Sunday wrapup

The Hippys loved the VW van and bugg.

After getting caught cheating on emissions testing by means of software, Volkswagen could face up to $18 billion in fines, reports USA Today. That number is based on the company being assessed the maximum penalty of $37,500 per affected vehicle.
   That's not the only bad news for Volkswagen, which has halted sales of its 4-cylinder diesel cars; the linked article reports that the violations "could also invite charges of false marketing by regulators, a vehicle recall and payment to car owners, either voluntarily or through lawsuits. Volkswagen advertised the cars under the 'Clean Diesel' moniker. The state of California is also investigating the emissions violations."

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In the wake of the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed in Irving, Texas, for carrying to school an electronics project believed by a teacher to look like a bomb, Make Magazine has a timely reminder that Ahmed's project is one of many home-brew efforts that sparked (or could have sparked) extreme reactions. 

 Make's list includes a few from tinkerers -- and pranksters -- that not only looked like bombs, but were fully intended to look that way.

 ("Back in 1967, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was arrested for building a metronome and storing it in a friend’s locker. He rigged a tin-foil contract sensor to the metronome in the locker, and set up the device to tick faster when his buddy opened the locker.") The article doesn't note the 2007 incident in Boston in which a guerilla advertising campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" raised fears of a terrorism and led to two arrests.

Gawker has a slightly more pointed article about other students who have specifically brought home-assembled clocks to school, without being arrested.

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Free Electricity

Slate dissects the strange circumstances that led the price of electricity in Texas to briefly dip not just to zero, but into negative territory, reaching at one point negative $8.52 per megawatt hour.

Why?

 A combination of being an "electricity island" with only weak ties to the surrounding state's grids; strong wind in a state that's sprouted thousands of windmills; and infrastructure design that means the only real buyer for most electricity producers' output is ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

 (One of the comments attached to the story notes that Texas is not completely isolated from the national grid, but it's still markedly isolated.) A slice: Demand fell—at 4 a.m., the amount of electricity needed in the state was about 45 percent lower than the evening peak. The wind was blowing consistently—much later in the day Texas would establish a new instantaneous wind generation record. 

At 3 a.m., wind was supplying about 30 percent of the state’s electricity, as this daily wind integration report shows. And because the state is an electricity island, all the power produced by the state’s wind farms could only be sold to ERCOT, not grids elsewhere in the country.

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One estimate puts the cost one way at €5,000 (£3,700) per seat for a Brussels to Sydney trip. 

The Lapcat-II project's Mach 8 airliner will be capable of 8,500 km/h (5,280 mph) and could take passengers on this trip in 2 hours and 55 minutes. 

The race is on...

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Whatever his motivation, 100 years ago, on 21 September 1915, Cecil Chubb paid £6,600 for the monument at an auction in Salisbury, Wiltshire. It happened, he said, "on a whim".

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I honestly have seen thee things out on the Mojave Desert!

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 Some people chose to believe that the earth is flat?

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 First we learn that monsanto is very very evil and now this...sigh.

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 “it is altogether forbidden to use wine of doubtful authenticity or provenance.”

Earth’s flatness was once common knowledge, before the world’s secret rulers brainwashed everyone. - See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/14360/flat-earth-truthers-youtube/#sthash.edxJ4FvD.dpuf

Earth’s flatness was once common knowledge, before the world’s secret rulers brainwashed everyone. - See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/14360/flat-earth-truthers-youtube/#sthash.edxJ4FvD.dpuf