The Ferrari 458 Italia is a hot car. Too hot. So hot that at least 5 of them have burst into flames because of a design flaw, leading the Italian luxury car maker to recall more than 1,200 Italias, each worth around $230,000.
The flambeed Ferraris weren’t a result of speed-racing billionaires crashing into walls, but rather a flaw in the wheel arch on the rear of the vehicles. Ferrari screwed up and used a glue which is prone to melting, which ultimately brings the lining of the wheel-arch into contact with the hot exhaust pipe. This causes both the lining and the adhesive to heat up and ignite. And for the grand finale, the heat will cause the Italia’s aluminum body to melt.
Here’s how a rep for the car company puts it:
The wheel arch assembly and heat shield which incorporates both mechanical fasteners and adhesive may, in the case of particularly high temperatures and as a result of heat produced by the exhaust, cause the deformation of the assembly itself.
Such deformation brings the assembly excessively close to the exhaust causing the adhesive used to overheat and produce smoke or, in the case of particularly high temperatures, ignite.
Ferrari has contacted the owners — including guitar god Eric Clapton — of these pricey vehicles and offered to fix them free of charge.
And for the few owners whose cars ignited because of the flaw, Ferrari is offering to give them new ones for free.
The £212m recall: Ferrari recalls ‘cursed’ supercar after FIVE 458 Italias burst into flames [Daily Mail]
Photo via The Daily Mail
The ocean’s whales are some of the Earth’s most massive and majestic animals, reaching sizes of up to 80 feet long and 150 tons. As the targets of centuries of whaling, they have a violent history — and are still recovering from an industry that depleted their numbers substantially.
But while whales can be aggressive at times, they are more often gentle, curious creatures — and likely to check out foreign objects in the water, including boats and photographers.
Read the full story on TreeHugger
Lease Fail
Extreme discount airline Ryanair kicked a 12-year old girl and her dad off a flight because they didn’t buy an extra ticket for her violin.
When they called the airline, Ryanair said they could put it in overhead no problem. But when they arrived at the gate, staff demanded she buy a seat for her instrument. Not only would the new last-minute ticket would have cost more than twice their tickets, when the father finally reluctantly agreed, he was told boarding was closed. The two were forced to fly home via EasyJet, which had no problem with the violin as hand luggage.
Ryanair’s rule is that anything over 55cm x 40cm x 20cm (roughly 21 x 15 7 inches) needs its own seat if it doesn’t go in cargo. And the rules are the rules, even if they don’t know them themselves.
Schoolgirl and father barred from Ryanair flight because they hadn’t bought extra seat for her VIOLIN [Mail Online] (Thanks to Simon!)
Need to escape from a stalker or clean up your online identity before a potential or current employer finds out that you have a personality? Here’s instructions on how to delete yourself from the internet, everything from erasing your profile from Facebook to “unGoogling” yourself.
How to Delete Yourself from the Internet [WikiHow]
Photo by Patrick Nelson
If you’ve been following along like us on Phish Summer Tour, you’d probably be aware that the last two shows of the run were broadcast live through USTREAM.tv thanks to a dude named taper420. The Phish audience is quite impressive technically speaking; we’ve been receiving iPhone broadcasts from Phish shows since the band returned last year. What made these final two broadcasts beyond special was the use of an actual tapers rig to record and stream down the show to the 2,500 people (or more) that continually tuned in, chatted along, tweeted the link to their followers, etc. In fact, you’d have to be completely disconnected from the band to have missed this fact over the course of two days. Hell, the dude got his own hashtag on Twitter.
The band has taken notice, and before we could even refresh our open letter from a while back asking, nay demanding that the band start offering their own high-quality streams directly from the shows, the band has updated their taper policy to include language referencing any live broadcasting or webcasting of the shows and how this is illegal in their current rights agreements with ASCAP/BMI. My emphasis added:
Can I broadcast or webcast live Phish recordings?
Officially released recordings of any kind (live or studio) in any format may never be copied or otherwise traded or offered in whole or part as compilations, online streams or other methods of distribution. You may play live Phish recordings as set forth in our taping policy and as determined by the band in its sole discretion. Broadcast of unreleased Phish recordings via: radio, online or other means is permissible only if the broadcaster is duly licensed and if all their activities conform to all the guidelines set forth in this policy. That includes broadcast or webcast only if you have all appropriate licenses from ASCAP and BMI. The band lacks the legal rights to permit real-time streaming of live shows under any circumstances. Real-time streaming is defined as passing along a live recording before you leave the venue. If you have a radio show, please note that you should name the show carefully so as to avoid infringing upon trademarks such as the name of the band.
PT’ers cry fowl! Could this be a move that the band recognized they need to cover their own legal skin and make sure they have language directly outlined that states that this is not a policy that they can comply with? Does that mean they’re going to police it now? Would this be difficult for the band in any meaningful capacity? All good questions that need answers.
In the meantime, though, we’re probably not going to waste too much more of our time on this subject now that they spelled it out for us. It felt ambiguous before, but based on this note it’s something that all tapers and audience members should likely avoid if they want to keep this type of freedom available to all of us at the shows themselves. If one streamer’s quest for domination starts to overshadow the efforts of the tapers that attend the show and get home before they upload the final product to a sanctioned torrent sharing site, then I’d like to propose that we not try to screw this up for the rest of us. These are privledges, not rights, and they are not expressly given to us going forward forever and ever no questions asked. Technology may very well win here and we’ll likely still see streams pop up from time to time, but this is something the band is paying attention to and will likely find a way to prevent.
