Colin Furze's "megapram" is a stroller built with the parent -- not the baby -- in mind. If the parent is a world record coveter with a need for speed, that is.

"I decided after becoming a dad i should rock the world of child care so tick that box i think," the British plumber and "garage inventor/video maker" brags in the description for the YouTube video he made to document the project.

As Furze tells viewers, his super-stroller has 10 horsepower and four gears as well as "every comfort a normal pram's got." Except, presumably, any illusion of safety. "It's not for women, it's for men," he adds.

According to British newspaper The Sun, the stroller cost Furze £450 -- or roughly $720 -- to put together.

While he's already been accused of planning the project out of laziness, his goal is not to traverse long spaces with his new baby son but to set a Guinness World Record this coming Sunday, Oct. 14. "[A]ll i have to do is break 30mph but as you can guess from video that will happen," he writes confidently.

He's also careful to clarify: "[N]o i havent put a real kid in at speed and no its not road legal hence why i had to film this on a private road."

If Furze does succeed in setting a world record this weekend, it won't be his first. The dad, who appears on British TV show Gadget Geeks, explains in his profile on the show's website: "Over the past years I've broken two world records (the biggest bonfire and the longest motorbike) and set a new record of my own (fastest mobilty scooter, clocked at an incredible 71.59mph)."



Indeed, Furze's pre-parenthood stunts are well documented; past efforts immortalized on YouTube include his snowbound speed-demon mobility scooter ride and trip through the car wash in a vehicle with no windows. Each falls squarely in the "Don't try this at home" category (and one even led to Furze's arrest).

"The things i make are made with tools that proper engineers would laugh at but i'm proof you don't need an expensive lathe and huge welder to create something amazing," Furze writes on his website, adding that when he lived in his parents' house, he was restricted to doing construction projects in his bedroom. "[I]f you have kids for god sake let them in the shed or at least help them," he adds. So while his son may not actually get to ride in the "world's fastest pram," it sounds like he'll have plenty of freedom to pursue daredevil deeds of his own when he grows up.

PETA's spoof video game that gets Pokemon to fight against his Trainers.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET )
Pokemon has begun his struggle for freeman and liberation, fighting his trainers, doling out group hugs and going to protests... in PETA's alternate universe, that is.

The animal rights group has launched a campaign against Pokemon Black and White 2, saying that the game condones animal cruelty and that its creatures are treated like abused animals.

"The amount of time that Pokemon spend stuffed in pokeballs is akin to how elephants are chained up in train carts, waiting to be let out to 'perform' in circuses," PETA wrote on its Web site. "But the difference between real life and this fictional world full of organized animal fighting is that Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible."

In addition to speaking out against the game's makers, PETA has also created a spoof video game called Pokemon Black & Blue: Gotta Free 'Em All on its Web site. The premise of the game is that the characters battle their trainers in their crusade for freedom. Players are given choices about how to "use attacks to exploit a Trainer's weakness," including group hugs, protests, quick attack, and thundershock.

"If PETA existed in Unova, our motto would be: Pokemon are not ours to use or abuse," the group wrote on its Web site. "They exist for their own reasons. We believe that this is the message that should be sent to children."

Nintendo's Pokemon gaming franchise, which is geared toward children, is one of the most successful worldwide. In what started out as simple adventures with Pokemon and Pikachu has now morphed into several video games, TV shows, toys, trading cards, and books that feature more than 600 fictional species. Pokemon Black and White 2 was released in July in Japan and is slated to hit North America, Europe, and Australia this month.

PETA has a habit of taking jabs at video games. In 2010, the group went after Zynga for having animated pit bulls as attack dogs in its game Mafia Wars. That same year, in response to an Android app that lets users train dogs to fight each other, it launched an iPhone app that highlighted stories about animal cruelty. And last year, in what seems like a spoof itself -- PETA went after Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land fordressing Mario in a fur suit.

Michael Gallagher just wanted to tap into the zeitgeist.

The 23-year-old filmmaker–known for his popular YouTube series, Totally Sketch–is about to release his first full-length feature film, a low budge horror flick called Smiley. But what should amount to buzzy excitement leading up to the film’s launch has been eclipsed by personal attacks on Mr. Gallagher made by notorious message board 4chan and hacktivist collective Anonymous.

