 “Fratricide” is my middle name. When my mortar explodes in my hands… Allahu Akbar! When my buddy point blanks me with an anti air heavy machine gun… Allahu Akbar! When I am so incredibly stupid as a result of uncountable generations of inbreedingthat the simple process of aiming my rifle is too complicated for me to fathom… Allahu Akbar! God may be great, but it’s painfully obvious that he doesn’t think a whole lot of you clowns.  DETROIT -- Fiat Chrysler must offer to buy back from customers more than 500,000 Ram pickup trucks and other vehicles in the biggest such action in U.S. history as part of a costly deal with safety regulators to settle legal problems in about two dozen recalls.
The Italian-American automaker also faces a record civil fine of up to $105 million. In addition, owners of more than a million older Jeeps with vulnerable rear-mounted gas tanks will be able to trade them in or be paid by Chrysler to have the vehicles repaired. The settlement is the latest sign that auto safety regulators are taking a more aggressive approach toward companies that fail to disclose defects or don't properly conduct a recall. The Ram pickups, which are the company's top-selling vehicle, have defective steering parts that can cause drivers to lose control. Some previous repairs have been unsuccessful, so Fiat Chrysler agreed to the buyback, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Owners also have the option of getting them repaired, the agency said in documents released Sunday. The older Jeeps have fuel tanks located behind the rear axle, with little to shield them in a rear crash. They can rupture and spill gasoline, causing a fire. At least 75 people have died in crash-related fires, although Fiat Chrysler maintains they are as safe as comparable vehicles from the same era. Both the Jeep and Ram measures are part of a larger settlement between the government and the automaker over allegations of misconduct in 23 recalls covering more than 11 million vehicles. Besides the civil penalty, which was reported Saturday by The Associated Press, Fiat Chrysler agreed to an independent recall monitor and strict federal oversight. It's another step in NHTSA's effort to right itself after being criticized for lapses in some highly-publicized safety recalls. "Today's action holds Fiat Chrysler accountable for its past failures, pushes them to get unsafe vehicles repaired or off the roads and takes concrete steps to keep Americans safer going forward," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in the statement. In a separate statement, Fiat Chrysler said it accepted the consequences of the agreement "with renewed resolve to improve our handling of recalls and re-establish the trust our customers place in us." NHTSA has been involved in vehicle buybacks in the past, but never one of this size. A buyback usually happens when a problem is so serious that it can't be fixed and the vehicles need to be removed from service. Under the agreement, Fiat Chrysler has to buy back the Ram trucks for the purchase price, minus depreciation. It's unclear just how many Rams the automaker will have to repurchase, but the cash outlay could be substantial. According to Kelly Blue Book, a 2010 Dodge Ram 1500 -- one of the smaller, less-expensive trucks involved in the recalls -- could fetch $20,000 in a dealer trade-in, assuming the truck has 60,000 miles on it and is in "good" condition. At that rate, if Chrysler had to buy back even a quarter of the trucks at issue, it could spend $2.5 billion. Fiat Chrysler said more than 60 percent of the trucks already have been fixed, and the company is allowed to repair and resell the trucks it buys back. The Jeep trade-ins could add to the tab, but they also could generate more new vehicle sales by getting customers into showrooms. Still, the total could strain the parent company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. The company posted a first-quarter net profit of $101 million and had more than $20 billion in cash and securities on March 31. The consent order that Fiat Chrysler agreed to requires it to notify owners who are eligible for buybacks and other incentives. Models included in the buyback offer are certain Ram 1500s from 2009 to 2012; the Ram 1500 Mega Cab 4 by 4 from 2008; and the Ram 2500 4 by 4, 3500 4 by 4, 4500 4 by 4, and 5500 4 by 4, all from 2008 through 2012. Also part of the offer are 2009 Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango SUVs and the Dodge Dakota pickup from 2009 through 2011. The fine against FCA beats the old record of $70 million assessed against Honda Motor Co. for lapses in recalls of air bags made by Takata Corp. Fiat Chrysler also received a $70 million fine, and must spend at least $20 million to meet performance requirements detailed in the agreement. Another $15 million could come due if the recall monitor finds any further violations. Earlier this month, the safety agency held a rare public hearing where regulators detailed a litany of shortfalls: failure to notify customers of recalls, delays in making and distributing repair parts and in some cases failing to come up with repairs that fix the problems. Some of the recalls date to 2011. Drop whatever you're doing and watch this. NASA has released videos shot from onboard the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters in the past, but you've never seen one prepared as masterfully as this. For one thing, the footage was shot in high definition, so the image is exceptionally clear. But what puts this video head and shoulders above most other rocketcams is the sound. The audio has been remastered by the folks over at Skywalker Sound (yes, that Skywalker Sound), and the final product is nothing short of incredible. Michael Interbartolo — who used to work on the Shuttle Program at Mission