Building News

Feb

Athletes cash in on California's workers' comp

Label: World

SACRAMENTO — In his seven-year career with the Denver Broncos, running back Terrell Davis, a former Super Bowl Most Valuable...

That Syncing Feeling

Label: Technology

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired...

Drone Pilots Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do

Label: Health

U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Steve HortonCapt. Richard Koll, left, and Airman First Class Mike Eulo monitored a drone aircraft after launching it in Iraq. The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones. “Though it might be thousands of miles from the battlefield, this work still involves tough stressors...

Many States Say Cuts Would Burden Fragile Recovery

Label: Business

States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession. Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers,...

Feb

Gunfire and deadly crash rattle the Las Vegas Strip

Label: World

LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati...

Good Lookin' Out

Label: Technology

The other strap-it-on-and-get-rad cameras out there — the GoPros and the Contours and the Ions — are all pretty sick in their own right. But for ease of use, no camera is sicker than Drift Action’s HD Ghost cam.It has enough capability and pure oomph to keep up with the competition — it captures 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 60fps, and it can talk to your other devices via Wi-Fi — but it also...

Feb

Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

Label: World

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.You...

Cash-Strapped Army Still Plans on Helping Pakistan Fight Narcotics

Label: Technology

The war on terrorism isn’t the only endless war the U.S. is waging. The drug war never went away, it just went overseas — and the U.S. military is lending new support to an effort to stem narcotics in Pakistan. A series of new solicitations by the Army Corps of Engineers show that even in these cash-strapped times, the U.S. is willing to build new structures, including in major airports, for...

Well: Getting Patients to Think About Costs

Label: Health

A colleague and I recently got into a heated discussion over health care spending. It wasn’t that he disagreed with me about the need to rein in costs; but he said he was frustrated every time he tried to do so.Earlier that week, for example, he had tried to avoid ordering a costly M.R.I. scan for a patient who had been suffering from headaches. After a thorough examination, my colleague was convinced...

DealBook: Carlyle's Profit Fell in 4th Quarter as Growth Slowed

Label: Business

11:18 a.m. | Updated Most of the publicly traded private equity giants proudly reported glowing fourth-quarter earnings.The Carlyle Group isn’t one of them.On Thursday, the alternative investment giant disclosed a 28 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit from the period a year earlier, as the growth of its portfolio companies slowed. That sent the company’s stock down more than 8 percent by midmorning,...

Feb

Interstate 5 reopens through the Grapevine

Label: World

...

Turkish Soccer Fans Roar Loudly Enough to Damage Your Ears

Label: Technology

ISTANBUL, Turkey — The Turks, who love football as much as anyone, have the loudest fans on earth.The 51,998 people packed into Turk Telekon Arena, home to the Galatasaray football club, let out a 131.76-decibel roar during a match against Fenerbahçe two years ago, enough to secure a spot in the Guinness book of records. That’s louder than The Who during their 126-decibel gig in London in...

Paul McCartney tops Bonnaroo music festival lineup

Label: Lifestyle

NASHVILLE, Tenn (Reuters) – Paul McCartney will perform at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee in June along with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Mumford & Sons, Bjork and Wilco, festival organizers said on Tuesday.“Top to bottom, this is one of the strongest lineups we have ever had,” Bonnaroo spokesman Jeff Cuellar said in an interview. “Looking at the festival landscape out...

Well: Caffeine Linked to Low Birth Weight Babies

Label: Health

New research suggests that drinking caffeinated drinks during pregnancy raises the risk of having a low birth weight baby.Caffeine has long been linked to adverse effects in pregnant women, prompting many expectant mothers to give up coffee and tea. But for those who cannot do without their morning coffee, health officials over the years have offered conflicting guidelines on safe amounts during pregnancy.The...

State of the Art: Sony’s RX1 Camera: Compact, Full-Framed and Expensive, Too

Label: Business

When you’re shopping for a camera, you have a million specs and features to consider. Size, weight, battery life, megapixels, zoom power. ... Can you guess which aspect consumers consider most important? The color of the body. (“Ooh, I like the shiny red one!”) The camera buyer for a national electronics chain told me that. We both slapped our foreheads. Please. If you’re buying...

Feb

Four dead, including suspect, in series of Orange County shootings

Label: World

Orange County sheriff's officials said they don't know what prompted a series of shootings across multiple cities early Tuesday...

The 'One' Is a Huge Step Forward for HTC

Label: Technology

HTC’s new flagship smartphone, the One, is an impressive bit of hardware and a big step forward for the company in three significant ways.The One is a top-notch, beautifully designed handset packed with the best specs and a ton of compelling features. It also runs a unique, fresh take on Google’s Android operating system. And it’s available in exactly the same configuration across the three...

Ask Well: Coaxing Parents to Take Better Care of Themselves

Label: Health

Dear Reader,Your dilemma of wanting to get your parents to change their ways to eat better and exercise reminds me of an old joke:How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.Sounds like your parents may be about as motivated as the light bulb right now. Still, there are things you can do to encourage them to move in...

Obama to Turn Up Pressure for Deal on Budget Cuts

Label: Business

Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Obama spoke at a White House auditorium surrounded by emergency responders. WASHINGTON — President Obama, back from his three-day golf getaway, on Monday made use of his bully pulpit, while Congress remains out all week, to turn up the pressure for a bipartisan agreement to avoid indiscriminate across-the-board budget cuts that will otherwise hit March 1. ...