The reason? Mr. Gallagher painted both 4chan and Anonymous as the villains of Smiley. Obviously, this didn’t sit well with either group.

Going off the IMDB description, the film’s plot sounds like something you and your friends jokingly thought up while stoned and surfing 4chan:

After discovering an urban legend on 4chan’s /b/ board of a demented serial killer that has nothing but a carved ‘smilely’ on his face, Ashley, a mentally fragile teen, must decide whether she is going insane, or the next victim.

Variety elaborates, saying that the film follows a college freshman as she meets members of 4chan and “a series of grisly murders committed by Smiley, an urban-legend Internet ghoul from the imagination of Gallagher and Phillips, is linked to the shadowy real-life groups.”

Shockingly, 4chan and Anonymous did not take kindly to the notion that their groups are fertile breeding grounds for serial killers. /b/ may be well known as a place for the detritus of the Internet to flourish and be celebrated, but likening it to a launching pad for vicious murderers is just a little bit disingenuous.

Of course, 4chan and Anonymous rebelled in typical fashion: by doxing and threatening Mr. Gallagher.

According to Variety:

Gallagher has endured a torrent of voicemails, emails, texts, message-board posts and comments laced with death threats, insults and admonitions to spam and harass the filmmaker, his colleagues, his girlfriend and his family. Now the FBI is considering whether to investigate the bizarre, life-imitates-art situation.

Mr. Gallagher, who as a semi-famous YouTuber is no stranger to Internet negativity, said he expected some backlash, but nothing to this extent. We have a feeling the poor guy probably hangs out on Reddit much more than he does on 4chan.

Electric vehicle buyers have a new reason to feel conflicted about their forward-thinking purchases, thanks to a recent study which suggests EVs are potentially more polluting than their gas-powered counterparts.

According to The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the environmental ramifications of EVs from well to wheel are significant. The study took into account all factors along the lifecycle of an electric vehicle, from the toxic battery ingredients like nickel and copper to the energy sources which power the grids that ultimately charge the cars' batteries.  "The global warming potential from electric vehicle production is about twice that of conventional vehicles," one part of the study concludes, indicating that energy developed from lignite, coal, or heavy oil combustion makes it "counterproductive to promote electric vehicles."

One part of the finding suggests that EVs driven in Europe have an environmental advantage over other global communities. "Electric vehicles powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10 percent to 24 percent decrease in their global warming potential relative to conventional diesel or petrol vehicles," the study says. Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche echoed that sentiment. "According to our results, a battery electric vehicle, with electricity produced by the power generation mix we currently have in Europe, compares favorably in the magnitude of 10 percent or so with diesel," he told the BBC.
by Basem Wasef 
Sources: The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (click for abstract), BBC; thanks to Shahdad Kelishadi for the tip!

Read more: Study finds EVs More Polluting Than Gas or Diesel Powerplants - Popular Mechanics 

The Clio RenaultSport has just gone out of production, leaving the number of naturally aspirated full-on hot hatches at precisely zero. The BMW M3 and the old-shape-booted 118i and 120i, cars in the last year of their lives, are the only models in the entire BMW range not to have one or more turbochargers. The next M3, all 1-Series and the next Clio RS will get turbos. The overwhelming buzzword across the entire petrol-driven world is downsizing - reduce displacement, cut cylinders, add a turbo or two. Is the time coming when we'll read the obituary of the naturally aspirated petrol car engine? Must we resign ourselves to the loss of big revs, the loss of an instant and proportional answer to the throttle foot, the loss of the goading yell of an exhaust unencumbered by a turbine - things that only an unblown engine can give?

Well, hang on. Ferrari and Aston Martin, suppliers of the naturally aspirated F12 andOne-77, would seem to disagree. You might think those two magical V12s prove exactly why forced induction will never win. Or you might mark them as epic last hurrahs of a dying breed.


We all know why the turbo is dominating. During official consumption tests, and indeed in everyday wafting around, smaller engines drink less than big ones. They're running in the more efficient part of their load band, and their frictional, thermodynamic and thermal losses are lower too. Crucially, consumption is proportional to CO2, since petrol (compounds of carbon and hydrogen) burns and is catalysed into CO2 and H2O. Both the cost of fuel and low-CO2 tax incentives are only pushing buyers one way.

