Hasta La Gadget!

Translogic host Jonathon Buckley heads to Thunderhill Raceway for the first Autonomous Track Day. We caught up with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and event organizer Joshua Schachter to find out if driverless cars will ever race themselves.

Bugatti has long held the honor of creating the faster production car in the world. It had the honor with the Veyron and it gets it with the recently unveiled Bugatti Chiron as well. It appears that Aston Martin is gunning for that crown because it’s working on a new car that’s going to very rare, very expensive, and the fastest production car in the world.

Aston Martin is working with Red Bull on this hypercar that’s currently known as AM-RB 001 and “Project Nebula.” Legendary F1 designer Adrian Newey is involved in the production of this car.

There was a customer event at the Monaco Grand Prix where more details about Project Nebula were revealed. Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer was present at the event.

According to a report by Autocar, the AM-RB 001 is going to be limited to just 99 units, which would mean it’s going to be very rare. On the other hand, Bugatti is going to make 500 units of the Chiron. Don’t expect to find the Aston Martin hypercar in your local garage. It’s only going to be sold in select destinations across Europe and the Middle East.

Nebula is believed to have a hybrid drivetrain packaged into a car that’s super lightweight. Its sole focused is said to be on going fast. While Aston Martin hasn’t confirmed the final cost of this device it’s expected to cost as much as $5 million.

Aston Martin Is Making A Car Faster Than The Bugatti Chiron , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

As President Barack Obama approaches the end of his second term, there’s been much discussion of what his legacy will be. While much of that debate focuses on his foreign policy or his sweeping domestic policies, such as the Affordable Care Act, there’s another area where the 44th president has left a significant mark: making life easier for millions of working parents.

“His administration has spent a lot of time and energy explaining why family-friendly policies are good for business, and providing a platform for employers to share their own views on the topic,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Those policies have included expanding paid parental leave and sick time, emphasizing gender equality in parenting and reducing some of the costs associated with having children. (There have also been some misses — family policy advocates pointed to the administration’s continued deportation raids targeting mothers and children as a major disappointment.) 

“This administration has focused in on those issues in ways that previous administrations did not,” says Heather Boushey, the executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, noting that’s been driven in part by the Obama administration’s ideology and in part by the economic conditions over the last decade. 

Here are some of the ways Obama’s presidency has benefited parents:

He’s emphasized giving new mothers and fathers the time off they need.

“We are a nation that, on the one hand, both encourages and preaches about the importance of being good parents to your children,” says Ellen Bravo of Family Values @ Work, an advocacy group that pushes for paid sick and family leave. “And yet for millions Americans, doing exactly that will cost them their financial security.” 

Obama has pushed to make it possible for parents to be both engaged with their children and financially secure, signing an executive action granting federal workers six weeks of paid leave after a child is born. He’s also urged Congress and state legislatures to expand paid leave, and emphasized the issue in his 2015 State of the Union address. The Labor Department, meanwhile, has given grants to states exploring the benefits of granting more workers paid leave.

This emphasis appears to have had some trickle-down effects. Cities like New York, San Francisco and Austin have moved forward on their own to grant workers paid family leave. The issue also became an important one on the campaign trail throughout the primary season. And while just 12 percent of Americans currently have access to paid parental leave, there seems to be a shift in some sectors: Tech companies in particular have started offering generous paid leave programs, in part to retain talented workers.

Many studies tout the benefits of family leave for parents and children alike. Children whose parents are granted paid parental leave are more likely to be immunized. Women are also more likely to breastfeed longer if given more paid time off, which in turn can help prevent asthma, infections and other health problems. A 2011 study found that increasing paid maternity and paternity leave could even reduce the infant mortality rate by 10 percent. Fathers who are given paternity leave are more likely to take an active role in parenting later on, which can help with children’s development.

Parents also see significant health benefits: A 2015 study published in Social Science & Medicine found women who are given paid maternity leave with full benefits are 16.2 percent less likely to become depressed than women without paid leave. Another study found that women who have paid maternity leave are significantly less likely to experience depression later in life.

Allowing new parents time off to bond with their child also benefits the companies they work for. Research shows that individuals given paid maternity leave are more likely to return to work at the same company, reducing costs associated with employee turnover. Women who take paid leave are also more likely to work more hours and remain in the workforce longer.

“That can save firms significant money,” says Boushey.

But it’s not just new parents that need time with their kids.

Obama has also required federal contractors to provide paid sick days to their employees, which parents can use to care for children or other loved ones in need. He’s also emphasized these policies at the state and municipal level: Currently, five states and 26 cities have paid sick time policies in place.

