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The Playlist* “Sweet Home Chicago” /// David “Honeyboy” Edwards /// The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing* “Hoochie Coochie Woman” /// Big Time Sarah /// Lay It on `em Girls* “Death Letter” /// White Stripes /// De Stijl* “Pardon Denied Again” /// Robert Pete Williams /// I’m Blue as a Man Can Be* “When the Levee Breaks” /// Memphis Minnie /// Queen of the Blues* “Memphis in the Meantime” /// John Hiatt /// Bring the Family* “High Water (For Charlie Patton)” /// Bob Dylan /// Love and Theft* “Your Southern Can is Mine” /// Blind Willie McTell /// The Definitive Blind Willie McTell* “Stop Breaking Down” /// Rolling Stones /// Exile on Main Street* “Greenville” /// Lucinda Williams /// Car Wheels on a Gravel RoadRELATED STORIES• FREEDOM OF THE ROAD: The Blues Highway• PLUS: 3 More Classic American Road Trips• TECH EXTRA: 3 Sound Improvements for Your RideMedia Platforms Design TeamThe Collection* Tab Benoit with Louisiana’s LeRoux /// Night Train to Nashville* Joe Callicot /// Ain’t A Gonna Lie to You* Eric Clapton /// Blues* Robert Cray /// The Best of…* Willie Dixon /// Willie Dixon* Buddy Guy /// Live at The Checkerboard Lounge* Delta Highway /// Westbound Blues* Son House /// Delta Blues* Elmore James /// Shake Your Money Maker* Robert Johnson /// King of the Delta Blues Singers* Robert Johnson /// The Complete Recordings* Sonny Landreth /// Grant Street* Fury Lewis /// Fourth and Beale* John Mayal /// Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton* Keb’ Mo’ /// Slow Down* John Primer /// Blue Steel* Bonnie Raitt /// Luck of the Draw* Otis Rush /// All Your Love I Miss Loving: Live at the Wise Fools Club Chicago* Magic Sam /// West Side Soul* Memphis Slim and Buddy Guy /// Southside Reunion* Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble /// Texas Flood* Muddy Waters /// His Best, 1947 to 1955, The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection* Junior Wells /// HooDoo Man Blues* Sonny Boy Williamson /// Delta Blues* Howlin’ Wolf /// Howlin’ WolfRELATED STORIES• FREEDOM OF THE ROAD: The Blues Highway• PLUS: 3 More Classic American Road Trips• TECH EXTRA: 3 Sound Improvements for Your RideMedia Platforms Design TeamThe Original BluesmanDavid “Honeyboy” Edwards was born in Shaw, Miss....

Media Platforms Design Team Browse expert reviews and compare info on Focus at the Media Platforms Design Team There are plenty of significant evolutionary changes going on with the all-new 2008 Ford Focus, but only one that we can call truly revolutionary: The new Sync infotainment system.A joint effort between Ford and Microsoft, Sync is essentially a small PC running on a version of Windows Auto (click here for our video comparison test of Detroit’s new in-car tech)....

Media Platforms Design TeamJust after midnight Eastern time on July 17, scientists at NASA confirmed that the had gone into orbit around the asteroid Vesta, the second-largest object in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. After a visit there, it will move on to orbit Ceres, the largest asteroid (and technically a dwarf planet, like Pluto). Why did NASA decide to visit these big hunks of ice and rock?Dawn spacecraftLast Uncharted Worlds"This is the first time a spacecraft has gone into orbit around something in the main Asteroid Belt," Marc Rayman says....

Wireless Empowerment /// bqTesla Texas Instruments Wireless Evaluation Kit$250Media Platforms Design TeamIf the size, complexity and staff-size of a booth is any indication, wireless electricity company Fulton Innovations has taken off this year. Add to this a hefty list of partners—from LG to Marriott, Bosch, Energizer and Texas instruments—and it’s clear that in the near future, we will see wireless power become even more commonplace. While the wirelessly powered Bosch tool line, complete with a workbench-cum-charging station is Fulton Innovation’s most exciting product out this year for consumers (out in 2010, price not yet set), Texas Instruments’ bqTesla development kit is a product that promises to tap the full potential of wireless electricity for companies big and, especially, small....

The temperature: 10 below zero. The location: the middle of frozen Waite Lake in the Northwest Territories, 1000 miles north of the U.S. border. I’m with six Canadian ice-road experts on the shoulder of a highway that curves from the powder-frosted shoreline forest, across the lake and into the distance. In the pale light of winter, even the sun seems frozen.Fifty yards away, a tanker truck hauling 40 tons of fuel oil inches forward, its huge diesel rumbling....

Scientists predict that by the end of the century, U.S. urban and suburban areas will have expanded by an area about the size of South Dakota. That’s an awful lot of blacktop, adding to scientists’ worries that the growth of cities could increase global warming, in part because of the way a city absorbs heat. But a new study has found that cool roofs, those painted with reflective materials, and green roofs (those with plants on them) could counteract this warming....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamMORE BRAND-NEW COVERAGE OF MODEL T’S 100TH BIRTHDAY• TECH WATCH: Top 10 Model T Innovations That Matter 100 Years Later• FLASHBACK: How Popular Mechanics Missed the Model T Unveiling DEARBORN, Mich. — It’s easy to make the case for Ford’s Model T as the most important automobile of all time. After all, the T literally put America on wheels. Over the course of 19 years spanning from 1908 to 1927, Ford sold more than 15 million Model Ts, including more than 1....

