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Air travel is miserable. You're herded, shouted at, hemmed in, and—if lucky—placated with sugared water and the cheapest feed available in mass quantities. Even the corn syrup that once "honey-roasted" your peanuts is too exotic for your airborne enjoyment these days.
I'm no engineer, but I know this: If personal electronics could bring down a plane, Al Quaeda would just assign a pack of assholes to send simultaneous text messages from the next flight out of Jerusalem.
The smell of a new car is intoxicating. It reminds us of money and shiny objects. It evokes that golden period before repeat coffee stains, moldy Tupperware, and our trunk's transformation into a Good Will depository change the way we feel about our car.
If you've driven across the US—or even across a state line or two—you've probably noticed that the roads you're driving on suck. They suck more more than a string of gas station bathrooms, more than hundreds of bug carcasses on your windshield.
When carbon fiber was first trotted out in solid rocket motor cases and tanks in the 1960s, it was poised to not only take on fiberglass, but also a whole host of other materials.
Nasa is getting ready to throw a Mini Cooper-sized mobile science lab up into space. Curiosity, as the rover is affectionately called, is headed toward Mars with a payload of lasers and mass spectrometers and multi-million dollar robotic drills—basically all the stuff needed to prove fourth planet conditions are capable of supporting microbial life… conditions depending, of course. But in order for Curiosity to even get the chance at an alien discovery, it can't show up dressed as a multi-millio