Control in Houston — had this to say about the video when he posted it to Google+ earlier this morning: Just got this from the guys at Glenn who are finalizing the new special edition DVD/BluRay version of Ascent: Commemorating Shuttle which this will be an extra on. The video is shot from the Solid Rocket Booster Perspective up and down with enhanced sound thanks to Ben Burtt's son and the folks at Skywalker Sound. The team is still trying to figure out how to release this all to the public, but for now enjoy an exclusive first look. +NASA youtube doesn't even have the video. Try to let what you're witnessing sink in. See those numbers flying past in the upper right hand corner? That's the Shuttle's airspeed. See that gleam of light against the inky backdrop of space at 2:08 and 3:11? That's the Shuttle continuing on its flight path into low Earth orbit. Hear the eerie rattling, haunting moans, and weird dinosaur noises? That's what it sounds like to be a Solid Rocket Booster, falling to Earth from an altitude of 150,000 feet.  Two people were injured when a stunt at an extreme motorsports show inGlasgow went wrong. The Nitro Circus at the SSE Hydro arena was temporarily halted on Thursday night after a biker attempted to perform a backflip off a ramp with three volunteers from the audience as passengers. The bike appeared to stall near the top of the ramp and tipped over the side. One of the passengers and the rider were able to walk away but two others were treated by medics at the scene before being taken to hospital suffering leg and facial injuries. All of those taking part were wearing helmets. Video posted on social media showed the incident. The MC of the event said: “That is the worst crash we have ever had.” The show was paused while workers and medical staff rushed to the scene and the MC added: “It’s obviously not planned – occasionally something can go wrong. It’s not meant to go wrong so we’re taking a moment.” Nitro Circus, which describes itself as an action sports entertainment company, is touring Europe. The event is being staged at London’s O2 on Saturday and Sunday before moving to Zurich and Paris. One fan at the Glasgow show tweeted: “Just at Nitro Circus in Glasgow. Hope the chaps on the four person backflip are ok! stretchered keep us updated!” Another said: “At nitro circus @ssehydro. 4 man back flip just failed. Hope the members of the public ok.”  Tax The Rich, the YouTube channel that exists mainly to terrorize ultra-rare, ultra-expensive cars like the Jaguar XJ220, Ferrari Enzo and Rolls-Royce Phantom, has come out with its first video in two months, starring one of the rarest Ferraris of the past 40 years – the 288 GTO. Now, by Tax The Rich standards, its treatment of the 288 is better than what the Enzo or the Rolls (especially) got in their videos. The most cringe-worthy parts are in the very beginning, before transitioning to actual roads (yes, we know the 288 was originally meant as a Group B rally car, but that makes zipping about on grass and dirt in a very rare Ferrari no less difficult to watch). After that, it's more of the stuff we wish collectors would do with their cars – drive. Seeing and hearing this 288 GTO at full clip is a thing of beauty, and something we wish were a far more regular occurrence. Take a look below for the latest video from Tax The Rich. When posting about it on Reddit Cars, the builder of this intriguing piece of furniture mentioned that it’s “powered by the ignition switch giving power to a battery which then powers the starter which spins the flywheel, crank, chains and cams”. He admits that it’s “not the safest piece of art”, but points out that the key isn’t kept in the block, and that his workshop isn’t somewhere that’s usually visited by kids anyway….  There has been a growing excitement around the prospect of a new sporting league where competitors race that very futuristic sounding vehicle, a drone. By drone they mean small remote controlled quadcopters, incredibly agile little aircraft that can move at speeds of over 100 miles and hour. Unlike most racing sports — cars, horses, dog sleds — there is no human onboard the drone. The pilots are all standing about with goggles on, steering based on a live video feed from a camera on the drone's nose. It's called FPV racing, a term borrowed from the world of video games, meaning first person view. But while the pilots don't have much choice about which view to use, the audience does. So what is the best way to view the race? So far most videos do a mix of first and third person. Sometimes you're watching from the perspective of the drone, zipping through turns and blasting along straightaways. Other times you're watching from the sidelines as the drones whizz by. Here's one completely from an FPV view. Putting the audience into the same perspective as the driver is neat, but of course it means they don't have any sense of how near or far the other competitors are. That, and the loops and rolls many drones do send the entire universe end over end, a visual that can quickly become nauseating to the casual viewer. Viewed from the sidelines, however, drones are not nearly as big and colorful as race cars. They often look like little more than black specks, hard to pick out against a background at high speed. So what's the solution? Drone Racing League garnered a lot of attention recently with a sizzle reel it put together for it's debut. One nice touch was that they covered each drone in colorful LED lights and matching rotors, so that they pop against the background, and it's much easier to tell them apart. They also introduced a lot of crazy atmospheric elements — Drones crashing through glass lightbulbs! Drones rising through thick fog! Drones chopping up innocent plants! — which work well in an edited montage, but might not pan out in an actual race. That trick worked well in the one clip of a "race" released by DRL so far. But as you can see from that clip, it's really hard to tell where the drones are in space, who's in which position, and how they are passing one another. A true sport requires more than a manufactured feeling of excitement from bombastic music, fast cuts between drones and pilots, and a staged slow motion crash at the end. This year will see a number of competing leagues try to bring drone racing to the mainstream. Having seen it live, I can attest it works as entertainment in person. But nothing about this clip, or others I have seen from various leagues, convinces me anyone has figured out a way to turn live drone racing into a compelling spectator sport for people watching from the comfort of their homes.  Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity. They have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. The international team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will usher in a new era for astronomy. It is the culmination of decades of searching and could ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang. The research, by the LIGO Collaboration, has been published today in the journalPhysical Review Letters. The collaboration operates a number of labs around the world that fire lasers through long tunnels, trying to sense ripples in the fabric of space-time. Gravitational waves: A triumph for big science Expected signals are extremely subtle, and disturb the machines, known as interferometers, by just fractions of the width of an atom. But the black hole merger was picked up by two widely separated LIGO facilities in the US. The merger radiated three times the mass of the sun in pure gravitational energy. "We have detected gravitational waves," Prof David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO project, told journalists at a news conference in Washington DC. "It's the first time the Universe has spoken to us through gravitational waves. Up until now, we've been deaf." 
"Gravitational waves provide a completely new way at looking at the Universe. The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionise astronomy. This discovery is the first detection of a black hole binary system and the first observation of black holes merging," he said. "Apart from testing (Albert Einstein's theory of) General Relativity, we could hope to see black holes through the history of the Universe. We may even see relics of the very early Universe during the Big Bang at some of the most extreme energies possible." Team member Prof Gabriela González, from Louisiana State University, said: "We have discovered gravitational waves from the merger of black holes. It's been a very long road, but this is just the beginning. "Now that we have the detectors to see these systems, now that we know binary black holes are out there - we'll begin listening to the Universe. " 
The LIGO laser interferometers in Hanford, in Washington, and Livingston, in Louisiana, were only recently refurbished and had just come back online when they sensed the signal from the collision. This occurred at 10.51 GMT on 14 September last year. On a graph, the data looks like a symmetrical, wiggly line that gradually increases in height and then suddenly fades away. "We found a beautiful signature of the merger of two black holes and it agrees exactly - fantastically - with the numerical solutions to Einstein equations... it looked too beautiful to be true," said Prof Danzmann.Prof Sheila Rowan, who is one of the lead UK researchers involved in the project, said that the first detection of gravitational waves was just the start of a "terrifically exciting" journey. "The fact that we are sitting here on Earth feeling the actual fabric of the Universe stretch and compress slightly due to the merger of black holes that occurred just over a billion years ago - I think that's phenomenal. It's amazing that when we first turned on our detectors, the Universe was ready and waiting to say 'hello'," the Glasgow University scientist told the BBC. Being able to detect gravitational waves enables astronomers finally to probe what they call "dark" Universe - the majority part of the cosmos that is invisible to the light telescopes in use today. Perfect probeNot only will they be able to investigate black holes and strange objects known as neutron stars (giant suns that have collapsed to the size of cities), they should also be able to "look" much deeper into the Universe - and thus farther back in time. It may even be possible eventually to sense the moment of the Big Bang. "Gravitational waves go through everything. They are hardly affected by what they pass through, and that means that they are perfect messengers," said Prof Bernard Schutz, from Cardiff University, UK. "The information carried on the gravitational wave is exactly the same as when the system sent it out; and that is unusual in astronomy. We can't see light from whole regions of our own galaxy because of the dust that is in the way, and we can't see the early part of the Big Bang because the Universe was opaque to light earlier than a certain time. "With gravitational waves, we do expect eventually to see the Big Bang itself," he told the BBC. In addition, the study of gravitational waves may ultimately help scientists in their quest to solve some of the biggest problems in physics, such as the unification of forces, linking quantum theory with gravity. At the moment, General Relativity describes the cosmos on the largest scales tremendously well, but it is to quantum ideas that we resort when talking about the smallest interactions. Being able to study places in the Universe where gravity is really extreme, such as at black holes, may open a path to new, more complete thinking on these issues. 
