It’s a feat inconceivable to most sound-minded mortals: This past Sunday, Denise Mueller-Korenek rode a bicycle more than 180 mph—183.93 to be exact, which is faster than the takeoff speed of an Airbus A340—and crushed the motor-paced bicycle land speed record.
This was not just any other ride, of course. Mueller-Korenek mounted a specially equipped bike with a massive gear and tethered it to a race car, which then accelerated to 100-plus mph—the velocity necessary for the rider to turn over the cranks on her own volition. Then she unhooked from the car and stayed in the slipstream, smashing the pedals around to hit the highest speed possible under her own power.
The whole thing took about five miles, Mueller-Korenek, a 45-year-old national champion cyclist from Valley Center, California, told Bicycling. She and her driver Shea Holbrook, a seven-time Pirelli World Challenge winner, already held the Guinness World Record for the fastest female motor-paced time at 147.7 mph, a speed they hit using a specially adapted Range Rover in 2016. (They had hoped for another record-setting attempt that year, but were rained out.)
Day: January 14, 2019
New tricks for old … Learning science at 70
It absolutely drives me nuts how much science that I did and did NOT learn as a young person at an evangelical school in the south. When I got to college, and properly learned about biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, et al, I was astonished at how poorly I was equipped with knowledge.
Worse, those around me still seem to lack any basic knowledge of science outside of their bias for “creationism.” It’s weird. Understandable, because the fog of faith is so thick down yonder. But the oppression of information is so bizarre to me.
This 70 year old former editor of the Economist sat down at 70 and learned what seems so basic, like that he’s a mammal. Check it out!
So far I have found physics relatively straightforward, because (at this level anyway) it has a lot of maths in it. Biology is not far behind, as it seems to be mainly about animals and plants. But chemistry, always mysterious to me, is pure revelation. It is making me look at so many everyday phenomena with far more interest and, yes, even understanding. A few weeks ago my tutor, John Harris, handed me a proper white overall and we spent a happy hour in his kitchen mixing acids and alkalis with the juice from a cooked red cabbage. Elementary stuff, but to me it felt like grown-up research.
Fifty things turning fifty in 2019
Get your brain wrapped around this great list of things turning 50 this year.
Some notables: First manned moon landing, Sesame Street, Tic Tacs, The Godfather, The Concorde, Wes Anderson, Cory Booker, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Scooby Doo and fucking Cracker Barrel.
FOX News contemplates the ramifications of arresting Trump
Donald Trump’s favorite show on earth discussed the detriments of placing the president in handcuffs this morning:
“This worries me, guys. Having been a former federal agent, when you put the handcuffs on someone, it’s tough. It really is, you are taking away their life, their freedom,” Bongino said.
“If you have an ounce of empathy, that’s a tough thing to do, even with the bad guys. Now imagine if you weren’t a bad guy, like Donald Trump, and you did nothing wrong…how would you feel?”
Trump on arresting bad guys:
Trump’s Supporters on this topic:
Le Café Wittypoots 