The 7 Hamburgers of the Apocalypse

by Gerry Pugliese

Hamburgers, next to apple pie and statins they're the ambassadors of American cuisine--for better or for worse--and these harbingers of heart disease might be the baddest of all.

Here are 7 over the top hamburgers that are guaranteed to clog your arteries by just looking that them:

1. The Quadruple Bypass Burger

The Quadruple Bypass Burger from the Heart Attack Grill; four burger patties with side orders of Jolt Cola, unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes and French fries deep-fried in pure lard.

2. Big Daddy Barrick Burger

Sonya Thomas, a 5'5 99-pound competitive eating champion, downed an 18 pound Big Daddy Barrick Burger in Las Vegas a few years ago.

3. The Hotdog Hamburger

This one hails from England. I'm not sure what it's called, but it's a hamburger with a chopped hotdog on top.

4. Mulligan's Monster

Mulligan's invented the Hamdog, one hotdog wrapped in a beef patty and cheese, then deep-fried, covered with chili and onions and served on a bun with a fried egg on top.

5. Dyer's Burgers

Dyer's Burgers are deep-fried hamburgers piled with mustard, onion and pickle and paired with a single, double or triple-order of cheese fries.

6. Whatafarm Burger

Whataburger puts the entire farm in one sandwich; bacon, cheese, fried egg, burger patty, and chicken cutlet. They affectionately call it the "Whatafarm" burger.

7. Luther Burger

Another Mulligan's creation, the Luther Burger. Named after Luther Vandross it's a bacon cheeseburger sandwiched between two glazed donuts.

Now, I hope you all find it incredibly ironic that a guy who doesn't eat meat was asked to compile a list of monstrous hamburgers. I do.

Okay, not really jumping the shark but a pretty neat shot none the less. This was taken at New Smyrna Beach, Florida in a sequence of three. The jumping behavior is not all that rare for sharks, but catching it on film like this is.

The Chinese Diet Could Solve The West's Obesity Crisis

Chinese food has a bad reputation in the UK. The rice-heavy meals and fatty meat dishes are thought to lead straight to obesity and heart disease. But properly prepared, says Chinese food expert Lorraine Clissold, the very opposite is true: the Chinese way of eating is healthy and fulfilling, fights illness and prolongs life. She also insists...

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The People You'll Meet in Every Office... [COMIC] The People You'll Meet in Every Office... [COMIC]

A great list of office personality stereotypes... you've probably met more than a few of them (or will).

The Top 15 MMA Fighters in the World

It’s time to countdown the top 15 fighters in the sport of mixed martial arts. We grouped in the best fighters from all different divisions and all different organizations to compile the list of the top 15 fighters in the world.

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Apple Now Third Largest PC Vendor in the US, Survey Says

Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7:30 PM PDT

Apple is moving up the charts, toppling Acer to become the third largest PC vendor in the U.S., according to a survey from Gartner.

Apple defied a weakening economy to record a 38.1 percent growth rate in U.S. PC shipments, according to Gartner. Overall PC shipments in the U.S. grew just 4.2 percent to 16.5 million units during the quarter.

The company shipped 1.4 million units compared to Acer's 1.33 million, according to Gartner's survey. Dell held the top spot, shipping 5.25 million units and growing 11.9 percent year-over-year, followed by HP.

IDC also released a survey on Wednesday that had Apple and Acer running neck and neck.

Apple is witnessing unit growth across the board with both desktops and laptops doing well, said David Daoud, research manager at IDC. "They seem to have a good balance of products."

The second quarter is typically big for Apple, Daoud said. "That's when they are inking relationships and selling to educational institutions ahead of the back-to-school season," Daoud said.

In a mass market dominated by sensitive budgets and buyers, Apple is catering to specific buyers who are immune from the economic slowdown.

"The mindshare that company is significant. Not only among consumers, but small-to-medium businesses and even enterprises are looking at Apple hardware."

At the same token, budgetary constraints may make it hard for consumers to switch to high-priced Apple PCs, Daoud said.

The company is expected to sustain its growth in the U.S. in the upcoming quarters, Daoud said. Its PC shipments among students going back to school is expected to be strong in the third quarter. Apple may also find PC buyers who are unhappy with the "lack of innovation" in the PC market, Daoud said.

"[Windows] Vista may be helpful, but it is not resonating with consumers at the moment," he said.

Apple has a small market worldwide compared to HP and Dell, but it represents an opportunity to grow. The company is showing good growth in Japan, where it shipped 130,000 PC units in the first quarter of 2008, according to Daoud.