Einstein himself actually thought a detection might be beyond the reach of technology. His theory of General Relativity suggests that objects such as stars and planets can warp space around them - in the same way that a billiard ball creates a dip when placed on a thin, stretched, rubber sheet. Gravity is a consequence of that distortion - objects will be attracted to the warped space in the same way that a pea will fall in to the dip created by the billiard ball. Inspirational momentEinstein predicted that if the gravity in an area was changed suddenly - by an exploding star, say - waves of gravitational energy would ripple across the Universe at light-speed, stretching and squeezing space as they travelled. Although a fantastically small effect, modern technology has now risen to the challenge. Much of the R&D work for the Washington and Louisiana machines was done at Europe's smaller GEO600 interferometer in Hannover. "I think it's phenomenal to be able to build an instrument capable of measuring [gravitational waves]," said Prof Rowan. "It is hugely exciting for a whole generation of young people coming along, because these kinds of observations and this real pushing back of the frontiers is really what inspires a lot of young people to get into science and engineering."  As the old adage goes, “go big or go home.” To give you an idea of what this sandrail is all about, we don’t think that the owner will be “going home” any time in the near future. This beastly sand rail makes 1300hp. In something that weighs nothing more than an oversized go cart, that has to be an insane ride! Check out the video below with jumps and wheelies this insane ride as he shows off each and every last horsepower that the impressive rail makes! As the uploader says, the results speak for themselves!  Today, the automotive enthusiast press went into a collective tizzy over a press release sent out by the Specialty Equipment Manufacturer's Association. In it, SEMA shed light on a previously unpublicized bit of wording buried within a giant, 629-page proposal drafted by the EPA in July of 2015.
"EPA Seeks to Prohibit Conversion of Vehicles Into Racecars," SEMA's headline reads. But the reality of the legislation is a lot more nuanced than that. Update, 2/9/16, 5:45PM: See the end of this post for further clarification from the EPA. EPA spokeswoman Laura Allen released the following statement on the recently uncovered EPA language: People may use EPA-certified motor vehicles for competition, but to protect public health from air pollution, the Clean Air Act has – since its inception – specifically prohibited tampering with or defeating the emission control systems on those vehicles.The proposed regulation that SEMA has commented on does not change this long-standing law, or approach. Instead, the proposed language in the Heavy-Duty Greenhouse Gas rulemaking simply clarifies the distinction between motor vehicles and nonroad vehicles such as dirt bikes and snowmobiles. Unlike motor vehicles – which include cars, light trucks, and highway motorcycles – nonroad vehicles may, under certain circumstances, be modified for use in competitive events in ways that would otherwise be prohibited by the Clean Air Act. EPA is now reviewing public comments on this proposal. In other words, the wording included in the bill, and highlighted by SEMA, is not a newly established rule outlawing a previously allowed activity. Instead, with this language, the EPA seeks only to clarify the wording of an existing law—one that has been in place for many years, and that apparently has not hampered our current culture of amateur or semi-professional competition using production road vehicles in any way. What isn't clear is how the EPA's newly clarified language will affect hobby racers going forward. The draft, as far as we've seen, does not include any proposal for enforcement. The law is not slated to go into effect until 2018, and it won't be retroactive. So even if it does pass as currently written, it will never apply to current racing-modified production cars, only to those produced in 2018 or later and purchased with the intent of being raced. That is, if the law passes at all. We applaud SEMA for bringing this issue to light. Were it not for the organization's diligent analysis of vehicular legislation, none of us would even know about this issue—the EPA proposal was drafted in July 2015, and the public comment period opened and closed with no major coverage. SEMA has been pursuing the issue ever since, submitting comments on the original draft proposal and meeting with EPA agents to discuss the ramifications. But as it stands right now, we don't know enough about the EPA's proposal to make broad-reaching conclusions about what it means for current or future racers. Currently, it's illegal under federal law to remove the emissions-controls devices from any car sold to be driven on the street, a fact that was true long before the EPA wrote this proposal. When was the last time you saw a track day, LeMons race, hillclimb, drag-strip meetup, or any other amateur racing event broken up by Feds? R&T has reached out to the EPA for clarification on the law, the plans for enforcement, and what types of vehicles or competition might be exempted. Until then, let's not race to conclusions. Update: EPA spokesperson Laura Allen provided this further clarification to R&T: This clarification does not affect EPA's enforcement authority. It is still illegal to tamper with or defeat the emission control systems of motor vehicles. In the course of selecting cases for enforcement, the EPA has and will continue to consider whether the tampered vehicle is used exclusively for competition. The EPA remains primarily concerned with cases where the tampered vehicle is used on public roads, and more specifically with aftermarket manufacturers who sell devices that defeat emission control systems on vehicles used on public roads. Emphasis added. From this, it sure sounds like (as we stated above) the EPA doesn't plan on confiscating your trailered, track-only race vehicle—only that, as has been the case since emissions regulation began, you're breaking the law if you remove federally-mandated emissions controls from your street-driven car. |
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