The +Ford Motor Company Mustang is starting its 50th consecutive year

There has been no shortage of despicable and anti-democratic actions by both the Obama and the previous Bush administrations but it's good to see the DOJ at least come out to protect the constitution in this instance. Now if only they would defend the right to photograph buildings and anything else in public places.  

Just to be clear though, despite what the lede of this New York Times article says, this engine block was NOT checked in and carried onto the plane. The photo shown was part of a social media stunt to demonstrate how compact and light the engine is. It never went past the security checkpoint. 
http://jalopnik.com/5961187/ford-built-an-engine-so-small-they-were-able-to-send-it-through-airport-security

Aside from that, getting so much power and torque out of such a tiny engine that also meets emissions standards and gets great fuel economy is a pretty impressive feat of engineering. 

Conservatives in America are not generally supportive of broad publication as a whole and tend to be particularly opposed to in-depth science education. Texas and other states don't want to teach kids to question what they are told and questioning everything is at the heart of science. I don't feel particularly optimistic about the future of humanity as long as we have these kinds of attitudes toward education.

Reshared post from +Phil Nickinson

Important to remember: Just because a piece of "Android malware" exists, it doesn't mean you'll catch it. Most of these stories are bullshit.

Stay away from weird Chinese app stores. Be cognizant of what you install. And don't listen to Phil Schiller. 

You'll be fine.

While John is right that MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) is a flawed way to indicate the efficiency of plug-in vehicles, he's wrong to blame it on the EPA and I also disagree with using miles/kWh. 

EPA labels actually carry MPGe ratings because the techno-dolts in congress mandated it. The 2007 energy bill that raised fuel economy requirements to 35 mpg by the end this decade also specifies that new vehicles MUST be rated in miles per gallon. The only way to do that for vehicles run on non-liquid fuels is to calculate the equivalent based on the energy content of the fuel.  For an explanation of what MPGe means, check out this video Because You Asked…What is MPGe or Miles per Gallon Equivalent?

As for what should replace MPGe, miles/kWh is also flawed and has the same problems as miles per gallon. The relationship between mileage and energy consumption is reciprocal and as mileage increases, the energy savings actually decrease. For example going from 20 to 40 mpg actually only saves half as much fuel as doubling from 10 mpg to 20 mpg and going from 40 to 80 mpg cuts the savings in half again. 
http://green.autoblog.com/2009/07/23/greenlings-where-are-the-most-important-mpg-increases-at-the-u/

What we should be using is kWh/100 miles so that we actually measure consumption in a linear fashion. 

Reshared post from +Green Car Reports

What's the best way to measure the efficiency of a plug-in electric car? 

Reshared post from +Alireza Yavari

Google Sets
Give it two examples, and Google's spreadsheet can make a list of almost anything. 

Create a new spreadsheet in Google Drive, type mazda in A1 and honda in A2 (the first column), highlight the two cells and then press Ctrl (or Option for Mac) while clicking and dragging the small blue box from the lower-right corner to select additional cells where to place the Google Sets results.

Yesterday +TechCrunch  reported that if you make a spreadsheet in Google Drive (Google Docs, formerly), enter and highlight the names of two beers, and pull down on the corner of the spreadsheet cell while holding Option or Control, the app will automatically fill the following cells with the names of other beers. The information is pulled, seemingly, from nowhere. It doesn't just work for beer, car brands, colors, states, or websites, as reported, but just about any category you can think of. 

See more examples at http://goo.gl/rHrYN

Read more:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.ca/2012/11/google-sets-still-available.html

Reshared post from +ze frank

one of my favorite animals… the fruit bat!