But what good is that if the resulting caris so slow it can't get out of its own way? You need a turbo bolted to the side of your small-displacement engine. Having sat there quietly minding its own business during gentle running, it charges to the rescue when you floor the accelerator. Propelled by a turbine in the exhaust stream, it compresses the air coming into the engine. More air molecules can be fitted into each cylinder, and burn proportionally more petrol (but hey, it's outside the regime of the official test). The small-displacement Bruce Wayne transforms into a big-block Batman, burning more fuel to produce more power when you need it, reverting to small and economical when you don't. All's well.

Except that in place of the sound and instant response of a multi-cylinder naturally aspirated engine, you get lag and a dull drone. And if you drive a small turbo engine hard, your consumption may be no better than a bigger n/a engine. But small turbo engines do have other advantages. They're lighter and more compact, from which should follow better packaging and handling. Besides, they're cheaper to make than multi-cylinder ones, some of which saving a manufacturer ought to pass on to us.

While turbos seem to be winning the war, over the decades, there have been strings of little individual battles, where turbo and n/a engines have punched and counter-punched technical innovations to overcome their weaknesses.

Early turbos were mostly a route to power in the absence of any available or affordable alternative. Chevrolet launched the turbo Corvair Spyder in 1962, and then Porsche the 911 Turbo in 1974. Both had flat-sixes in the rear, with no room for anything physically bigger. And for Saab in 1978, not having the wherewithal for six cylinders, turbocharging the existing four was a handy shortcut. Saab made a better job of it than BMW's highly strung 2002 Turbo (Europe's first petrol turbo in 1972), but, even so, ‘off-boost lethargy' and ‘turbo lag' became staple phrases whenever these engines were being talked about. A naturally aspirated engine gives the full possible torque for a given rpm as soon as you ask for it. It might not be as strong as the torque from a turbo engine after the lag's passed, but a bird in the hand, and all that...

To try to get near the peak torque of the turbos, the natural-aspiration team fought back with some clever ruses. With its VR6, VW simply jammed a big engine into the space of a small four by wedging in two extra cylinders. Simple variable-cam phasing is widespread now, and it varies inlet/exhaust overlap to suit high-rev power, mid-rev torque and low-rev emissions. Honda's VTEC system and Rover's VVC were among the first to use differing cam profiles at different revs, giving an optimal timing and lift profile for mid-rev torque, and another for high-rev power. BMW's Valvetronic and Fiat's MultiAir are even more sophisticated ways of controlling valve timing and lift, plus they let the engine run without the throttle and its associated pumping losses. Naturally aspirated engines also often have variable intake tracts, to introduce various resonant lengths to charge the cylinders more effectively at various revs.

Well, if n/a engines were going to get themselves more torque, squashing lag was a priority for turbos. Anti-lag systems for rally engines such as the Mitsubishi Evo injected air and fuel into the exhaust when the throttle was shut; it caught fire in the heat, and the explosions kept the turbo spinning. Magnificently incendiary, crazily wasteful, and destructive and dirty - not exactly acceptable on the road.

On road engines, smaller turbos help: they have less inertia. But they don't work as well as bigger ones for high-speed power, so some engines use pairs of blowers in sequence. Or twin-scroll turbos, which separate the exhaust tracts of the cylinders that would otherwise wastefully interfere. A lateral-thinking solution is to use a small supercharger for low-rev pick-up. But superchargers use energy at high revs, so VW's Twincharged 1.4 and the new Jaguar C-X75 engine bypass and declutch the supercharger at high revs and hand off boosting duties to a turbo. Hmm, complicated. More common now are variable-geometry turbos. They change the angle of the vanes that guide exhaust across the turbine, so they're efficient at a wide range of exhaust flow rates. They were used in diesels for yonks, but their mechanisms were prone to fail in the higher heat of petrols. Beginning with the Porsche 997 Turbo, new materials have resolved that.

Handily, as naturally aspirated engines chased torque, as a good rule of thumb along came improved efficiency. Direct fuel injection (DI) adds more. It means an engine can run higher compression without knock, because the fuel is injected just before spark. Through clever exhaust and piston design, Mazda's new DI SkyActiv engines get it to 14:1. And compression equals efficiency. When it's combined with full variable-valve control, as BMW did in its last pre-turbo fours and sixes, you had an engine that was the poster child of n/a economy and civilisation.
Thing is, almost every technology that works well on n/a engines works even better on turbocharged ones. If knock matters on n/a engines, it matters more on boosted ones, which have, in effect, higher compression ratios once boost arrives. So DI is even more handy to have. Same for variable-valve control. All its benefits on n/a engines are redoubled on turbos.