Awesome Super Mario Kart Wedding Cake [PICS]

The greatest wedding cake ever! The Super Mario Kart Cake was a hit with guests at our wedding. Everything in the pictures of this cake is 100% edible. This Chocolate Decadence Cake (black chocolate cake filled with bittersweet chocolate ganache, chocolate buttercream and chocolate mousse) was as delciious as it was unique.

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Tooth Lasers Could Make Drilling a Thing of the Past

For some people, just the sound of a dental drill is enough to cause panic—but the good news is that this barbaric procedure may be a thing of the past. UK researchers have developed a technology that is based on Raman spectroscopy (a method that is currently used to identify chemicals) to spot tooth decay before it begins. A new study has determined that harmful bacteria can be detected by analyzing how light is scattered when a laser is fired at the tooth.

This method would make it possible to detect damage much faster than X-rays, nipping the problem in the bud before drilling is necessary. The testing is ongoing, but the researchers hope that the lasers could be available commercially within the next five years. Of course, you would have to actually go to the dentist on a regular basis to benefit from the procedure, so my guess is that drilling won't disappear anytime soon. [eurekalert via ZDNet]

7 iPhone Apps to Boost Your Productivity

The iPhone has been out for more than a week and the hubbub has started dying off and the realities are starting to set in. Not to try and put more fuel on the fire of hype, but I always think the point when the Reality Distortion Field effect starts wearing off* is the best time to look at the technology objectively as well as the application options available to you.

I mean, when an application that tests how long you can push a button gets web-wide coverage, you know there’s some kind of reality distortion going on.

So, I’ve compiled a list of apps from the iTunes App Store that I’ve found useful and good for productivity that you might be interested in trying out. That is, if you hadn’t already done so during the week’s excessive hype. Or if you’re not busy playing Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart.

To find any of these apps and install them, fire up iTunes and run them through the iTunes Store search box. And if you’re favorite productivity application isn’t listed here, it could be because I haven’t tried it or didn’t like it—but then, just as likely, it might just be because of the bone-headed decision to restrict some apps by country.

* I purchased mine well before this point in time arrived.

OmniFocus

I’m bringing out the big guns first, when it comes to productivity. OmniFocus is a great GTD task management application. It’s a “port” (and I use that word loosely) from Omni Group’s popular desktop application of the same name. Though it’s on the pricier end of the available iPhone apps, the functionality offered can be accounted for.

Some developers just want to get a mobile version of their desktop application up at the App Store, but OmniFocus is one of the few that leverage the iPhone’s capabilities as distinct from the Mac with location-based task lists thanks to the iPhone’s GPS location services.

OmniFocus for the iPhone will sync and integrate with OmniFocus on the Mac if you’re running the latest version of the software. If your tasks are important to you, make sure to keep your data backed up, because I’ve read a review or two where an application crash caused complete data loss.

Mocha VNC Lite

Oh, crap. I’ve just got in bed and want to do some reading online with my laptop, to relax before going to sleep. But I’ve left a torrent running on the computer in the home office and the Internet connection is so slow, it’s almost unusable!

I’ll have to get out of bed, turn the torrent off, and if I want it done by morning, I’ll have to get out bed again when I’m done and turn it back on.

Okay, I’m sure you can think of a scenario that’s more about becoming productive and less about pandering to laziness, but Mocha VNC works like Screen Sharing on the Mac does. You can use Mocha to control your Windows, Mac or Linux computer and the level of interaction is surprisingly high. You use the multi-touch finger controls to zoom around the screen just like when you’re using MobileSafari. Best of all, it’s free.

BookShelf

BookShelf is an ebook reader for your iPhone. It does text documents all the way to Mobipocket books. I definitely think this app can boost your productivity because it allows you to get more reading done quicker. You can read any book in your entire library in the living room, on the train, heck, even when you’re pedaling away on your exercise bike. Ever tried to lug an entire library of books around? Not fun. This is simple and easy. I’ve had the iPhone 3G since Friday and I’ve already finished two-and-a-half books thanks to BookShelf.

Mobipocket, the ebook reader I’ve been using on Windows Mobile or CE devices for close to a decade, is apparently coming out for the iPhone in months to come. But BookShelf beat them to the punch and they get a vote from me.

What I’d like to see: a smoother desktop app for shoveling books onto your phone and a revision of the “chunking” process that turns it into a background function you don’t need to worry about.

Evernote

I can barely live without Evernote on the Mac these days. The iPhone version makes it easier to create notes on the go and also easy to view them, but if you want to edit them, you won’t be too happy—Evernote doesn’t allow it. I’m hoping, nay, begging, that they’ll build the ability to edit existing notes into a future version. Please, guys?