It took a team of animators 1 million hours to create DreamWorks’ Bee Movie. Paxson Woelber’s first animated work was completed in a long weekend. During his sophomore year at Middlebury College in Vermont, he found himself alone on campus for a short fall break and was simply trying to keep himself occupied. “So I figured out how to make a really simple motion file on my computer,” Woelber says. For this first animation, he used the standard software that came with his PC and drew the frames with his computer mouse....

Media Platforms Design TeamBuilder: Larry Erd, Pompano Beach, Fla.Plans: spidercarts.com “Black Widow"Cost: $689.151.) Plans and PartsGo-Kart Plans (PDF, .3MB, requires Adobe Reader) Erd and his 7-year-old son, Harrison, used $14.99 plans for the “Black Widow” go-kart from spidercarts.com. Plans like these, whether they are free or require a fee, often give frame dimensions but leave steering, axle, throttle and cable connections up to the builder. Browse parts suppliers’ websites to find additional advice on materials and methods....

The recently renovated Naval Surface Warfare Center’s “maneuvering and seakeeping” (MASK) basin simulates wave conditions to test the stability and control of scale models up to 30 feet in length so the Navy can predict how the full-scale vessels will perform on the ocean. The improvements to the Carderock, Md., facility—which has been testing the seaworthiness of warships and subs since 1962—mean that MASK can generate a multitude of different kinds of waves, at any angle, and with 99 percent precision....

Media Platforms Design TeamMost of us have a special affinity for the cars our parents owned when we were growing up. I was brought home from the hospital in a ‘49 Plymouth sedan. At age 7, I was with my dad when we went to Crabtree Motors in New Rochelle, N.Y., and bought a black and white Plymouth Belvedere–the one with the big fins.In 1966 we walked into the dealership to buy another car–a Ford Galaxie....

Media Platforms Design TeamTensions in the Korean Peninsula are at their worst point in decades after a North Korean submarine ambushed a South Korean warship, killing scores of sailors. Although North Korea has made violent provocation a cornerstone of its foreign and domestic policy for years, there is always the chance that this kind of brinksmanship will spark a major war. With an isolated and paranoid regime like North Korea holding some of the world’s most terrifying weapons, any reaction from the South or the United States could be seen as the first phase of a larger war....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf there was any doubt about Fake Locke’s intentions, last night’s episode of , “The Candidate,” made them loud and clear: This guy is bad. He doesn’t need all the candidates to go with him in order to leave the Island; he needs to all the candidates to make his great escape. So he fashions a bomb out of four blocks of C4, some batteries and a wristwatch, which he stows in Jack’s backpack....

How low can your blood oxygen level go? To find out, you might need to climb a mountain. An average person at sea level has about 13-14 kilopascals (kPa) of oxygen in their bloodstream, University College of London medical researcher Dan Martin says. When his intensive care patients drop to around 8 kPa he gets very worried, and a normal person with 6 kPa of oxygen faces almost certain death. Imagine his shock, then, when he and three colleagues on the top of Mount Everest measured their own blood oxygen level to be between 2....

Media Platforms Design TeamMONTEREY, Calif. — During last weekend’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the idyllic 17-Mile Drive here was overrun with some of the most striking shapes that sheetmetal has ever dared to form, from 1920s Duesenbergs to a fleet of Bugatti Veyrons, and everything between. On the futuristic end of this tantalizing spectrum is the Mustang by Giugiaro concept. We were fortunate enough to get some seat time and chat with its designer, Fabrizio Giugiaro, who has worked on such notable vehicles as the Maserati 3200 GT and the Lamborghini Gallardo....

Right now, Mexico has a unique and temporary landmark. The waters in the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas have receded some 82 feet to reveal a hidden treasure: A 400-year-old colonial church that’s been flooded for nearly 50 years. The Temple of Santiago was built in the mid 1500s, and was an important location in its day, sitting right on the King’s Road, a highway built by Spanish conquistadors. It was functional for several hundred years before being abandoned right around the same time that the United States was coming into being....

The universe is huge and stretches mind-blowingly far, so one of the best ways we have to find out more about it is to recreate the universe inside a computer and study that simulation. Studying simulations is how we’ve learned the structure of dark matter, for instance. But those simulations also predict that all the galaxies in the universe should be connected with long filaments of regular matter that, until recently, we’d never observed....

View full post on YoutubeIndia just successfully launched a 694-ton heavy lift rocket designed to take satellites and crewed vehicles into space. It’s another huge achievement for a nation rapidly ratcheting up its space program.The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV MK-III) is twice the mass of the Russian Soyuz rockets currently used to launch crews to the International Space Station. In this new test, it lifted a capsule that would be capable of carrying two to three crewmembers into space, marking the possibility that the country’s emerging space program is looking to send humans to orbit, or even considering reviving its idea of a moon mission....

Media Platforms Design TeamWell, our Jeep Liberty CRD (diesel), has been released by the dealership, proclaimed cured. Again. This time the earnest service techs and advisers at Manattan Jeep gave it up and called in Jeep’s diesel expert from the regional office. And after keeping our Liberty for the better part of another week, they finally replaced the EGR valve (that’s the second replacement) along with the throttle body. No explanation other than the throttle body on the engine was defective....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design Team(Photo by David S. Holloway/Getty Images) Halloween has never been kind to pumpkins. But in Sussex County, Delaware, this weekend, hundreds of the gourds will meet a particularly gruesome end: Loaded into hulking compressed-air cannons, fired like artillery shells across an empty field, their ground-splattering detonations will be cheered on by thousands of spectators. Other pumpkins will be vaulted into the air by modern incarnations of medieval siege machines, trebuchets and catapults that whip payloads thousands of feet through the air....