“We have established the evil cars have imposed on us. There can be no harm in being morose about dejected hordes inhaling toxic fumes as they crawl our ill-named “freeways”; but the enduring challenge is to conceive and propagate a panorama of lifeways in which cars, rather than being restricted or even forbidden, are simply surplus to our requirements.” From Looking Backward, Looking Forward by Simon Baddeley in the New Colonist

MagicBike, the mobile WiFi hotspot provider with the nifty folding bikes has had some good coverage lately, on TechTV, print and online. This is how it works: Magicbike turns common bicycles into WiFi hotspots. The end effect creates bicycles that broadcast free WiFi connectivity to their proximity. The technology behind this is not complex. Magicbike is simply a creative configuration, or reconfiguration, of widely available computer, bicycle, and WiFi gear. WiFi antennas mounted on the bike’s frame feed into a laptop embedded into a specially [...]

The BBC reports that fumes from cars and other vehicles may damage male fertility. “Researchers in Italy have found evidence that traffic pollution reduces the quality of sperm in young and middle-aged men. They believe nitrogen oxide and lead in exhaust fumes may be to blame.” The researchers studied people employed in what must be one of most hellish jobs in the West: motorway tollgate workers.