You can do snapshot notes with the iPhone’s camera or audio notes. And, of course, you get searchable images as usual once your snapshot has uploaded to the Evernote server.

NetNewsWire

I’m a user of NetNewsWire on the Mac, so this app had me excited. Unfortunately, it’s not quite the experience I had hoped for, and not only that, but it won’t seem to download my entire collection of feeds as synced with Newsgator.

But, where before I spent precious office time catching up on feeds (after I got my real work done, of course), I can now get (most of) them done when I have an idle moment—like when I’m waiting for someone to say something interesting at that dinner party! This frees up extra time to work on new projects or take on another small client project back at the office.

Sidenote: before you lambast me for my previous habit of reading feeds when I could’ve been working on a new client, feed reading is actually an important task for a writer whose work is primarily online. It’s not extra time I was desperate to have before, but thirty minutes a day can add up.

Google Mobile

There may be no Spotlight on the iPhone (yet, the optimist would add), but Google Mobile does the job just as well as a Mobile Spotlight would. That is, aside from the system-wide integration that it obviously lacks.

Google Mobile will let you perform a search that hunts through your contacts and the web and provides you with the most relevant and local results first. Does the job damn well, while we’re waiting on Spotlight. You hear that, Apple? We want it along with copy and paste, okay?

Twinkle

You might be surprised to find a Twitter client in a list of productivity apps, but there’s a good reason for it. Since I’ve installed Twinkle, I’ve stopped using Twhirl or constantly refreshing the tab I have Twitter open in; I know Twinkle will let me know when someone replies to or messages me and since installing it my time spent on the site in general has decreased a lot—without really affecting my participation in the community there.

10 Most Anticipated Movies After The Dark Knight

'X-Men Origins: Wolverine,' 'Terminator 4' and Heath Ledger's final film also have us excited for next year.



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Making genetic testing useful

Credit: Technology Review

It's now possible to go online and mail-order genetic tests that will predict your genetic risk for common diseases. But because the meaning of the genetic risk factors flagged--how they boost risk for disease--is not yet clear, such tests have received major criticism. In many cases, it's unclear how to use the findings to improve an individual's health.

A new $31 million project aims to address that issue by revisiting large epidemiological studies encompassing tens of thousands of people whose medical status has already been well documented. Scientists will use previously donated DNA samples to identify 100 different variations in the participants, and then sift through data to clarify how they affect health. The results could have a broad impact on public-health recommendations, such as who would benefit most from additional screening for cancer or diabetes. They could also provide new targets for drug development.

The deluge of data linking specific genes to common diseases comes from new tools that allow scientists to quickly scan the genome for up to a million common genetic variations. In the past two years, these so-called genome-wide association studies have identified more than 300 genetic variants that boost risk for illnesses such as diabetes, arthritis, and Crohn's disease, a form of inflammatory-bowel disease. By examining the entire genome without bias, scientists have found genes that they never expected would be involved in a particular disease.

"We're being inundated with [genome-wide association] results, and that's a good thing," says James Evans, a professor of genetics and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and editor in chief of Genetics in Medicine. "But the next step will be the hardest step, and that is figuring out what it means for human health."

Although genome-wide association studies have shed light on a great number of genetic variations, it's not clear how these genetic changes boost risk for different diseases. For example, a variation that boosts risk for type 2 diabetes might do so by disrupting part of the insulin regulation pathway, or it might act through some less well understood pathway, such as inflammation. Both of those possibilities could point to a specific molecular pathway to target in the development of novel diabetes drugs.

"We want to try to understand more about [these genes], in terms of how they are related to disease and whether they are really causative," says Teri Manolio, director of the Office of Population Genomics at the National Human Genome Research Institute, which is sponsoring the new study.

The project will focus on four existing epidemiological studies in which scientists have spent years tracking participants' medical information, such as blood pressure, medications, lifestyle, and nutrition. The people being studied encompass a broad swath of the United States' population, including African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and Asian and Pacific Islanders. That's especially important because most genome-wide association studies were done in people of European descent; other groups may carry that variant at different frequencies.

One of the groups under study is the population screened by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a survey done every year by the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta. "It's meant to be a snapshot of American health at the time the information is collected," says Dana Crawford, an assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics at Vanderbilt University, in Memphis, TN, who is leading one arm of the project. "We have data on pesticide exposure and occupational exposure--it's a huge opportunity to look at gene-environment interaction." (Genes have differing effects under different conditions. For example, some studies link pesticide exposure to Parkinson's disease, but this risk may only be realized in people who possess certain genetic risk factors.)

