Technology Review and some thoughts

I was reading the paper the other day, and it stuck me that for a small/medium city like Windsor, the fact that the Catholic School Board has 51 employees, in administration, that earn over 100K a year.

I know a 100K a year isn't neccessarily as much as it used to be, but that seems like a lot to me, for a government run seperate school board.

Top Ten Tech Cars
Nothing really revolutionary for cars, but definately evolutionary, with enough useful gadgets to add real value.

On the efficiency front,
-a Ford Reflex that uses a diesel and hybrid-electric propulsion (diesels are more fuel efficient then gasoline vehicles, but most electric motors and diesels produce most of their torque at low speed, and a flatter speed/torque response is desired)
- A vehicle that uses one central gasoline motor and 4 special motors (having a doughnut shaped rotor and inner stator, apparently to reduce the overall intertia) to seperately drive each wheel.

On the autonomous front,
-a Volkswagen sport utility navigated itself through 211 KM of desert in 6 hours,

Safety front,
-automatic headlights
-a system that tells you if you are driving too agressively (somehow I don't think this would be popular in Windsor, at least.)
-self belt pretensionrs ,adaptive cruise control.
-electronic vision to ublock blind spot
-Heads-up-display (not new ofcourse, but definately new to cars) to warn of pedestrians, also night vision

Gadget front,
-The Lexus having automatic parking, realtime traffic updates, 19 point surround sound, individual DVD players for each passenger, climate control based on body of each occupent, anticipates skidding and other vehicle stability problems, headlights that look ahead, and electronic everything (steering, brakes, etc) oh my.

And of course, 1000 HP, 1.2 MILLION, Bugatti Veyron. Produces 987 HP, and 1250 NM of toqruqe. 0-100 km/h in 2.3 seconds, top speed 408 km/h (which ofcourse, to go beyond 375 km/h, the driver must first stop the car, insert a special key, and go through a cheklist, "seatbelts, check, oil, check, last will and testament, check).

Still no production vehicle with Bose's EM suspension, though. :)


Round About Way of Profiling Earth's Atomsphere
An interesting application for GPS (although I'm sure there's lots more).