Posts

CAR CAMPINGTailgating with Mother NatureDrive-in camping combines the beauty of nature with the conveniences of civilization–if it keeps you warm, grills a steak or mixes a cocktail, bring it along. Finding the perfect spot to park all that luxury takes advance planning. Campsites at many state and national parks can be booked online. But before you make a reservation, call the campground and ask to speak with a park ranger, says Jane Huber, coauthor of The Best in Tent Camping: Southern California....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe deterioration of our asphalt roads poses a long-term maintenance problem, requiring extensive digging and construction (and horrible ruts and potholes when they simply aren’t maintained). So why not makes roads out of easy-to-replace plastic slabs?Working with the city of Rotterdam, a Dutch company called VolkerWessels has recently proposed exactly that. It wants to develop and construct plastic roads that are as easy to remove as they are to install....

Jake Brandspigel, the Stihl product service supervisor who explained these parts to us, learned his job the old-fashioned way, by repairing lawn mowers as a teen. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, he continued working in shops. One day a Stihl representative on a routine visit called him out from under a mower and set him up for a post-college job. He’s been at the company ever since.Model: Stihl MS 362 C-MQMade: Virginia Beach, VADisassembled: TorontoNumber of parts: 297Time to disassemble: 7 hours, 26 minutes, 40 seconds1....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe goal is to find new deep-water oil reservoirs. The tool is Scarabeo 9, an advanced mobile drilling platform that supports a crew of 200 and can bore more than 9 miles into the ocean floor. The problem is its destination: Cuba. Built in China and equipped in Singapore, the Italian-owned Scarabeo 9 is now on its maiden voyage from Asia to the Atlantic. The structure itself is designed to sustain 100-knot winds and waves almost 90 feet high, and the mobile platform is stabilized by hulking, submerged pontoons....

It’s been 26 years since there’s been a Ghostbusters film, and 16 years since any small screen compatriots. But with Paul Feig’s hotly anticipated, all-female Ghostbusters re-imagining coming up, fans have been wondering how close it will hew to the spirit of the original. But with the first promo images having been released, fans can rest easy: while offering up something new, it also seems to be the same kind of ghostbusting we know and love....

The new era of clean diesel in America will officially be ushered in by the new VW Jetta TDi when it goes on sale in a few months. Powered by a 2.0-liter four-banger that produces 140 hp and 236 lb.-ft. of torque, it will be the first automobile to meet the world’s most stringent emission control standards, California’s Tier II, Bin 5. Although it won’t be wearing the “BlueTec” badge, the Jetta will be using emission-cleansing technologies developed under the cooperative formed by Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen to make it 50-state legal....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs Popular Mechanics reported last fall, the light bulb wars are on. The government-mandated phase-out of old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs is upcoming, but plenty of people aren’t happy with the replacements such as LEDs. One problem with LEDs is they haven’t produced light that’s white enough for general use. But several years ago, researchers at Vanderbilt University led by Sandra Rosenthal invented a way to create much whiter light through the use of quantum dots—tiny semiconductor crystals....

After rough water prohibited attempted life raft rescue attempts, U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Air National Guard helicopters successfully rescued all 23 crew members of a sinking cargo ship in the Bering Sea Monday night. Three helicopters fought through turbulent weather hundreds of miles from the Aleutian Islands to remove the crew from their sinking 654-foot vessel, the Cougar Ace, and brought them all to safety. The Cougar Ace was shipping about 5,000 cars from Japan to Canada when it began listing to its port side the night before the rescue....

At the turn of the last century, San Francisco could fairly count itself as one of the world’s great cities. Formed out of the gold rush of 1849, it transformed from a rough-and-tumble mining town into a cosmopolitan center of 400,000 people. Aspirational locals called it the Paris of the West. There were fashionable department stores, urbane hotels, a new sprawling city hall said to be the biggest in the West, and a Grand Opera House that hosted the greatest tenor of that time, Enrico Caruso....

Media Platforms Design TeamUp in the sky: a black dot, like a speck of pepper on a white tablecloth, hurtling through the air. I was plummeting at more than 100 mph myself, the jet roar of wind blasting by, but the speck was closing in on me like a missile. I yanked the ripcord of my parachute and then watched as the object became a human body with wings. The body had a man’s face, and as he streaked by, not even 10 yards away, I could practically see the tonsils inside his screaming mouth: The tawny grasslands of southern California rushed upward to pancake him....