"I think this kind of effort will be useful because it will cast a wide net looking at the way results [from genome-wide association studies] can be used to improve human health," says Evans. "Arguably, much of the utility of this knowledge being generated by [these] studies will be at the population level and could have very useful effects on how we practice medicine from the perspective of public health."

By Emily Singer

Magnets capture cancer cells

Seek and destroy: Magnetic nanoparticles (above, red) coated with cancer-targeting peptides can seek out and glom on to cancer cells like the one shown above. The peptides were designed to bind with a molecule found on the surface of ovarian-cancer cells. Researchers hope to use the nanoparticles to filter cancer cells from the abdominal fluid of patients with ovarian cancer, perhaps preventing metastasis. Credit: J. Am. Chem. Soc. Copyright 2008 American Chemical Society

Magnetic nanoparticles coated with a specialized targeting molecule were able to latch on to cancer cells in mice and drag them out of the body. The results are described in a study published online this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The study's authors, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, hope that the new technique will one day provide a way to test for--and potentially even treat--metastatic ovarian cancer.

"It's a fairly novel approach, to use magnetic particles in vivo to try to sequester cancer cells," says Michael King, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, who was not involved in the study.

With ovarian cancer, metastasis occurs when cells slough off the primary tumor and float free in the abdominal cavity. If researchers could use the magnetic nanoparticles to trap drifting cancer cells and pull them out of the abdominal fluid, they could predict and perhaps prevent metastasis. Although the nanoparticles were tested inside the bodies of mice, the authors envision an external device that would remove a patient's abdominal fluid, magnetically filter out the cancer cells, and then return the fluid to the body. After surgery to remove the primary tumor, a patient would undergo the treatment to remove any straggling cancer cells. The researchers are currently developing such a filter and testing it on abdominal fluid from human cancer patients.

"It's possible that the particles may not ever have to go into the patient's body," says John McDonald, chief scientific officer of the Ovarian Cancer Institute at Georgia Tech and a senior author of the paper. "That would be preferable, because then you don't have to worry about any potential toxicity."

The particles, which are just 10 nanometers or less in diameter, have cobalt-spiked magnetite at their core. Most of the time they are not magnetic, but when a magnet is present, they become strongly attracted to it. On the surface of the particles is a peptide--a small, proteinlike molecule--designed to attach to a marker that protrudes from most ovarian cancer cells.

To test the new technology, the researchers injected first cancer cells and then the magnetic nanoparticles into the abdominal cavities of mice. The cancer cells were tagged with a green fluorescent marker, and the nanoparticles with a red one. When the team brought a magnet near each mouse's belly, a concentrated area of green and red glow appeared just under the skin, indicating that the nanoparticles had latched on to the cancer cells and dragged them toward the magnet.

Xbox to play Netflix movies

Microsoft announces that its popular game console will stream Netflix movies in the fall

By Jaya Jiwatram

Just when you thought you couldn't waste enough time on your Xbox 360, Microsoft has decided to add another way to get you to stare at your tube for longer, by streaming movies and TV shows through its popular game console. The tech giant announced its partnership with the movie-rental company Netflix this week at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles. While video-gamers were leaping for joy at the convention when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, avid movie fans were leaping even higher to hear about Microsoft's movie deal. Consumers, however, will have to wait for the fall and sign up with Netflix in order to access 10,000 movies and TV shows through their Xbox. Currently, movies are available for download on the console, but only about half that number.

It's a sweet deal for Netflix, which normally offers its services through the internet and a DVD-by-mail program, but even more so for Microsoft, which has faced tough competition from other game stations. Even though it has sold more than 10 million Xbox 360 units in the U.S., the company has had to compete for living-room entertainment space with Sony's PlayStation 3 which has a Blu-Ray high-definition DVD player built in. With this new partnership, though, Microsoft might stand to kick its competition out of the room.

Facebook redesign

Apps on the side: As of Sunday night, Facebook users have the option of a new profile design, which changes the way that they interact with the site’s third-party applications. In particular, most applications have been moved from the profile’s main page to a "boxes" tab, circled in the image above. The redesign also lets users add further tabs for their favorite applications. Developers say that the changes will affect their ability to promote their applications. Credit: Facebook

As of Sunday evening, Facebook users can try out a new profile design. While part of the redesign seems aimed at cleaning up the site's interface, the changes also affect the third-party applications that run on Facebook, undercutting some of the techniques that application developers use to expand their audiences.