To me, I’m taking a lot of this language at face value. The band clearly states that this is not something they can do legally. Case closed, right? We can ask and demand and setup guerilla streams all across the country, but it’s not going to stop the notion that the band will not pursue this option in the near term.
That sucks, but it’s also not all that surprising.
What are your thoughts about this whole mess?
Related posts:
- Phish Reunion Updates Expected Soon
- CNN Taps Widespread Panic as House Band
- New Digital Live Music Services: Live Nation-iTunes, EMI’s Abbey Road Live
Image credit: GreenHouse International & Mickou (Creative Commons)
No sooner do we hear that the Scots have developed a biofuel from whisky distillery byproducts, that the tequila industry announces it wants in on the waste-to-energy act too. This is not without good reason—the growth of the tequila indus…Read the full story on TreeHugger
I’ve never tasted milk that contained the corpse of a dead mouse, so I can’t say whether or not it would be noticeable, but a couple in Kentucky claim they drank three days’ worth of moused-up milk they’d purchased at Sam’s Club before ever noticing the rotting rodent inside. Now, as happens in these situations, they have filed a lawsuit.
The suit, which was filed earlier this week against Sam’s Club’s parent company Walmart, says the couple purchased the jug of milk at Sam’s and then, with the help of their 23-month-old granddaughter, spent the next three days drinking from it.
On the third day, the woman involved went to pour some milk and “discovered a dead mouse” in the jug.
The gallon of milk — along with the rodent — was taken to the Kentucky Department of Public Health where the couple filed a written complaint.
According to the suit, the family “suffered embarrassment, humiliation and emotional distress.”
The plaintiffs also claim that their granddaughter had blood in her stool after consuming the allegedly contaminated milk.
“This has been a traumatic experience for the Grants,” says their lawyer. “They were completely shocked.”
In addition to Walmart, the suit names Superior Dairy Inc., of Ohio, as a defendant. The family is seeking non-economic and punitive damages through a trial by jury.
Without having much to go on here, what’s your gut instinct on the plaintiffs’ allegations — scam or the real deal?
Louisville KY Injury News: Family Sues Walmart After Finding Dead Mouse In Milk [JusticeNewsflash.com]
What you see here are coprolites—a fancy name for fossilized poops, which allows paleontologists to seriously discuss something that could otherwise end up eliciting a lot of immature giggles. Notice, if you will, the giant teeth marks in the coprolite on the left. Those were likely made by either a Physogaleus or a Galeocerdo, ancient, extinct sharks related to the modern Tiger Shark.
And, while it’s pretty awesome that paleontologists can match tooth marks well enough to fossil anatomy to narrow the biter down to one of two species, the real thing we all want to know is, “Why the heck was a shark biting poop?”
Tiger Sharks have not been documented as poop-eaters. Plus, if the ancient sharks were trying to eat poop, you'd think they'd have succeeded. Instead, we have coporolites—un-eaten, but still bitten. It's a mystery. But, according to science blogger Brian Switek, researchers from Maryland's Calvert Marine Museum and the American Institutes for Research, have a theory. An awesome theory.
The pattern of the bite marks and the fact that the feces were not ingested is consistent with a reconstruction in which, during an attack on another animal, the shark either bit through the body wall and guts to leave the tooth impressions or bit the intestines after disemboweling its prey. Such an attack would have left tooth marks on the feces, which probably fell out of the intestine shortly afterward, hence “In this scenario, the shark chose not to eat the feces, which drifted away, settled out of sight, or otherwise avoided attention.”
Brian Switek: Unique fossils record the dining habits of ancient sharks
Image from “Shark-bitten vertebrate coprolites from the Miocene of Maryland” in the journal Naturwissenschaften
Behold the perplexing multi-media underground electropop darlings of Tokyo, Trippple Nippple. Their stage show sounds like a J-Pop version of out-there 70s performance artists, The Kipper Kids, and features stuff like eggs, glitter, milk, blood and rotting food. From an interview posted today at the Dazed and Confused blog:
Dazed Digital: Is there symbolism behind your costumes and performances?
Qrea Nippple: Last time we were doing some guillotine things, and we cut so many heads off balloons. The helium goes to the ceiling. Yuka was crying like, “Oh I feel so guilty for killing so many balloon heads, so I drew some really wicked, bad faces on the balloons, so she wouldn’t feel guilty for cutting their heads off. ”
Dazed Digital: What were some of your most memorable performances?
Yuka Nippple: We have a lot of stories about making a mess. We played club Asia in Tokyo and our costumes were mud, just that. And we put on some blonde hair ponytails. We were just mud and blonde hair ponytail. That was our costume. It was a lot of fun as always. But in the morning when the lights turned on, the whole club was covered in dry mud. And everyone went mad, and everyone had to clean up until about 9am in the morning. We made a lot of people really upset. We didn’t mean to of course, but my bad, but I’d like to announce that we can do “Not dirty one” too! People sometimes misunderstand what we are, but we are musicians!
Dazed Digital: So where did you acquire all this mud?
Yuka Nippple: Amazing, amazing store called Tokyu Hands in Shibuya. It’s a department store with 21 floors of DIY stuff. We get everything from there. You can spend a day just looking for things. We found rice-field mud in a packet.
Read the entire article at Dazed Digital: TOKYO’S TRIPPPLE NIPPPLES: Insane electro popstresses hailing from the fine land of Tokyo talk fake tits and their milky alcohol
