the air car

Motor Development International (MDI) may have a solution for breaking the world's dependence on oil! And the answer is...drum roll please...The Compressed Air Car!

Models like the CityCAT can hit up to 68 mph with a range of 125 miles. They can be made into a hybrid as well to extend the range.  The best part is that it costs only around $2.00 to fill up with compressed air! (it holds 340 liters of air) Coming in at an estimated cost of around $13,000 it's also affordable.

These cars are ZERO emission! In fact air motors generally release cleaner air than they intake due to the air filter. Cars that are actually purifying the air? What a concept. And unlike fuel cells or electric cars they don't have batteries, which means they are more easily recyclable.

      

[proposed models of the Air Car under-development]

The only catch is they are tiny! They actually make the smart car seem large. So don't count on seeing them any time in the United States because I doubt they would pass safety requirements. They actually sort of remind me of those Fisher Price Power Wheels for kids.

They go into production this year in India.

More information can be found on MDI's website: http://www.mdi.lu/

zippers

While researching CurtainWall Systems made by YKK AP for my current project I accidentally went to their main website and was pleasantly surprised to find that YKK not only makes CurtainWall, but are also the zipper monopoly of the world. I'm sure you've looked down at your coat zipper or the zipper on your jeans and noticed the emblazoned YKK letters.

Wanting to know more I checked out the Wikipedia entry for the YKK Group and this is what I found out:

The initials YKK stands for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki-kaisha (吉田工業株式会社) and the original company was established in 1934.

It's made up of a group of Japanese manufacturing companies. They are best known for zippers (they are the world's largest producers) but they also make fasteners, architectural products, and machinery.

Zippers!

choose your own adventure

Choose your own adventure books. For some reason I wikipedia'd them today and discovered this entry about one called Inside UFO 54-40. This is an excerpt from the wikipedia entry:

"One book, Inside UFO 54-40, revolved around the search for a paradise that no one can actively reach; one of the pages in the book describes the player finding the paradise and living happily ever after, although none of the choices in the book led to that page. The ending could only be found by disregarding the rules and going through the book at random. Upon finding the ending, the reader is congratulated for realizing how to find paradise."

It's sort of existential for a children's book series! It's intriguing. Makes you wonder how many people figured it out and what lesson they took away.