“The progress we have seen in recent years is hugely important, not just because of those who have been helped, but also because we now have an irrefutable body of evidence demonstrating that paid sick days policies work well for employers as well as workers,” said Ness, pointing to research showing how paid sick time has little impact on profitability and in some cases has boosted productivity among workers.

The American Medical Association has also endorsed paid sick leave, arguing that by giving individuals time off to care for themselves or their children, they are reducing the risk of transmitting diseases or viruses to others or prolonging illness.

“Paid sick leave keeps our homes, offices and communities healthier while ensuring the family’s economic security,” the organization said.

He’s embraced the role of “dad-in-chief.”

“Barack Obama has been ‘dad-in-chief’ in a way we haven’t seen before in the White House,” said Bravo. “He talks openly about the need for fathers to be engaged, but also that women are disproportionately affected by the lack of [family-friendly] policies.” 

Obama regularly talks about his relationship with his daughters, Malia and Sasha, and the importance of his role as a father. Bravo argues that by doing so, Obama has made parenthood an issue of national importance. She pointed specifically to Obama sharing how his daughters had reshaped his views on marriage equality.

“That’s a great model in a father,” she said.

His emphasis on fatherhood — which Obama has said stems from his own childhood with an absent dad — could have a concrete impact on kids if emulated. Studies show that children with engaged fathers have higher cognitive ability and stronger literacy skills. Children with engaged parents are also likelier to be healthy and have less emotional distress. And by emphasizing equality in parenting, Obama is making strides for women as well. 

“His gender-neutral approach to family-friendly policies is also tremendously positive because it underscores that, for families and communities to thrive, we must recognize that caregiving is not just a women’s issue,” said Ness.

He’s addressed rising income inequality. 

Obama’s answers to the country’s worsening economic inequality — the Affordable Care Act, pushing for a higher minimum wage, proposing tax credits for child care expenses — could have a significant impact on working families.

“This is an era in which the kinds of benefits that families get make all the difference for economic security,” said Boushey. 

Research shows that low wages have a major impact on families, and women of color are disproportionately affected. Raising the federal minimum wage, as Obama has proposed, would increase the salaries of millions of low-wage workers — most of whom are women. 

As for the ACA, a 2014 Brookings Institution study found that Obamacare will ease income inequality over time by boosting the average income of the country’s lowest earners. Another study by the Urban Institute found that the law will help close the coverage gap between white people and people of color.

Ness also pointed to provisions of Obamacare, like contraception coverage and requiring employers to give nursing mothers time to pump at work, as being huge milestones for parents, arguing that these policies are “essential to women’s ability to participate and succeed in the workforce.”

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“Beautiful place,” said my father, looking around admiringly. “Nice . . . very nice. Beautiful place.”

“It sure is,” agreed the attendant behind the wheelchair. Quite charitably, I might add, because this particular hallway of the local VA hospital was not what I or anyone else could realistically call “beautiful.” The lobby, now, that was a different story — all glass and sunlight and super-modern check-in terminals. The lobby was bright and if not beautiful, at least relatively appealing. The lobby made you feel better about coming to a hospital, like it just might be a halfway pleasant experience. As if only the best and most cutting-edge medical procedures would be offered here. As if everyone, in the end, would come out alive.

My dad, on this day, would almost certainly come out alive, and thanks to his Alzheimer’s Disease, no worse for the wear. The reason for this particular ER visit isn’t really important; suffice it to say that whatever it was, my dad had forgotten about it halfway between home and hospital. Also, that through powers well beyond my control, I had arrived carrying a vial of his urine in my purse. Which also isn’t really important, and yet I find myself trying to work it into conversations every chance I get. Believe me when I tell you that I don’t get many.

So we’d arrived at the hospital via ambulance, they’d done the normal things, and now, we were on our way to get a CT scan of my dad’s bladder. Or kidneys. Or probably both. It was a bit of a hike from the ER to the imaging department, so my dad had plenty of time to remark upon the beauty of his surroundings; at the moment said surroundings included worn tile floors and closed doors, some featuring skull-and-crossbones-style DANGER signs. Scuffed white walls, a utilitarian brown handrail running the length. Every 50 feet or so, you might come across a large framed photo of nature at close range: blades of grass as tall as my hand, a butterfly the size of an average pigeon. Maybe it was those photos that my dad found beautiful, and maybe they actually were. To my eyes, they were little more than a try and fail to cheer the place up: fancy pillows thrown on a threadbare couch. I guess it could have also been that my dad was simply being nice, but I doubted that. His faculty for pretending had been among the first to go.

“How long you been working here?” he asked the attendant now. We’d just turned our third corner or maybe our fourth, each hallway having been indistinguishable from the last. I really hoped someone would be around to lead us out of here.

“Long enough,” the attendant said with a chuckle.

