Wired, March 2003 - Speed Freaks The latest Wired magazine is about speed and the people who crave it. The cover article chronicles those that rank at the top: from the fastest person, through to the fastest computer. I still can't believe that the SR-71, at Mach 3.4, still holds the speed record for an aircraft (that was set back in 1976) - and considering that Columbia was over Mach 18 when it broke up ... you'd think there would be a faster plane by now. Other articles on speed in this issue are:
  • War of the Wheels: a well written article on the drag racing scene. The article compares the old-school dragsters who pushed raw-horsepower, topping with vehicles that put out 7,000+hp, to the "rice burners" - souped-up Japanese imports, such as overclocked Honda CRXes that reach upwards of 1,000hp. The article is well written, and pulls no punches.
  • Maximum Overdrive: covers the overclocking of processors. It started out just as a way of pushing a CPU and a computer faster than the manufactuers wanted so that the edge could be gotten in the first-person shooters such as Doom and Duke Nukem. It's evolved into refined sport where the latest king of the hill can claim fame at such sites as HardOCP.com and Futuremark.com.
  • ... or Die Trying: Ken Warby's holds the world's water speed record at 317.6mph, set in 1978. Everyone who's tried to break it have either failed and/or died in the attempt. Warby now thinks he can break his own record, and he's got competition from two other teams, all are readying for runs within the next year.

    • Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    The first chef

    First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...
    Read more

    Inner Cow

    Image
    This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Researchers cut holes into the sides of cows and insert an cannula, which allows access to a live animals stomach. These holes are so big, you can actually see what's going on inside -- literally, reach into the stomach of a cow. Cows stomach have millions microbes that aid in digestion, and surprisingly, cannulated cows are usually the healthiest of the herd. You would think that walking around with a hole in your stomach would be bad for you, but apparently not. Some farmers apparently keep cannulated cows in their herd so they can serve as microbe donors to sick cows. Just bizarre. [Source: Oddity Central ]
    Read more

    Blogs of Note

    Who Would Jesus Hate? -- described as providing "anecdotal evidence of how religion is on the wrong side of every social issue." Fugetaboutit! -- hilarious site from a "48-year-old shrinking Italian comedian ." Take the tagline for instance: "I saw the face of Jesus in my lasagna ... briefly."
    Read more