Dear people of Jacksonville, Florida...

Driving south down I-95, your stretch of which must be the most treacherous length of interstate in the continental United States.  The GPS blaring red alerts of "stay in the left lane" practically the entire time from the Georgia border until well past town.  Hopped-up on Dr. Pepper and Lindsey Stirling's "Shatter Me" playing over the car stereo.

It was one of the most crazy awesome experiences I've ever had as a driver.  But please... please... do something about that highway.  A lot of the time I could barely tell where one lane ended and the other began.  You guys are one confused motorist away from a collisional calamity of crippling proportions.

Looks like a pretty nice town though.  Maybe next time I'll stop for a bite to eat there.

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The most interesting carpool passenger in the world

I did something like this coming through Atlanta alone several years ago.  Except instead of what this guy did or having a mannequin, I used a pillow wearing my leather jacket and I went the whole way through the high-occupancy lane with my left hand on the wheel and my right one holding the pillow up and in sight.

How I cleared Atlanta while doing that, I'll never know.

From the Associated Press via Q13Fox News in Seattle...

Most Interesting Man in World' fails as carpool lane ruse

FIFE, Wash. (AP) — A Washington State Patrol trooper says it’s by far the best carpool scam he’s seen, but it didn’t work.

A motorcycle trooper parked along Interstate 5 near Tacoma on Monday afternoon spotted a driver and a rather unusual “passenger” pass by him in the carpool lane.

When the trooper stopped the car, he discovered the “passenger” was a cardboard cutout of the actor who portrays “The Most Interesting Man in the World” in Dos Equis beer ads.

The driver’s response?

“He’s my best friend.”

The highway patrol didn't confiscate The Most Interesting Man in the World, but they did tell the driver to not use him again.

Later on the patrolman tweeted: "I don’t always violate the HOV lane law … but when I do, I get a $124 ticket."

I love stories like this.  You have to give this guy props for some ingenuity even if it didn't work.  And hey, from the photo above it looks like he's still having a good time despite the error of his ways.

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New technology: 2TB optical storage, cardboard bicycles!

Two researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed an optical storage system that can hold 1 to 2 terabytes of data on a disc the same size as a standard Blu-ray or DVD! That's equal to 50 Blu-ray discs. Whereas Blu-ray and DVD discs have always had up to two layers holding the data and the laser refocusing to transition from one to another (the reason why your DVD often pauses for a split second before resuming play) the researchers piled dozens of much teenier layers on top of each other. Same basic technology, but a significant refinement of the materials being used. Potential investors are already looking into bringing the technology to market.

Meanwhile over in Israel, Izhar Gafni - an accomplished engineer and cycling enthusiast - has invented a bicycle made almost entirely out of cardboard. The cycle is very cheap to produce, can be manufactured in large quantities and is already about to hit the retail racks. Gafni expects, in fact designed his bike, to be especially useful in major congested urban areas such as are often found in India and southeast Asia, as well as remote villages in Africa.

And no, the bike will not come apart when it starts raining :-) To find out more, hit the link above!

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The 367 miles per hour school bus

Sporting a jet engine from a Phantom fighter plane, this school bus that Paul Stender and his team at Indy Boys Inc. out of Indianapolis hacked together can reach speeds up to 367 miles per hour!!

The downside is that top speed is sustainable only for a half-mile. And it takes 150 gallons of fuel to reach it. But that's gotta be a hella scary ride for any kiddies that might be aboard this beast. Stender and his crew used an actual school bus to build their creation but admit having to reinforce it quite a bit because "There's no way the original bus could have withstood the speeds that I take it to." Still, he estimates that about 5 percent, including the door, are original parts.

Why a 367-MPH school bus? The self-taught Stender quipped that "I grew up on a farm and to tell you the truth I always wanted to learn things myself and didn't like school much... I guess this is my revenge for all those days riding on the slow journey to school, now it goes at my kind of pace."

But there are other reasons as well. From the story at the Telegraph...

Mr Stender's creation, which he has dubbed 'The School Time Jet-Powered School Bus', also fires out 80 foot flames from the back creating massive clouds of smoke.

Mr Stender, 43, said: "I built the bus for two reasons. The first is to entertain people because, come on, it's a jet bus.

"The second, is to keep kids off drugs. Jets are hot, drugs are not...

"We do a lot of displays at schools and we are trying to show them there's more to life than sitting in front of computers.

Click on the above link for more, including video of the School Time Jet-Powered School Bus in seriously hot action!

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GPS system could start dying next year

The Global Positioning System may be months away from beginning to fail, it has been been announced. Mismanagement and a failure to maintain the fleet of satellites at the heart of the system now threatens to put both military and civilian use of GPS in tremendous jeopardy starting sometime in 2010.

Here's hoping that this can be remedied and soon. I just recently started using GPS for highway navigation (a unit from TomTom) and it has already become an essential part of my business ventures. But then you get to considering the reason why GPS was first made available for public use to begin with, and you come to realize the urgent gravity of the situation.

(Thankfully, Soviet-controlled airspace at least has been defunct for the past 18 years. But absent modern navigation that much of the world has come to depend on, and it's not hard to imagine a similar incident happening in any number of places.)

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World's cheapest car has been unveiled

For 100,000 rupees (or about $2000 American) the Nano, built by Indian car company Tata, can be yours...

The Nano seats four, and the basic model has no power steering, air bags, radio, or air conditioner. Oh yeah, and instead of welding the plastic and sheet-metal parts of the exterior are joined with adhesives: a glued-together car.

The Nano has a maximum speed of 70 kilometers per hour... or 43 miles per hour.

This thing would get eaten alive by most of the roads around where I live.

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Hacked electronic road signs warn motorists of Nazi zombies, velociraptors

High-tech practical jokers in three states have declared war on those electronic road signs that DMVs put out to relay information to drivers. Here's what one sign in Austin, Texas alerted motorists to...

But these weren't ordinary zombies, mind you. They were "Nazi zombies", from which people were urged to flee toward cooler climates. While Texas and Illinois got plagued with zombies, Indiana roadways suddenly became flooded with raptors from Jurassic Park.

Mash down here for the story and video about the highway highjinks!

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