Month: December 2019

Enlarge / A student in Berlin, Germany places his smartphone on a shelf on the classroom wall at the beginning of the lesson. (credit: Britta Pedersen/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB/Getty Images)

In the early 2000s, when I taught freshman writing at the University of North Carolina, disengaged students couldn't rely on the Internet to distract them—they had to make their own fun. One male student used a light "get to know each other" first-day exercise as a chance to tell the whole class an aggressive story about how he once peed in his much-despised stepfather's aftershave; another female student delivered a "professional presentation" to the whole class while wearing a sheer shirt and no undergarments. And you know what? I respected them both. That's the kind of old-school subversion of the classroom experience, the unspoken challenge to the authority of the teacher, that I can get behind. It takes creativity, it takes guts, it takes rebellion.

Today, who's got the energy for that kind of acting out? I've been in and around universities for my entire adult life, and in the last few years I've observed an astonishing "tuning out" taking place in the classroom. I've seen a student, in a course where cell phones and laptops were forbidden by the professor, slip his phone out of his pocket every two minutes, checking for messages and occasionally tapping out a quick reply under the table, apparently convinced that the professor did not notice this. (He did.) I've seen students shop for boots in class, log in to their stock market portfolios (!), read the newspaper, write emails, and even work on papers for other classes. One spent each class period scrolling through his Twitter account on a laptop, pausing to watch every moving GIF and video clip.

This is not just my experience. Take yesterday's piece in MIT Technology Review, where philosophy professor Ron Srigley writes about what cell phones have done to his own classroom. His conclusion is sobering: "I have a real fondness for my students as people. But they’re abysmal students; or rather, they aren’t really students at all, at least not in my class. On any given day, 70% of them are sitting before me shopping, texting, completing assignments, watching videos, or otherwise occupying themselves. Even the 'good' students do this. No one’s even trying to conceal the activity, the way students did before. This is just what they do."

Enlarge / Photo taken in Borl_nge, Sweden (credit: Svante Berg | EyeEm | Getty Images)

Amid the growing popularity of the Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat products, and other plant-based meat alternatives, the meat industry has declared war.

Despite coming out with their own competing alternative and plant-based products, various meat industry-backed efforts have claimed that the vegetarian-friendly foods are harmful and “ultra-processed.” They’ve also compared them to dog food.

Now, there’s a new claim: that they’ll make men grow breasts.

Enlarge (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The North Atlantic was once home to a bird that bore a remarkable similarity to penguins. The great auk, also known as “the original penguin,” was a large, flightless, black and white bird, that is said to have existed in the millions. Despite its appearance, the great auk is actually a relative of razorbills and puffins, not of penguins. However, since around 1844, the Northern Hemisphere has been without its version of the penguin, and it looks like our species is to blame.

The great auk had long provided humans with a source of meat and eggs. But from around 1500, hunting dramatically intensified when Europeans discovered the rich fishing grounds of Newfoundland. Within 350 years, the last great auks ever reliably seen were killed to be put in a museum, and the species was lost forever.

Given the relative speed of this extinction, it’s worth asking whether other factors, such as environmental changes, were involved. Was the great auk heading for extinction before intensive hunting began? Or could it have survived and still be around today if it hadn’t been for humans?

Enlarge / An example of electric scooters left in Berlin city on Thursday, November 7, 2019, in Berlin, Germany. (credit: Artur Widak | NurPhoto | Getty Images)

On Thursday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a widely supported bill that would have legalized electric bicycles and scooters. The bill was the result of extensive negotiations and compromises that sought to balance a set of competing interests. But in vetoing the bill, Cuomo cited an interest that he felt hadn't been properly considered: public safety, specifically the lack of a helmet requirement.

By waiting until the end of the year to veto the bill, Cuomo has left the legislature without an opportunity to override this veto, meaning the whole process will have to start again next year.

The whole situation has been extremely complex due to the number of technologies and constituencies involved. On the tech front, there are several types of vehicles, including the pedal-assist e-bikes we test rode earlier this year. These require the user to pedal before the motor will act and are typically limited to speeds of just under 30mph. Separately, there are electric bikes where the motor will operate without the user doing anything other than operating a throttle, which have become favorites of the legions of food delivery people in New York City.

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  It's not the Cybertruck, but it is a Cybertruck. [credit: auto.ru ]

Tesla's angular, unpainted Cybertruck sure is polarizing. The company says it will go into production in late 2021, but not everyone wants to wait that long. If you're Tesla CEO Elon Musk, that's not a problem—you can just drive the prototype to dinner at Nobu, as long as you have a chase car follow you. But he's not the only one breaking necks out there. Over in Russia, some of the citizens of the Khimki suburb outside Moscow might also have seen a metallic wedge on the roads recently. And this one is already for sale.

The "Cybertruck" in this case is the work of the YouTubers at Pushka's Garage, and it follows a long line of Russian homebuilt specials. If you've been on the car Internet long enough you'll probably know what I'm talking about—build threads showing old Porsches or BMWs being made to look like this year's model with the help of elbow grease and a lot of Bondo (or whatever the Russian equivalent is).

That's not quite the case here, although I do like the idea of someone buying an old Model S as the starting point. No, this is a lot more low-tech and low-budget. The entire project only cost $1,300, which included the donor car, a VAZ 2109. (This is an angular hatchback that first appeared in the 1980s, which some of us know better as the Lada Samara.) Instead of two electric motors and a whole lot of lithium-ion, this Cybertruck makes do with front-wheel drive and a 1.6L gasoline engine. The body panels are at least made from sheet metal, however.