on the Tonight Show. Unbelievably, Geller still continued convincing people he could bend spoons with his mind after this appearance.

James Hydrick:

Hydrick later confessed to blowing a powerful stream of air out of his mouth, which he taught himself during an 18 month stay in solitary confinement while in prison.

Sylvia Brown:

Brown accepted James Randi’s million dollar challenge on the Larry King show in 2001, but she has never showed up to be tested. Randi and Brown still periodically appear together on TV shows and argue.

The Media and the Public

Randi recruited artist, Jose Alverez, to become famous in Australia. In one week, they used the Australian media to create a fake channeling personality named Carlos who filled a large auditorium for his first performance.

:: haha.nu