The world starts to blur. People and trees and houses and stores are just streaks of colors as you zoom by. The roads become vertical as you make your turns. You’re going so fast that, if you hit anything on the road, even a stick, you’re probably going to fly hundreds of feet in the air and smack yourself to pulp. This is what it’s like to race a motorcycle in the Isle of Man TT. It’s unreal how fast they go.
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When it comes to races, there are many different kinds where you can choose from, although it must be said that the faster the speed is, the more thrilling it gets. Camel racing happens to be one of the most competitive sports in Dubai, and it seems that technology, too, has caught up with camel racing through the introduction of remote-control jockeys that will whip their camels to victory – or at least, attempt to.
Most of the camels happen to be owned by the elite and royalty in the United Arab Emirates, where these camels are urged on by robotic jockeys that have been placed atop each of them. The robots will tip the scales at anywhere from four to half a dozen pounds, and they feature remote-controlled whips which camel owners will operate as they drive along a parallel track in white, identical SUVs. It starts to look more and more like a video game, don’t you think so? Of course, we do wonder whether the presence of a “turbo button” would help, so that button mashing takes on an easier task for the owners of these thoroughbreds. Certainly, we do hope that the connectivity is reliable, as woe to you should the robot jockey fail to register any signals at the final furlong. Oh yeah, make sure those remote controls are also fully charged!
Camel Racing Jockeys Take The Robotic Route original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Quartz has dug up a rather sad chart that reveals the racial preferences of online daters. Judging from data from Facebook dating app Are You Interested, you can see how different races respond to each other under the veil of the Internet. Most women respond positively to white men, while most men respond positively to Asian women. On the flip side, most women and all men have the lowest response rates when it comes to black men and women.
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What can you do with a small yet really powerful engine, a new riding lawnmower, a healthy marketing budget, and a professional race driver with some free time? You can cut the grass really, really quickly. Oh, and severely injure or kill yourself if you’re not careful.
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For much of the world, it’s probably fair to assume this type of machine and it’s originally intended utility are something quite foreign. The majority of planet earth’s residents don’t have golf courses or sprawling, heavily grassed estates, so one could be forgiven the assumption that this thing is something like a 4-wheeled ATV for senior citizens (realistically, in a way, riding lawnmowers are kinda that).
If such machines are new for you, that up there is a riding lawnmower – it cuts grass – lots and lots of grass, usually very slowly. Most riding lawnmowers do not hit 130mph/209kph, nor do they crank out 108HP and scream from 0-60mph/96kph in just four seconds. So yeah, again: fabulous engine, new mower, marketing cash, racecar driver. Vrooom!
Along with this mower’s, uhhhh, enhancements, Honda UK also made sure it can still do its job. Blade & grass bag included.
Have a watch – and if time’s short, and you must choose – go with the second one:
Honda’s Mean Mower
Racing Lawnmower from TopGear
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
After last night’s decision in the Trayvon Martin case, many Americans errupted
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There they were, a caravan of nine electric car enthusiasts with a lot of free time on their hands, “tearing” down North America’s west coast in a bunch of environmentally conscious vehicles. That was just last week in what organizer Tony Williams called the All Electric Vehicle Rally, and nearly all nine participants arrived in the rally’s end location of Tijuana, Mexico.
The convoy started in Blaine, Washington and took to I-5 in four chunks. This year a Tesla Model S piloted by Jack Bowers and Georg Kuhnke arrived first, with just 41 hours of driving time — a far cry from the eight days and five hours the course took Williams last year. The approximately 1,400 miles were covered by the winner at an average speed of about 34 MPH. Sadly, one Nissan Leaf owner got stuck charging their car for 15 hours in California due to a lack of CHADEMO chargers en route. Despite years of promises, CHADEMO sites haven’t made their way south of the Oregon/California border as part of the west coast’s Green Highway. Still, that we’ve reached the point where even some EVs can clear that many miles in under two days using only public chargers is pretty impressive.
Filed under: Alt
Source: Plug In Cars, All Electric Vehicle Rally
Wow. This is a real sport. Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing is basically off-roading, but without the huge heavily modified and super horsepower 4x4s. Instead you use cheap, fast, toy plastic cars that grown men barely fit in, and remove the speed limiters. Sounds awesome.
From what I can gather from the info available, you drink a bunch of moonshine, slap each other on the back a few times, crank up the country music and then push each other down the hill in one of these kid’s cars.
I guess I would be game for that. Just don’t try to feed me any roadkill or anything. And the minute I hear banjo music, I’m out!
[via Jalopnik]
Today, AkihabaraNews attended the 3rd International Smart Grid Expo at Tokyo Big Site. It was certainly exciting to see so many companies from around the world attending the event. Of course we saw solar panels and every kind of high-tech gadget to manage anything from a small array to an entire large-scale power grid. The show had a strong B2B focus and we found it quite difficult to find any consumer related products. But what we could not resist noticing were some of the sponsors of cool …
The 24 hour race at Le Mans held every year is among the most punishing automotive tests on the planet: race-bred machines running top-speed (or close) for a full day. Recently, gasoline-powered cars have had their dominance usurped by diesels, who themselves are now losing to hybrids. The next step? It could be EVs. The GreenGT H2 will take the grid of next year’s 24 hour race as an experimental entry, driving the full race distance pushing only water vapor out its tailpipe. Hydrogen is stored in the two large tanks running down the sides, while the massive fuel cell stack itself is situated behind the driver. Power output is somewhere north of 500 horsepower, which is quite healthy for a car that the company hopes will be down under 1000Kg (2,200 pounds) by the time it hits the track in anger. Enough to win Le Mans? Almost certainly not, but it’ll be fun to watch it try.
Steve Dent contributed to this report.
Filed under: Transportation
GreenGT H2 eyes-on: the first fuel cell-powered racer to tackle Le Mans originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While we might not have enjoyed the full story arc just yet, we came within an electric whisker of seeing the electric Roadster‘s around the world trip derailed completely. The team at Tesla service in Munich, however, obviously love a fairytale ending — which is why they pledged to fix-up the car in the fastest time possible. Just four days after that show-stopping accident, de Mestre is back in the game, and heading south to Barcelona. The journey won’t end there though, as to make up some lost miles on the French Citroen team, he’ll travel back up to Strasbourg, and in turn roll over the virtual 25,000 km finish line. Assuming no other problems along the way, we’ll be mentally cheering the him along.
Filed under: Misc
Around the world Tesla Roadster tour back on track after swift repair job originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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