Facebook opened up to third-party developers just over a year ago, with the launch of Facebook Platform in May 2007. Developers host their applications on their own servers but make them available through Facebook's interface. Facebook users can browse through lists of applications and add any that they find interesting to their profile pages. Users can grant applications permission to access some of the information in their profiles, to publish notices that appear on the profile pages, and to send notices to their friends. Developers raced to get access to Facebook's users, who the site claims now number more than 80 million.

However, the initial gold rush had its excesses. A user who installs a Facebook application is given the option of recommending it to his or her friends, but some developers made it difficult to skip that step. Facebook responded by forbidding applications from preselecting long lists of users' friends to receive notifications. The company also suspended a few high-profile applications that it said weren't respecting Facebook's privacy policy. The profile redesign continues the process of reining in third-party applications, while adding features that the company says will make for a better user experience. "Third-party applications are more tightly integrated into Facebook in order to make using applications simpler and more seamless," the company said on a Facebook page dedicated to the redesign. "Users will have the option to interact with an application before adding it, grant it access to their information, and decide where they want it placed, if at all, on their profiles."

Specifically, the profile redesign splits the existing profile into tabs, emphasizing the wall, where a user's friends leave him or her short, semipublic messages, and the news feed, which describes the user's activities on the site. Most important for third-party developers, it removes most of the applications that the user has installed from the main page of the profile, relegating them to a "boxes" tab instead. To compensate for the applications' reduced visibility, Facebook allows users to add tabs for their favorite applications, presenting the possibility that developers could design entire sections of a user's profile.

Leggo my Van Gogh

Scientists develop a database that could pinpoint forgeries once and for all

Forgery or Not?: Photo by digitalpaintinganalysis.org

Detecting art forgeries is an inexact science—even some certified masterpieces have a cloud of doubt over their authenticity. But in recent years James Z. Wang and his colleague Jia Li have been putting Van Gogh under the microscope to create a database they hope will eventually thwart art fakers and revolutionize the detection of forgeries. Using 23 high-resolution gray scale images known to be by Van Gogh, the Penn State team broke the images down into 2.5 x 2.5 inch squares, analyzing “wavelet” based texture features and the geometric characteristics of the master’s brushstrokes. In other words, they developed an algorithm that recognizes the artist’s signature “handwriting.”

The team then used the model to analyze 78 other scans from works thought to be by Van Gogh and known copies, correctly weeding out some of the fakes. As their database increases in size and spans works from all periods in the artist’s life, they hope to create a digital fraud detector that will take most of the guess work out of the art historian’s job. “Through tackling these tough problems, we can advance the core technologies at the same time,” says Wang. “I anticipate computer scientists, art historians and mathematicians will collaborate more in the future.”

By Jason Daley Posted 07.18.2008 at 2:39 pm

Fannie, Freddie rescue could cost 25 Billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday estimated Tuesday that a government plan to stabilize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could cost government coffers an average of $25 billion.

CBO's estimate is an average based on "the path of housing prices in the next several months." They considered three scenarios: prices stabilize, grow modestly or decline steeply.

The CBO said it thinks there is probably a better than 50% chance that the Treasury would not need to step in. In addition, it said there is nearly a 5% chance that Freddie and Fannie's losses would cost the government $100 billion.

The CBO report came out one day before the House is expected to debate and vote on a rescue plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last week. Paulson asked Congress to give the Treasury broad, but temporary powers intended to provide a liquidity and capital "backstop" for the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

Paulson requested that the Treasury be allowed to offer Fannie and Freddie an unlimited line of credit for 18 months and be given authority to buy stock in the companies if necessary.

Both critics and supporters of the Paulson plan have expressed concern that loaning or investing money in the GSEs could leave taxpayers with a fat bill to pay.

In a speech in New York on Tuesday, Paulson stressed again there are no immediate plans to exercise the powers he seeks and characterized the proposal not simply as a way to support Fannie (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) but to support the U.S. capital markets and the economy.

"The best way to protect the taxpayer is to have very flexible powers which are temporary," Paulson said. His reasoning: That's the best way to boost market confidence in the two companies and minimize the likelihood that the government would need to lend a hand.

Even though Paulson wants as much flexibility as possible, lawmakers are expected to impose some parameters, such as giving Congress the right to limit executive pay at Fannie and Freddie and insisting that if government money is used the GSEs agree to pay Uncle Sam before paying investors dividends, or if they're liquidated, assets.