Gun-Toting Robots Deployed in Iraq The latest robots to crawl through the sands of Iraq aren’t just outfitted with cameras and infrared sensors, they’re packing fully automatic M249 SAW machine guns. After years of refinements and tweaks to make them safe in the field (including that all-important kill switch), the operator-controlled, bomb disposing SWORDS robots have been deployed, making them the first gun-toting ‘bots ever in combat.IRAQ BLOG: Man and Robot Down in War ZoneTECH WATCH: Israel’s Uzi-Packing Mini ‘BotEnergy Bill Ready for Last-Minute Fight Representatives from both sides of the aisle are duking it out in Congress today over the mammoth energy bill that would reduce dirty fossil fuel emissions and increase fuel economy standards....

Media Platforms Design TeamBehold the Hankook iFlex, the auto industry’s latest attempt at an airless tire.Tire companies have been trying for years to make a tire that doesn’t need air. The reason is simple: Although tires are more reliable now than they’ve ever been, they’re still totally dependent on the pressure that holds them up (even run-flat tires aren’t designed go very far without air). But it’s not an easy task....

Can metal really get inside your brain without you noticing?This week, Dr. Bishop’s guinea pig is Roy, a man plagued by pre-cognitions of Pattern-related atrocities. Roy has a bit of trouble in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine: Once inside, his veins begin to protrude from his skin, looking as though they’ll explode if exposure continues. Unfortunately for Roy, he spent his high school years participating in Dr. Bishop’s science experiments....

1 . WeightLow weight is the cornerstone of a fuel-efficient vehicle because the amount of energy required to accelerate a car is directly proportional to its mass. Plus, lightness has a cascading effect. A lightweight body doesn’t require a stout chassis, heavy-duty suspension components or large brakes. And the tires can be smaller, reducing rolling resistance. 2. Aerodynamic dragThe power—the rate of energy consumption—required to overcome aero drag is a product of the speed and the car’s aerodynamic resistance....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a vicious circle of four-wheeled dysfunction: An automaker unveils an impossibly sexy concept car at a major auto show, the motoring press fawns over what could become of it, and the enthusiast population is crestfallen when the production car ends up looking like a lame distortion of that original vision.Except in the case of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe, the production car that debuted at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show actually looked stunningly similar to the silver-hued concept we first saw in Frankfurt, save the normal-sized side mirrors and a few detail and proportional tweaks....

It’s about the size of a credit card and costs about $60, but the humble CANtact can hack into your car.The small device, built by Eric Evenchick, serves as a sort of hub between a computer and your car’s on-board diagnostic computer. From the device’s interface, you can control windows, brakes, service lights, and more.Evenchick is proclaiming his device to be a security solution for cars, helping users find cybersecurity vulnerabilities that aren’t readily evident even when you use more expensive existing devices....

Red Abbott, the band, is not really a band at all in the traditional sense. They don’t get together to rehearse, and they haven’t performed live since the group was formed. In fact, they don’t see much of one another at all. Bert Brown, Chip Means and Joe Madera (now in their mid-20s) played in a classic rock cover band back in high school, but they went their separate ways when college and then professional life scattered them up and down the Eastern seaboard....

In a winter storm in 1686 a 54-foot French frigate carrying a skeleton crew on an exploratory mission off the Texas coast sank in Matagorda Bay, halfway between Galveston and Corpus Christi. For more than 300 years it sat and decomposed, but portions of its keel and hull were mummified in 6 feet of mud. When those diminished but very important remains were raised in 1996, preservationists had an astonishing piece of good luck almost unheard of in the world of shipwreck rescue: Every important plank of wood had been marked with a Roman numeral, like a model in a box....

Media Platforms Design TeamQ: I am looking for the right way to repaint the wood floor in my living room. Do you have any suggestions?A: First, buy a simple home test kit for lead paint. If the existing floor paint contains lead, you’re better off coating the floor with a product rated as a lead encapsulant, such as those offered by Fiberlock Technologies. Then, install wall-to-wall carpet.If the floor paint does not contain lead, damp mop it with a floor cleaner, then let it dry....

Jimi Hendrix killed Jimi Hendrix, and Jimi Hendrix saw him do it. Such is the world in The Jimi Hendrix Case, a game released by the Adventure Game Studio earlier this month. The objective of the game is simple: Solve the murder of Jimi Hendrix. The characters, too, are simple: Everyone is Jimi Hendrix. That makes the objective tricky, since, in world of clones, it seems as if everyone and no one did it....