Tesla Roadster

Okay this car is just crazy, I'm definitely gonna get one when they're available here (in New Zealand) I don't care if I have to sell bodyparts on the black market which doesn't really exist in NZ but a trip to somewhere that does may be in order.

It's a completely electric car, so in other words much less pollution than hybrids. It can accelerate 0-60mph (100kph) in under 4 seconds, which makes the acceleration faster than a Lamborghini Murcielago. It takes under 4 hours to do a complete charge (charges like a cellphone overnight). Looks awesome. Top speed of over 130mph. Constant acceleration (no clutch and only 2 forward gears)

Not to mention just all these little things, I'm blown away. They're not paying me anything to write this, I'm just so impressed that I'm going to go on and on about all the cool things about this car and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Except stop reading I guess but that still won't stop me writing it. Bring down The Man and all that. Speaking of which I'm about to tell you about all the cool things The Man gives you for driving one, like incentives from your power company, single-occupancy access to all carpool lanes, income tax credit, exemption from luxury car tax even though it's a luxury car, free parking and charging at LAX and/or no parking meter fees in an increasing number of major metropolitan areas.

It does around 250 miles between each charge, which is of course more than enough, and much more than other electric cars. The car comes with a portable charger too which plugs into any power plug, so if you need to travel a long way you can charge while you rest. Oh aaaand *deep breath* it has... Okay I think I'll do bulletpoints mofos again:

• Click here to see the motor torque curve comparisons
  
• Click here to see the efficiency vs. performance graph
  
• Comes with an MP3 stereo with a built in interface for iPods
• Just in front of the gearstick are controls for the seat heaters and the instant-on cabin heating and cooling system.
• Security system with a customized PIN, it won't start without it. There's no way to hot-wire the car.
• Built-in valet-mode. With this turned on, the security system limits the car's acceleration, range and speed.
• Windshield with SPF 42/7, which completely blocks UV rays and reduces infrared rays (heat) by more than 30%, making the temperature easy to control.
• I'm just pretty much copy-pasting from the site so just go to it http://www.teslamotors.com/
  

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MIT researchers develop new engine

A new gasoline engine that's half the size of a normal gasoline engine is being developed. It has the ability to perform like normal engines but with the same fuel efficiency of hybrid engines.

It does this by injecting ethanol into the engine's cylinders. They're cheaper than hybrid engines (by 300-500%) and drivers will only need to refill their ethanol tank every 1-3 months. The technology could be available in 5 years.

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New very important fossil discovery

In Kimberley, West Australia, a new 380MYO fossil fish called Gogonasus has been discovered.

The fish had large holes for breathing through the top of it's head and muscular front fins with a well formed humerus, ulna and radius (same as humans)

This discovery means humans can trace their evolutionary roots back further than before, to more than 380 million years ago, and raises the possibility that tetrapods originally evolved in the southern hemisphere, in Gondwana, as opposed to the northern hemisphere as was previously thought.

Religious statistics in the U.S.

I've known for some time that Christians are more likely to be in jail than atheists (by roughly 10%) but I've come across some other statistics today, all taken from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health.

As well as being less likely to be in jail at all, atheists were most likely out of any religious group (not that they're really a religious group but I'll refer to them as such to make life easier) to be serving sentences of less than 12 months, meaning the crimes they do commit are less serious.

Divorce statistics show that Jews and Christians of all denominations are more likely to divorce than atheists (Jews 30%, Christians 24-27% depending on type of Christian, Atheists 21%)

Atheists seem to make more money as well. The average annual income for atheists is $33k, whereas the Christian is around $29k. Other interesting ones are Jews, the highest income at $36,700, and Jehovah's Witnesses with the lowest at $21k.

More dramatic though, is this one UK statistic. Christians are a minority in the UK (around 40%) but are a majority in prison, at around 60% of the prison population.

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A tip for iTunes users

I learned a cool little trick with iTunes today. I remember a while back I looked for a long time for a way to have two iTunes libraries on the same Windows account, but couldn't find anything. Well I was Stumbling today and I found a little tutorial on how to do it. It's not terribly convenient for switching between libraries (ideally I think there would be a function in iTunes itself to switch between libraries) but oh well.

How it works is you select an iTunes icon (on your desktop for example, doesn't work in the Start Menu) then you hold down Shift and press Enter, holding down shift as iTunes loads. Then it takes you to a screen that says to choose a library, then you just click on create a library, go to a folder you want the new library to be located (easiest to put it in the same directory your first library is in) then it just creates it. Now it starts iTunes and you have a new library. Whenever you want to switch libraries you just do that again, but instead of creating a new one you just click the other button, to find one that already exists.

Most people won't need to do this, but if you have an iPod it's pretty useful. I have thousands of MP3s and while most are sorted (the tags are how I like them, so that they display properly on the iPod) there are some that aren't. So I have a Sorted folder and an Unsorted folder, so I'm using the 2nd iTunes library for my Unsorted folder, as my primary one only has the Sorted folder because it's linked to my iPod.

Enjoy!

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On the evolution of eyes

Biologists at the University of California have found a protein present in the eyes of fruit flies that when absent (as it is in bees and beetles) it radically changes the eye, from an open system to closed one.

This lends yet more evidence to evolution, as one of creation's strawmen is that the eye is so complex that it couldn't evolve, but here we have this single protein that changes an eye completely.

Too early to classify Dikika fossil

University of Pittsburgh anthropologists Jeffrey Schwartz and Ian Tattersall, who compiled the entire human fossil record, have found discrepancies with the new fossil found in Dikika.

They contend that it’s too early to classify this fossil as A. afarensis as it has been, as afarensis was not from Ethiopia so it would be very strange for an actual A. afarensis to be found thousands of kilometres from their usual ground.

It’s possible it could belong to a new taxon, or be more similar to other fossils found in Hadar.