New Mazda 6- trying not to be an appliance for the appliance buyer

By the time you finish this paragraph, someone will have driven home with an appliance car. They will awaken tomorrow morning and turn the key to their transportation device, back it out of their vinyl-sided suburban domicile, and quietly motor to work. This is what we've been told will happen when we get older, get jobs, and need to start transporting hatchlings to soccer practice. This is also why we are glad that sporty mainstream sedans like the previous Mazda6 exist, because given the choice between floating around in a mayonnaise-filled sensory deprivation tank on wheels and not having kids, the staggering emasculation of a vasectomy actually starts to look like a good option.

The thing is, there weren't enough buyers of a similar mind to make the 6 catch on in North America. Designed as a global sedan, it was sold in the States with the same compact dimensions that helped it scoot down the narrow backstreets of Japan. To hear Mazda execs tell it, expecting a midsize car with a tiny backseat to win over buyers on account of its eager handling made about as much sense as going to Benihana for the pierogi. To hear our grumblings around the office, the failure of the Mazda6 to triumph over appliance cars is further proof of a bitter and malevolent God.

So now Mazda's bread-and-butter sedan is in its second iteration, and my how it's grown. 6.1 inches longer and 2.3 inches wider than the car it replaces, with 4.5 extra inches between its wheel bearings, the 2009 Mazda6 now follows the same formula that Honda and Toyota twigged to in the nineties: Americans like their cars bigger than other locales. The 6 has been pulled and stretched, growing larger than all of its rivals but the Accord — itself no mighty mite. It may look similar to the refreshed Mazda6 launched on the other five continents last fall, but our version is actually 7.3 inches longer and 1.8 inches wider than its global twin.

Instead of taking the easy way out and stretching the sheetmetal to make our Mazda6 resemble a global version that's swallowed the air hose, the American car was given a wholly new body that plays to its, ahem, generous proportions. The wider fenders roll and curve over their wheel arches, visually slimming down the 6's nose and recalling shades of RX-8. Definition creases arc across the bottoms of the window line, terminating in crystalline LED taillamps. Polished metal trim forms an aluminum corona around the greenhouse. The look is shockingly upscale and restrained for a car whose predecessor looked like it crashed through a Super Autobacs and all the bits inside stuck to it.

Inside, the Mazda6's newfound maturity continues: The old car's interior was awash in black-gloss plastic doing its best to resemble lacquered piano wood. For 2009, the Mazda6 is brimming with broad expanses of textured soft-touch materials. The center console floats above the lower stack, and its red-backlit LCD status bar — small, high-mounted, and bristling with information from every system in the car — is as unreadable here as it's been in other Mazdas past. Gauges are big and legible and light up in familiar Mazda blue-and-reds. The lower console houses rotary climate controls and a start button big enough to be stump-punched by an amputee.

Pressing the button with just my index finger brings the Mazda online. My destination is Decker Canyon Road, California State Road 23, running south from Fillmore to the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Hundreds of feet below the road surface and lined with boulders, poison oak, and the impaled steel hulks of the unfortunate, the inhospitable base of Decker Canyon promises a quick yet exciting end for those who fail to navigate the 75 turns making up the stretch's southern end. There's a sign on the approach to Route 23 warning drivers not to attempt driving the canyon road with a trailer in tow. I ignore it since I'm in a lone Mazda6 sedan. The next sign warns that the speed limit is 25 mph. I ignore that one, too.

Despite its class-leading 273 horsepower and thumping 3.7 liters of displacement, the V-6-powered Mazda6 never feels especially quick. A Nissan Altima 3.5SE on hand for comparison’s sake — down three horsepower on the Mazda and yoked to a CVT — was not only more raucous but more tractable, its sweet VQ engine working within its elastic powerband to slingshot the car out of corners. The V-6 in the 6 also returns only 17 mpg city and 25 highway — the same mileage the EPA says you'll get traipsing down urban roads in a Ford Flex. That could be why Mazda thinks nearly three-quarters of buyers will instead drive home with the base 170-horsepower, 2.5-liter four under their hoods. A bored and stroked version of the old 6's 2.3-liter mill, the 2.5-liter not only bumps mileage up to 21 city and 30 highway, it lops a solid 238 pounds of weight off the front axle — and it's also the only engine in the new 6 that's available with a manual.

Yes, you read that right: The three-pedal Mazda6 V-6, which sold in nearly fractional percentages, has been dropped from the lineup. There was no transmission in the parts bin that would mate up to the Ford-designed 3.7-liter V-6, and all five people who would order one didn't justify the cost. The five-door hatchback and the wagon have both been sent packing, too, leaving the sedan as the sole model in the lineup.