Feb

Jerry Buss dies at 80; Lakers owner brought 'Showtime' success to L.A.

Label: World

Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died at the age of 80. Last week, it was revealed that he was hospitalized with an undisclosed form of cancer. ...

Pondering the Point of Snow Bikes While Riding With Wolves

Label: Technology

Three Fat Amigos! The green one is a Surly Krampus and runs an even larger 29r wheel size. The orange and blue are Salsa Mukluks and this is the park bench stop on Adams Gulch in Sun Valley. We reached this in an unusually hard effort, 'cause behind us were the wolves.
Hitting the trail on a bike made for it... provided the trail is wide, the terrain is reasonable and you aren't in a hurry.
Seen through our Rolling Huts cabin window in the Methow Valley, the Mukluk awaits another ride.
Hunter orange is easy to spot on the trail in the snow, and this bike was ridden on Sun Valley's famous single track. Riding on the cross-country trails is not permitted there like at the Methow.
It was about 2 degrees on this ride and layered like that kid in A Christmas Story. Seen here are REI's Winterflyte jacket and tights. Underneath there's an eVent shell and under that Merino wool liners from ibex.
A big, fat tire that grips and doesn't damage the groomed trail. The blue spots on the rim are from the rim strip that's poking out through drilled out holes. Drilling out the rim removes considerable weight. A Fat Bike rim is essentially two MTB rims welded together.
Rode the 9 Zero 7 over hill and dale on groomed trails in the Methow Valley at about 9 mph. Once on a downhill, hit 12, and it's super fun to ride where you normally can't, even if it's at a tourist pace.

KETCHUM, Idaho – Snow bikes are good for hucking about on groomed trails. They are not good for outrunning wolves.This became obvious as a group of us, dressed in garish red Lycra suits and riding black, orange and DayGlo-green bikes with cartoonishly large tires, pedaled frantically through the snow after a trio of wolves caught our scent.The experience made me ponder the point of these bikes, and the questions those building them must answer if snow biking is to catch on. It isn’t as if people often see apex predators when riding. But my encounter with canis lupus highlighted the shortcomings of bikes that are a hell of a lot of fun but struggling to find their place.Snow bikes are, of course, designed to ride over snow. Fat, cushy tires pumped to a whopping 5 PSI keep you from sinking. Garage tinkerers in Alaska and other cold climes have been building them forever, welding mountain bike rims together to double up on tires and fashioning frames to straddle them. The DIY ethos went corporate a few years ago when industry juggernaut Quality Bicycle Products joined the party.Although snow bikes remain one of the most esoteric niches in cycling, they are slowly entering the mainstream. A dozen manufactures are making them, as are independent craft builders. There was a Fat Bike Summit last month, where folks got together to talk about land use and access for the bikes. There are some 10,000 snow bikes in the wild, and that number’s expected to double within a year. And the Iditabike, the famous riff on Alaska’s epic Iditarod dogsled race, begins later this month in Anchorage. Yet as the scene gains participants, especially roadies and mountain bikers who already have a bike or three in the garage, expectations increase. And frankly, snow bikes have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a Pivot 5.7, Specialized Stumpjumper, or Jamis Dakar 650b. At this point, the bikes have more in common with beach cruisers than proper mountain bikes.Don’t get me wrong; riding in the snow is a hoot, because, well, you’re riding in snow. But trudging along at less than 10 mph wears thin after 45 minutes. Snow biking feels like a sport that hasn’t figured out what it wants to do yet, much like mountain biking in the days when crazy Californians bombed down Mount Tam on bikes they’d built themselves.It’s one thing to ride groomed trails and quite another to scramble up a single track. Fat tires require fat frames, which lack the handling and agility of modern mountain bikes. The bikes are clumsy and, at about 35 pounds, heavy. Trigger shifters are endlessly frustrating when you’re wearing gloves. And riding an 8-inch single track on a 5-inch tire requires exceptional concentration and balance. Bobble your line and you’re off the trail, half-buried in powder. So you bounce along at little more than walking speed, trying to be smooth and find a flow. It’s best to settle in and enjoy the ride. With so much resistance working against your forward momentum, it’s quite an effort to get anywhere. Before hitting Sun Valley, we rode the Methow Valley. Both resorts are interested in buying fleets of snow bikes to draw well-heeled vacationers to underutilized trails. It’s easy enough to design bikes that roll over groomed snow trails at single-digit speeds, but it isn’t enough to sustain the scene, especially when you consider these machines cost $1,500 to $3,500.Snow bikes will never replace dedicated single-track or cross-country machines, but if the industry wants them to be anything more than a fad, they’ll have to go faster, shift better, ride stiffer and weigh a lot less. We’d like to see dropper seat posts, internal gears and the ability to adjust tire pressure on the fly, to start. People made the same complaints about mountain biking back in the day, and look where the sport’s gone. The same thing could happen to snow biking as another generation of builders and tinkerers pushes this budding sport forward — or falls to the wolves.Photos: DL Byron/WiredcreateSummaryAndThumb("summary547667123570012658");Read More.. Home

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