My dad chuckled too. “Long enough, huh? That’s good. Nice place, you got here. Very nice. Beautiful.”

“He has dementia,” I said, as if I needed to say anything at all. It’s not like my dad had embarrassed himself, or said or done something inappropriate. Still. I don’t know. I guess I felt like I needed to explain, to let him know that my normal dad would not remark so enthusiastically on the loveliness of this barren and institutional corridor. My normal dad was like us, is what I really meant. My normal dad knew better.

What I wanted, I know now, was to retrieve my dad’s dignity for him, since he couldn’t do it himself. Like it was nothing more than a lost contact lens. And failing that, I at least wanted people to know that he once had it. Not that it was especially undignified to call a hallway ‘beautiful.’ And not that my dad was ever particularly dignified in the first place. But I wanted people to know what he was really like.

Because this wasn’t it.

“Just shoot me,” my dad’s sister once said, in a conversation in which she worried she might end up like her older brother. “Better yet, dress me up in a fur coat and send me out into the woods. Let the bears get me. Just do not let me live like that. Whatever happens, my God, please don’t let me live like that.”

Not surprisingly, most people seem to agree with her. Most people hope mightily that the reality of Alzheimer’s Disease will never become their own, and not without good cause. I often wonder what it must be like for my father, living with a brain set on permanent auto-erase. The older I get, the more my brain becomes the one aspect of my physical self which I can appreciate unconditionally. How would it be, for example, if I could no longer read a book because I couldn’t remember what it said from one paragraph to the next? How would it be to not be able to follow along with your favorite TV series or sports teams or, I don’t know, political figures? To not even know you once had favorites? My dad can’t look back with misty nostalgia on his wedding day, or the days he brought home my sister or me, or, for that matter, yesterday. He no longer knows what he likes to eat. Nor does he know not to walk into a restaurant in flannel pajamas. And underneath it all there’s a nervousness, a sense of fearful desperation that comes through strongest when he’s confronted with something he’s not familiar with. Which, these days, is almost everything.

Still, I’m not entirely sure I’d rather be sent into the woods in a bear costume.

Anyway. By the time we were finally able to leave the hospital, my mother was a bundle of anxiety. Tired from a long day of waiting. Tired of being the only real adult in a household that used to include two. Worrying who’d be able to take them back to the VA hospital to see the urologist, wondering if my dad would really be okay.

My father, on the other hand, did not appear to be worried about a thing.

On the way out of the hospital, he agreed with someone who guessed he’d been in Korea — he had not — and then waved and said very pleasant good-byes to everyone we passed, including doctors and nurses, patients in wheelchairs, sad spouses there to visit their own sick veterans. Most said good-bye in return, a few did not. Almost all looked confused. None of it made any difference to my father, who rolled along in his wheelchair as if he was the parade, the rest of us merely spectators.

And now we were in the car, weaving our way through the back streets of Oakland, a Pittsburgh neighborhood that houses several hospitals and a few universities, Carnegie Mellon and Pitt among them. “Nice neighborhood,” said my dad, glancing around as we waited at a red light. “What do they call this place, anyway? Was I ever here before?”

“It’s called Oakland,” I told him. “I’m sure you were here sometime . . . probably a long time ago.”

“Boy, look at all those beautiful new houses, huh? You see that, Maureen? Look at that! Man, beautiful. Really nice.”

My mom, sitting in the back seat, did not seem impressed. I glanced around myself, taking in the ramshackle brick buildings, most occupied by students, all with some less-than-beautiful defining characteristic. A badly tie-dyed sheet covering a picture window, crushed beer cans overflowing a recycling container, a battered recliner in a front yard. From one second-story window, I could see Ronald McDonald smiling out at me, though whether it was the man himself or just a life-sized cardboard cutout was difficult to determine. Granted, the buildings were big old brownstone types which, with some landscaping and help from several renovation crews, could certainly be beautiful again. As it stood, however, they were a bit past their prime. To put it politely.

“When did they build all these homes, do you know?” he asked me. “Man, these are beautiful new homes, huh? Big. I just wonder when they built all this. It’s a beautiful display.”

Even though “display” sort of made sense here, I was pretty sure it wasn’t the word he was going for. I let it go, as you tend to learn to do. “Yeah, I don’t know how new it is,” I told him. “But I guess . . . I mean, it’s nice. Was nice. Is nice.”

“Huh,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

The light we’d been waiting at turned green; we managed to advance maybe five or six car lengths before it was red again. Now to my right was a front yard featuring a dirt-filled kiddie pool, clearly meant as a flower bed but whose contents had long since gone to seed. There were cigarette butts scattered throughout the rest of the yard, and the house itself had a screen door that, in defiance of any and all laws of nature, appeared to be attached with nothing but duct tape.

