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On a warm afternoon last October at Lake George, N.Y., a group of 47 retirees from Michigan and Ohio climbed-some with the assistance of walkers-aboard the 38-ft. tour boat Ethan Allen. It was one of the last stops on a week-long fall foliage trip, and many passengers opted for port-side benches, where the sun streamed beneath a wooden roof through open windows. Jeane Siler, 77, noticed the boat was listing and joked to a companion: “Hey, we might not get away from the dock....

Media Platforms Design TeamScary movies and TV specials may focus on the most frightening-looking predators (Shark Week, anyone?), but that fearmongering is misdirected. The next time you’re nervously scanning the surface of the sea for a dorsal fin, remember one thing: Statistically speaking, you are much more likely to be killed by a cow than a shark.Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....

Media Platforms Design TeamEnertia, the first-ever zero-emissions, production-ready electric motorcycle, is bringing a whole new shade of green to two-wheelers. The bike has a deceptively simple design and, with a carbon-fiber chassis, weighs in at a mere 275 pounds. That lightweight vehicle platform allows Enertia to top out at speeds over 50 mph. Okay, so it’s no competition for a high-powered Harley or Honda, but it probably gets a little more respect than the average scooter....

High-end classic car auctions like the Barrett-Jackson events are common on cable channels with three-digit numbers, such as Speed and HD Theater. Perfect Shelby Cobras, Ferraris with long racing pedigrees, glorious Duesenbergs, exceedingly rare muscle cars and old Mercedes roadsters so gorgeous that your eyes water cross the block and sell for insane prices. This is not about those auctions.This is about auctions where the cars are the most ordinary of ordinary vehicles: Ford Crown Victorias coming off six years of patrol duty with the county sheriff’s department....

JANUARYLegionRelease Date: January 22[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/u8lGCjd9W8U&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/youtube]The 2010 slate of movies promises to start with a bang—and that bang is a bunch of angels knocking on your door to bring the apocalypse. The only thing standing between them and their goal is Michael (Paul Bettany), an archangel who must protect a pregnant waitress whose child is mankind’s only hope. This is the plot of Legion, out January 22. The flick promises to be full of amazing visual effects and incredibly creepy creatures—not to mention foul-mouthed, ceiling-crawling grandmas—and that’s more than enough to get us to the theater....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: NowPrice: $76,000–$90,000 (approx.)Competitors: Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Porsche 911, Nissan GT-RPowertrains: 3.5-liter V6, 345 hp, 295 ft-lb; six-speed manual, RWD EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 17/26 mpgWhat’s New: The normally aspirated Lotus Evora reached U.S. shores last spring, and the new souped-up Evora S straps a Harrop HTV 1320 supercharger to the Toyota-sourced V6, boosting horsepower to 345 and torque to 295 ft-lb. The mill meets a six-speed manual gearbox, which incorporates a more heavy-duty clutch with lighter inertia....

The Popular Mechanics magazine archive–especially the 100-plus-year-old section–stinks. It smells a bit as though it’s been stored in the wet basement of your untidy, chain-smoking uncle. When you get beyond sensory observations, the content of our 106-year archive captures a remarkable breadth of news, views and practical advice over the past century. Still, spend more than a few minutes with your face buried in paper that’s more than a century old and, unavoidably, dust and mold start doing strange things to your sinus cavities....

Media Platforms Design Team2012 Engineers install equipment that removes radioactive atoms migrating into underground water and seawater. The land must be repeatedly mapped for contamination because rain distributes the material unevenly in the soil. “It’s not a uniform distribution,” says Norman Kleiman, an environmental health sciences professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York. “We have potential hotspots of contamination here and there.” Irradiated soil is removed and stored in secure silos....

A timber-frame home is a celebration of wood on a massive scale. Tall posts grow from the floor and connect overhead in a soaring network of beams, rafters and braces joined with glovelike precision. And the entire structure — which can last for centuries — remains exposed as evidence of the craftsman’s skill. But when Don Jackson and his wife, Nita, built the Bradford, N.H., home where they’ve lived since 2003, the building style’s distinctive open spaces were the main attraction....

Media Platforms Design Team"I’ve been riding these things my whole life. There’s basically no way I’m going to flip this one over," Tom Kaiser, managing editor at , says as we strap ourselves into a new at Carolina Adventure World. “But if I do flip it, you have to ignore the basic human instinct to put your arm out of the vehicle to brace for the fall. Just grab the seat belt like this....