Strangely, one of the final places we'll see n/a engines is in hybrids. In mild hybrids, the electric motor doesn't only help efficiency, it helps fill the low-rev torque hole. Ferrari's next Enzo will exploit that double win. In full hybrids, whether the Toyota system or in range-extenders like the Ampera, the hybrid system allows the petrol engine to run only around its most efficient middle rpm range. But that's the opposite reason to why we love n/a engines. We love them for their revs and sound.

Turbos tend not to rev because they don't need to: big on-boost torque allows higher gearing. Anyway, DI turbos are hampered because direct-injection systems become hugely expensive if they have to work above about 6,500rpm.

Turbos give us more performance and more economy. So you're left asking which of an/a engine's particular delights has the turboyet to give us. Is there no substitute for revs? The Jaguar C-X75 500bhp turbo motor runs to 10,000rpm. Or if you want instant torque, is there no replacement for displacement? A Viper buyer might say so, but AMG's turbos hardly feel limp-wristed. And in America, Ford's V6 EcoBoost-powered F150 pickup is beginning to convince the good ol' vee-eight's most loyal followers that there may be merits to this new-fangled itty-bitty 3.5-litre.

But we'll regret the passing of the sound and the instantaneous response of a good unblown engine. Sure, lag has largely gone now - it's more a slight softness in the pedal - but without that softness, with the hard-edged bite of a good n/a engine, you're harder-wired into the experience.

Finally, the noise: try the new M135i, and you'll be convinced BMW's straight-six petrol turbo is a fine sonic replacement for a heavier n/a V8, but the trouble is not many people are building straight-sixes. Even BMW petrols are mostly fours these days. At least Ford is binning its boring 1.6 n/a fours in favour of a charismatic little blown triple, and it won't be the only one. Generally, though, we're suffering not just because turbos mute the exhaust, but because downsizing means the dull-sounding blown four-cylinder is taking over from fives and sixes.

Maybe the price for the turbo engine's performance, economy and lightness boils down to this: we're going to have to live with engine noise that's electronically and synthetically enhanced, rather than the real thing. That's not so far-fetched, either. It's coming on this autumn's new Mondeo.

Words: Paul Horrell 

This feature first appeared in the September 2012 issue of Top Gear magazine

The chances are that you saw the title of this article and winced a little. Usually, things which are enjoyable bring negative side effects to our bodies. Alcohol, chocolate and fast-food are all fine examples of things which are enjoyable at the time but have negative long-term side effects on your health. So how does coffee compete with these ‘naughty’ foods and drink?

Drinking coffee is a great way to stay alert, both physically and mentally. It helps wake you up in the morning and aids your productivity, and help relieve workplace stress.

 Many of us drink up to 5 cups of the coffee a day, in various forms, from a black coffee to a mocha, or even one of those frozen coffees you can get from Starbucks. No matter how you like to mix it up, you need to be aware of the impact drinking coffee is having on your body.

Starting with the negative things about coffee…One big rumour about coffee being bad for you comes from the effect it has on raising blood pressure. Although a temporary increase in blood pressure does occur, it is only really a problem if you already have naturally high blood pressure or are pregnant. Research suggests that limiting coffee consumption to 2 cups a day should reduce the harm coffee has on your baby’s health.


As with most things, too much coffee is bad for you. If you consume too much coffee (over 5 cups a day) you increase the likelihood of thinning of bone marrow. This impacts on how susceptible you are to a fracture, so, particularly for the elderly, keep coffee consumption to a sensible level.

The other side effect which many people experience when they begin drinking coffee is an inability to fall asleep. Often, this is because coffee (or anything with caffeine in it) has been consumed too soon before sleep. To overcome this, I like to stop all caffeine consumption after 2pm each day, but remember that this affects different people differently.

So if they are the main negative impacts of drinking coffee, what about the positive side effects?