This would be the part of the article where you'd expect me to say that the new Mazda6 is bigger and heavier than the outgoing car, and as such has lost its raison d'être, but I can't because this is the part of the article where the road started getting curvy. Which would also be, appropriately, where the Mazda6's chassis reveals its beguiling genius.

The new Mazda6's larger body shell has had its bending rigidity increased by 39 percent and its torsional rigidity improved 17 percent, the result of sills with wider cross-sections, doubling the number of spot welds used on seams, and adhesive welding of critical joints. High-strength steel now makes up 30 percent of the structure versus the old 6's piddling eight. Attached to that stiffened structure is a carryover of the old car's double-wishbone front suspension, with forged one-piece lower control arms designed to help reduce bump steer versus the old 6's two-piece, double-ball-jointed arms. The rear multilink suspension had its shocks moved out further and positioned nearly vertical to make their damping more effective.

Also carrying over are the previous 6's brakes — 11.8-inch vented front and 11.0-inch solid rears — which sounds like someone in product planning has gone barking mad until the scales are tallied up and it's found that the new 6 packs on only 35 additional pounds for the most common automatic four-cylinder model. The pedal is easy to modulate with pressure rather than travel, and even when the interface begins to go soggy after ten miles of pegging the binders into hard corners, they still stop the car confidently, just with a grab point that has worked its way progressively nearer the floor.

Does the 2009 Mazda6 still do the voodoo that it did before? Damn skippy. The Mazda6 coped with the undulating pavement by digging in and only succumbing to understeer when pushed well beyond what would have sent the average Camry into the ravine. On a series of quick switchbacks, the 6's suspension compresses and releases suddenly and repeatedly, but the car never loses its composure. The hydraulic steering rack, despite a somewhat leisurely 16.2:1 ratio, locks in on-center and allows the meting out of tiny inputs that make setting the car up for a corner fiendishly simple — and once that vector is plotted in, the 6 obediently stays on line. This isn't to say that the Mazda will be sneaking up on canyon-berserking Porsches; there are limits, after all, to how much power a front-drive chassis can slap down through just two contact patches that are also tasked with steering. But after driving the Mazda6 back-to-back with both four- and six-cylinder versions of its Japanese rivals, I feel confident calling the new 6 — competent and conceived as a whole — the most rewarding of the bunch.

So, yes, the 2009 Mazda6 is very much the successor to its namesake, but one that manages to retain the sporting nature of the old car while eliminating the shortcomings that kept utilitarian sedan buyers from signing on with it. By the time you've read this far in, at least five more appliance cars have found their ways into suburban driveways. With Mazda's modest sales goal of 80,000 sales each year for the new 6 — only 20,000 more than the car it replaces — we think siphoning a few of those away won't be too hard.

Dyno on board- a story of innovation

Why can't a car tell you exactly how much power and torque it's making in real time? Those of us who've been around cars and test equipment forever shrug and respond, "because that sort of thing requires giant stationary roller drums and megabuck machinery." But 16-year-old Taylor Blackwood of Germantown, Tennessee, was unsatisfied with that line of adult reasoning. He wanted to quantify the power bump he was getting from each modification made to his Mustang GT without schlepping down to a speed shop and renting pricey dynamometer time and risking potential variability from one dyno or operator to another.

He reckoned there had to be a way to measure torque somewhere between the engine and the wheels. The universal joint just aft of the transmission seemed as good a spot as any. He convinced his dad it might be possible, and together they commissioned a machine shop to grind down the U-joint pins that mount to the driveshaft yoke, so they could wrap them with paper-thin (8/1000 inch) Powertech pressure sensors. Their leads connect to a battery-powered signal conditioning unit and wireless transmitter located in a two-piece, weight-balanced plastic collar that bolts onto the driveshaft about halfway between the yoke and the center bearing. Several iterations of this design over a period of two years have yielded sensors that can withstand the torque of his now supercharged V-8 without being crushed, and a collar that doesn't fly apart under the extreme centrifugal forces experienced on the driveshaft. He's even been granted a provisional patent for the concept.

Initial tests reportedly show close agreement between Blackwood's U-joint gizmo and a proper Dynojet dynamometer. Naturally, the system can report realistic output figures only when the rear tires are "hooked up" and the vehicle is pulling-it can't infer the torque lost to a squealing, smoking tire. But a pull from low rpm to redline in second gear could yield an actual, measured peak torque figure without even breaking the speed limit. Calculating power and torque using quarter-mile acceleration data introduces errors related to launch technique, exact vehicle weight, and aerodynamics.

