The National Football League and football in general face an existential crisis right now. As players get bigger and stronger, people are becoming increasingly aware of the long-term health effects of repeated blows to the head. If something isn't done soon to reduce brain injuries to players, the game may fade away. 

Bill Simpson has been a pioneer in the design of helmets for race drivers over the past several decades. Over the past two years he has turned his attention to protecting players on the gridiron. Unlike the typical football helmet approach of just spreading out the energy over the head, Simpson is working to actively reduce and dissipate the energy. His helmets weigh about half as much as traditional helmets and appear to provide better protection so far.  The story is definitely worth a read. 

Next weekend he'll be taking a break from his Audi racing duties to take another shot with the American Starworks Motorsport team and their Riley-Ford Daytona Prototype. 

Reshared post from +George Achorn

This September marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. In that time the team has evolved a lot, having been a dominant force in the heyday of the original Can-Am and the mid-90s GT1 sports cars. 

Throughout that half century, the one constant has been +McLaren Automotive's participation in formula one where the the team is second only to +Ferrari in total wins with 182 and podium finishes with 483.  McLaren is third behind Ferrari and Williams with 8 constructers championships. While the team has gone through some fallow periods, they've been consistently strong in the past three decades aside from that whole Ferrari spygate issue a few years back.

The driver lineup over the years has included legends such as James Hunt, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and of course Ayrton Senna.  

More recently, McLaren has gotten into the road car business. The company's first attempt at a street car came with a closed version of the M6 Can-Am car in 1970, a project that was aborted when McLaren died in a testing accident. In the early 1990s, they tried again and took the world by storm with the F1. 

After a dalliance with Daimler that yielded the SLR, McLaren is back on its own with a new effort that began with the 12C and will soon bring us the true F1 successor, the P1. 

The editors of Ars Technica have compiled a list of the features they'd really like to see in the next version of iOS. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/bring-us-the-features-an-ars-staff-wish-list-for-ios-7/

Reading over the list, it looks like they really want Apple to copy much of what is in +Android, but of course since Apple believes so strongly in protecting innovation, they would never actually do something like that, right? Almost all of the features they are asking for are readily available such as changing default apps and better control of do not disturb. 

While I'm generally not a fan of most of the "enhancements" manufacturers add to Android, I have to give +Motorola Mobility credit for Smart Actions which was introduced last year on the Droid Razr and now included on all new Moto phones. Smart Actions let you set activities based on triggers such as location, time of day, docking status, connection to a bluetooth device and more. Based on the trigger, a wide range of actions can be enabled such turning on wifi when you get home, automatically silencing during meetings on your calendar or reading messages automatically replying when the phone is docked in the car. You can also set multiple actions for a given trigger. 

Ever since Ice Cream Sandwich, Android can even disable built-in bloatware apps from carriers without rooting.

Given that Motorola is now using what looks like a near stock Android interface, I'll stick with my Razr Maxx HD.