Coffee’s positive side effects


There are some surprising findings in the benefits of drinking coffee regularly which I think you will find comforting:

• The British Coffee Association states that coffee can reduce the risk of fatal liver disease by up to 40%, with the most significant improvements being seen in people with already damaged livers…
• The chances of developing type II diabetes, the UK’s fastest growing type of diabetes, are shown to be reduced with regular consumption of coffee.
• Colorectal cancer is the world’s 3rd most commonly found cancer, and although research findings are mixed, there is a common trend showing a reduction in the chances of developing this type of cancer by around 20-50%.
• According to further research, regular coffee drinkers may have less of a risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease in later life – by as much as 60%!

There is no doubt that the findings here are pleasantly surprising. So if you were worried about drinking coffee, remember the facts above and how they are in your favour.

How you can make the most out of drinking coffee

Finally, there are a few simple things to remember when drinking coffee. You will want to invest in a decent coffee machine as instant coffee can be highly processed. This will reduce the amount of benefit you receive. Stick to 2-4 cups a day unless you suffer from high blood pressure or are pregnant, in which case, ask your GP about the level of coffee is safe for you to consume.

Coffee has a positive impact on your health and should be enjoyed. Each cup can help your body in the long-term just as much as it does in the mornings and through your average day. Keep a check on how much coffee you are drinking and enjoy every sip.

by Graham Tripp 

Paolo Cirio has a problem with Google.

Specifically, Cirio's beef is with Google Street View, the web giant's mammoth project providing 360-degree street-level viewings of the world's cities. He sees a conspiracy in it, or at the very least, a win of profit motive over principle.

"It's interesting to me how a company can takes pictures of the all world's streets and sell them back to people, assembling basically an huge repository of the world and monopolizing it. We all know that knowledge means power," Cirio says of Street View, in emails to the Huffington Post (Google Street View is free to use, but that hasn't stopped Cirio's crusade).

To draw attention to Street View's problems, Cirio's turning what he considers the most problematic aspect of the project, the permission-less photographing of people, into art. To do this, he's taping pasteboard images of people who appear on Google Street View on walls in Berlin, London, New York, and more cities, if he can help it. He says fellow artists and viewers have already contacted him and asked if they can put up images inspired by Cirio's Street Ghosts project in Hong Kong and Sydney.

Wrote Cirio to the Huffington Post, "I'm going to ship posters ready to affix on walls to everyone who asks me, in order to spread them everywhere."

A former street artist turned digital, this is Cirio's first piece that combines the two contexts -- so it's no coincidence that many of his photos show up next to old, elaborate lines of graffiti (Cirio says he looks for walls where the posters "can stay as long as possible"). We at Huffington Post exchanged emails with Cirio, who since 2002 has been traveling the world redistributing books found on Amazon and promoting a project that encourages peer-to-peer money-sharing using mock-VISA cards.

What inspired you to do this project?

My work is about the power of information and so it often addresses abusive Internet companies…In this case, I reverse the abuse of power by Google simply through visual exposure. I didn't need to hack or process any data—they’re just printouts of screenshots. It's simple to show how controversial and critical the information that Google collects is, just by putting it in another context.

What do you think of Google Street View, with regards to the privacy issues?

I find Google especially problematic, when it comes to privacy. I find Google Street View quite invasive in general, but Google just doesn’t care about anything. They could take pictures only during [particular] times of the day or alert people before they pass by with the car, which wouldn’t undermine privacy, or just try to have manual control over the pictures that they take, as all the content of YouTube is checked. The reason is that people in the streets are actually valuable information for Google to resell to its users.

Did you contact the people who appeared on Street View and ask if it was okay to use their images?

The people that I found, printed and affixed to the walls are totally random, there isn't a way to contact them.

What has been the best reception your project's gotten? The worst? The most unusual?

The funniest feedbacks were from people who sent me the links to themselves on Google Street View asking to be printed and became an art piece of mine.

Have you contacted Google about this project?

Not yet, but it may happen soon, if the media and people keep talking about that. Legally, I'm violating the copyright of the images that Google pretends to own, but more important, this project may influence the verdict of next time that Google Street View will be debated in a court case.

What are you planning on doing next?

I've quite a lot of interesting information from Twitter and tax havens users [sic].

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.

Take a look at some of Ciprio's Street Ghosts (below).