Significant hurdles remain. Sorting out the electronics required to collect OBD II information on vehicle speed and engine rpm in order to infer the gear ratio (and hence the torque multiplication inside the transmission) is proving tricky at engine speeds over 4000 rpm, but a design firm is currently helping with that. The user interface is under development, but the goal is a power and/or torque gauge similar to the one on the Bugatti Veyron that regular tuner-aficionados could afford.

As envisioned, his product would be specifically engineered for different vehicle lines, not sold as a kit for do-it-yourselfers to adapt to any car. Initial kits would target the Mustang, then other rear-drive vehicles popular with tuners (front- or all-wheel-drive applications would need two, three, or four sets of sensors). I can't help but think this is an idea the performance engineers at Ford, GM, or Chrysler should license and develop. By engineering it into their Mustangs, Camaros, or Challengers, they could employ inductive charging to eliminate the replaceable batteries and integrate the whole works into the driveshaft for improved robustness. They might even be able to incorporate weather info to correct the results per SAE standards. If I were buying a car to tune I'd love to have a gauge that could quantify my performance improvements and perhaps even plot a graph I could download to a USB drive.

If car-scribbling paid venture-capitalist wages, I'd be drafting some legalese for the now college-bound Blackwood to sign. If you want in, contact him at powertachhp@gmail.com.

2010 Camaro SS performance numbers and production launch date-

What's most interesting is the 400hp L99 engined automatic SS is faster than the 422hp LS3 engined stick shit SS..... Much shorter gearing on the auto box no doubt.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, California — GM engineers at today's official 2010 Chevrolet Camaro unveil were all too willing to provide performance numbers for their hot, new muscle car, including quarter-mile and 0-60-mph times.

Al Oppenheiser, chief engineer for GM's North American rear-wheel-drive platform and owner of a first-generation Camaro convertible, was pleased to run through his baby's accomplishments.

According to Oppenheiser, the new 300-horsepower 3.6-liter V6-equipped Camaro will run from zero to 60 mph in 6.1 seconds regardless of transmission choice. The V6 coupe will cover the quarter-mile in 14.5 seconds with an auto and 14.7 seconds with a manual, both at 97 mph. The brakes don't sound quite as impressive, though, as Oppenheiser said the base Camaro stops from 60 to zero mph in 132 feet.

Not surprisingly, the V8-equipped Camaro SS delivers better numbers across the board. Chevy's Camaro SS outfitted with the 422-hp 6.2-liter LS3 V8 six-speed manual hits 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and runs a 13.4-second quarter-mile at 108 mph according to Oppenheiser. Strangely enough, Oppenheiser also claims that the automatic-equipped SS Camaro, which is rated at 400 hp, runs from zero to 60 mph in just 4.6 seconds and through the quarter-mile in 13.3 seconds. "We optimized the shift points," he said.

Both versions of the V8 Camaro SS pull a maximum 0.90 g on the skid pad. Four-piston Brembo brakes help stop the Camaro SS in 117 feet.

What this means to you: If Chevrolet's numbers pan out, the Camaro SS will be every bit as fast as the Dodge Challenger SRT8 for a lot less money. — Kelly Toepke, News Editor

It is, at least if you're talking about the 2010 model-year Chevrolet Camaro. Although we've given you full details on the car already, the official unveil of the V6-powered cars was this afternoon, at which time the production launch was revealed.

The Camaro's arrival at dealerships is closer than you might have expected. Production of both V6 and V8 models begins February 16, 2009 at the Oshawa, Ontario, Canada plant. Deliveries to dealers should be sometime in the middle of March. The Camaro Convertible should arrive about a year after that as a 2011 model.

The Camaro will be available with either a 3.6-liter V6 engine making about 305 horsepower or a V8 making around 425 hp. Either engine can be had with either a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic.

Chevy won't announce a price for the car. But Cheryl Pilcher, product manager for the Camaro, says, "We know where Mustang is and we're going to be competitive." A Mustang V6 starts at $20,530 and a GT is $27,220. We'd be shocked if the more powerful, more efficient and plain newer Camaro can match those prices — but maybe not as shocked as Ford would be.

What this means to you: There will be plenty of time for you to work on your burnout technique before next summer's laying-epic-rubber-in-front-of-the-Dairy-Queen season begins.

Beijing's Final Preparations for the 2008 Olympics [PICS]

Final preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics are in full swing in Beijing. This includes completing hundreds of construction projects, reconstructions, pollution controls, cultural training, and a general "beautifying" of greater Beijing. Rehearsals and drills take place daily as Chinese citizens hurry to finish up.

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