“Look at that,” said my dad, clearly in awe. “Beautiful!”

The light was still red. I looked over at my dad. He was smiling, or at least forming the lip configuration that passes for his smile these days. His shirt was tucked in, his thinning hair neatly combed. And he was sitting up very straight in his seat — actually, he was leaning forward a bit, apparently anxious to see what new beautiful thing might lay around the bend.

From the backseat, my mother sighed. “I don’t know what he sees, anymore,” she said tiredly.

“It’s the houses, Maureen,” he told her. “Can’t you see the houses?”

“Yeah. I see the houses,” she said.

And then the light turned green, and we moved on, neither my mother nor I able to see what he saw.

And, most likely, hoping we never would.

This post originally appeared on Goodness Madness.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

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Did you know that there is a link between depression and your orgasm? It was shocking for me to read that, according to the National Mental Health Association, there are 12 million women in America that experience clinical depression each year. Not only that — but one in eight women can expect to develop clinical depression during their lifetime.

According to Dr. Michael L. Krychman, Medical Director of Sexual Medicine Hoag Hospital and Executive Director of the Southern California Center for Sexual Health and Survivor-ship Medicine, women are more likely to experience atypical depression — they eat more, sleep more and gain weight. Women are about twice as likely as compared to men to suffer from depression. Many factors are implicated in the origin of depression including biological, psychological and social factors. Medical problems can contribute to depression, so it’s always critical to get a comprehensive history and medical examination. Some cultural or psycho social problems that may lead to depression include poor self-image/self-esteem relationship dissatisfaction.

Luckily, there are a variety of treatment modalities that can safely and effectively treat depression. Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have become the first choice of antidepressant medications. Many experience life-changing results and return to normal once they have consistently taken these medications. According to the “USA Today” report on Americans taking antidepressants, the amount of Americans using antidepressants doubled in the past — to close to 50 million people.

Not surprisingly, we see that depressed mood and sexual concerns and difficulties — including changes in sexual desire and lowered arousal — are often intertwined. SSRIs can cause many types of sexual concerns, such as the inability to have an orgasm. Lowered sexual interest is common for both men and women. The sexual side effects of SSRIs have been underestimated and at least some health care professionals are reluctant to discuss sexual side effects with their patients.

In my clinical experience it remains critical for these women to maintain their SSRI medications. Depression is devastating. Sexual side effects are often troublesome, but can be addressed in a variety of ways. For instance, I recommend that if they take their medication in the morning, they enjoy morning sex play before their dose. The amount of SSRI in their system may be at its lowest level at this time, and may allow enough escape, so that they can enjoy orgasm. Another excellent solution to heighten your sexual response and improve sexual satisfaction is with Zestra®, a patented blend of botanical oils and extracts that has been clinically proven to be safe and effective. Zestra can be applied topically to help with latency to orgasm and has been reported by many women on SSRI also report improved sexual orgasmic response.

Okay great. We can use topical creams like Zestra or Sex Butter — why not? But there is more.

As a Sex and Relationship Coach, I also think that it’s helpful for women and their partners to separate the idea and concept of “climax” from the idea or concept of orgasm. We live in a very male dominated society — where almost every experience including female sexuality and orgasm are based on a male model. The male model for orgasm is all around ejaculation and climax — the entire experience can happen in three minutes! Women can have an entirely different experience of sexual pleasure — and their experience can be separated into “arousal,” “orgasm,” and “climax.” Women can have tremendous pleasure floating back into the pleasure of arousal and orgasm without a climax. It’s just that we think we are not having an “orgasm” if we don’t experience a “climax.” And that simply isn’t true.

It’s time to change this model for every woman — and for women on anti-depressants, introducing the concept of “The Arousal Principal”, “Slow Sex” or “Organic Orgasm” can be very helpful. Women also have an inner pharmacy and can be taught how to use it doing some very simple meditations that flood the body with endorphins and that can possibly support women in reducing or getting off of anti-depressants in some cases.

I also think that understanding the Orgasm Gap between men and women (which really should be renamed the “Climax Gap”) would help women better understand their sexual responses and reduce anxiety about experiencing feminine erotic pleasure. Men and women are different. Women who are experiencing depression can feel like their erotic response is also depressed. But using tools and information like understanding our arousal, experimenting with arousal gels, lubricants, sex toys such as vibrators, and re-educating ourselves about the female experience of orgasm and climax all can change the game and welcome back pleasure for everyone.

No one should have a depressed orgasm!

Pamela Madsen runs retreats around the country to help women re-connect to their bodies and sensuous nature and is author of the book; “Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner” (Rodale 2011).

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

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