Media Platforms Design TeamOption 1: INSTALLATION: EasySOUND QUALITY: Poor FM transmitters are the most popular and convenient way of playing an MP3 device through a car stereo. They typically plug into an iPod’s dock or headphone jack to create what is essentially a low-wattage pirate radio station—powerful enough to be picked up by your car radio inches away, but not strong enough to interfere with neighboring car radios. Unfortunately, these transmitters need to compete with real (and far more powerful) radio stations and are easily swamped by 6000 watts of classic rock....

Media Platforms Design TeamCarl StrongBozeman, Mont.Age: 46Years on Job: 18 When Carl Strong opened a retail store in 2002 to expand his presence in the local bicycle market, he realized quickly that it was a mistake. “I learned that I didn’t want to manage people,” he says. “What I wanted to do was build frames.” The Seattle transplant now focuses on his true passion—working with chrome moly, titanium and carbon fiber....

(Published in the December 2001 issue)Read about Exkate Raptor 4.0 Extreme Electric SkateboardIt’s a perfect icon of Germany. From the land of Oktoberfest, bier steins and strudel comes a new skateboard—the BMW Street Carver—that brings the joyous carving sensation of snowboarding and surfing to pavement. Bomb down concrete slopes on its more stable design. Slalom at speed while feeling more relaxed with subtle shifts of your weight. Performance boarding now comes to das ganze volk....

Media Platforms Design TeamDinosaurs lorded over the Earth for more than 160 million years, and then, about 66 million years ago, poof!What exactly happened? Most laypeople probably think we know the answer — that a massive rock from space crashed into Earth and wiped them out. To paleontologists, however, it’s a little more complicated than that. Based on recent improvements in big data analysis and dating techniques, a new report in Biological Reviews says the evidence seems to support the asteroid impact hypothesis....

Media Platforms Design TeamEarlier this year, when the Motorcycle Industry Council reported a growth in new road bikes after initially projecting a decline, Enterprise Rent-A-Car took notice of Americans’ increasing interest in motorcycles. Today the international rental company added a new branch in Las Vegas to its list of locations that already numbers more than 6000. But this one’s a little different: It offers motorcycle rentals—making Enterprise the first major rental company to do so....

Ford is showing off a heaping spoonful of digital technology at the New York Auto Show this year. Out in front of the Javits Center was a fascinatingly oddball cab concept with a Microsoft Surface-like projection touchscreen interface in the back seat. And in Ford’s booth was the Transit Connect Family One concept vehicle–which crams a truckload of tech into a tiny van in the spirit of family togetherness. At first, I thought the Transit Connect was an awkward platform for a family vehicle concept, since Ford is introducing the miniature $21,475 van (not to be confused with a minivan) this summer, aiming at the small-business commercial segment of the market....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Donato Sardella/WireImage) One of science fiction’s most famous voices is gone: Michael Crichton died Tuesday in his home in Los Angeles at age 66. Crichton’s work were central to mainstream science fiction of the last 40 years. His best-sellers included The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and Congo. He also helped develop the screenplays that took many of his books to the big screen. In addition, Crichton created the TV show E....

The Sport Coupe Concept was Nissan’s big reveal at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show, but the Japanese automaker’s show space had two other cars on the main stage: the IDx Freeflow and IDx NISMO. Both cars appeared at the Tokyo Motor Show in November, and their stateside appearance isn’t just to give Americans a firsthand look at compact sports car that pays homage to the Datsun 510. According to Andy Palmer, Nissan’s executive vice president and chief planning officer, the IDX is headed for production....

Media Platforms Design TeamMaterials scientist Edwin “Ned” Thomas, left, dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University, and Jae-Hwang Lee hold a polymer encasing bullets, the focus of a previous experiment. (Photo Credit: Tommy LaVergne/Rice University) Single layers of carbon just one atom thick can be stronger than steel when it comes to absorbing impacts, suggesting it could help make extraordinary armor, researchers say.The graphite making up pencil lead is made of atom-thick sheets known as graphene....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Box (2009)Media Platforms Design TeamScience fiction author Richard Matheson, probably most famous for his 1954 novel I Am Legend, has been putting words on paper for 60 years. Like Legend, many of his stories have made the transition to film and television, including “Button, Button,” the basis for the Box. However, The Box actually has more in common with The Twilight Zone episode the story inspired than Matheson’s original short story....