Skunk Works is a great book with many great stories about the U2, F-117, and SR-71 programs. I got my copy off the shelf to be sure I didn't mis-remember some items. The U-2 flew up to at least 74,500 feet with a 65,000 cruising altitude. Missions could exceed 6000 miles and last 10-12 hours. The window between stall speed and overspeed buffeting could be so narrow that "our test pilots reported that sometimes during a turn the inside wing would be shaking in stall buffet while the outside wing was shaking more violently in Mach buffet.", and the wings were so light that they flapped up and down. The chapter about the unsuccessful hydrogen plane program is titled "Blowing up Burbank"

One of the US crash safety standards required by the NHTSA that adds weight and expense to new vehicles is for "unrestrained drivers", despite the fact that under 10% of US drivers go un-belted these days. The punch line is that the IIHS found the NHTSA test not very useful, because un-bented passengers often aren't held in place in front of the intended safety devices.

Car and Driver recently tested several different cars with lane assist and adaptive cruise to see how far they could drive hands free. None went very far without leaving the lane.

NYT financial columnists Andrew Ross Sorkin's book "To Big To Fail" documents events approx from Lehman Brothers' collapse to TARP.

Chapter 20 details how CEOs of the "big 9" we summoned to an unexplained a meeting by Henry Paulson and told by Treasury that they would all be participating in TARP, and how much each would receive: "Bank of America: $25 billion; Citigroup: $25 billion; Goldman Sachs: $10 billion; JP Morgan: $25 billion; Morgan Stanley: $10 billion; State Street: $10 billion, Wells Fargo: $25 billion." (the book omits who the last two banks were and how much they were to receive) When Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich objected, Henry Paulson to him "Your regulator is sitting right there" "And you are going to get a call tomorrow morning telling you you're undercapitalized and that you won't be able to raise money in the private markets".

Other points of interest in the book- The picture of the $9 billion check Mitsubishi used to invest in Morgan Stanley

Personally, I enjoyed Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" much more.

You are stopped at a red light, cars are stopped ahead of and to either side of you. Driver approaching behind you is distracted and doesn't see that you are stopped. Any suggestions for mitigating this impending collision?

Yes, inhibiting protein creation while a memory is being recalled, which actually re-creates the memory, can prevent the memory from storing again. There have been human trials. This Radiolab discusses it http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/

Not idiotic at all, you made good inferences. The current popular systems have an optical beam transceiver and reflector pair at both the start and finish lines, which are hard wired to a fairly simple timing box with multiple time displays that can track 2 or more (typically 4) times simultaneously (which also limits how many vehicles can be on course at once), with the oldest time being replaced by the newest time, so timing integrity is not dependent on the PC, but on the "simpler" hardware inside the timing box. As events are timed to the thousandth of a second- with "dead heats" occurring even then, depending on a PC for timing accuracy is not the best choice. At our events, one of the T&S staff's job is "manual time log"- writing every new time down direct from the timer box, along with the vehicle or event causing the trip- tumbleweeds, false trips by workers, rain, snow (which happened this year), etc, to generate an independent audit trail of results. The timing box sends new times to a PC running the T&S software via a serial connection. The T&S software operators enter cars in the start queue into the software, make adjustments for wrong/ missing numbers, false trips, extra trips, etc in real time. Cars are sent onto course approx. every 30 seconds for a safety margin, with runs lasting from 30-70 seconds depending on the size of the course. On a large course, 3-4 cars is about the max on course at a time.

Current optical timing systems for autocross time to the thousandth of a second- and there are dead heats even then. So GPS is no where near accurate enough.

Factoid- prior to national events two parallel timing systems are set up and tested against each other to ensure consistent results. IIRC, anything greater than 5 thousands variation between them calls a timing system into question.

Ok, I've read. From page 1 of the paper "The financial services industry has grown tremendously in this country over the past eight years, and done a very good job of handling growth and the increased risks that accompany it. The industry accomplishes this task most fundamentally by separating risks by type, making them easier to evaluate and price." From this, I question that the paper is "foresighted"

It was the failure to understand CDOs and accurately assess their risks by the issuing banks, S&P and Moodys, and their government regulators that caused the most recent financial calamity. Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" has good insight into the mortgage bond market melt down.

As there was no significant (not just token) firings, prison time, and lawsuits for the banks, ratings agencies, and their federal regulators, another round of this type of economic catastrophe will occur again soon, and on a larger scale.

I'm an autocrosser with experience setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting both an older T&S system, and the new system used by the SCCA at national events. Ours was the first local region to install the new "national" system, so I'm familiar with the "issues" surrounding the current T&S options.

There are several practical issues with optical systems for automated vehicle recognition- number and class markings are already tough to get consistent without requiring an additional barcode or QR large enough (some competitors would gripe about a huge barcode) to be useful at the 30'+ distance finish line sensors are set back to minimize getting hit by spinning cars. Add in the fact that existing markings some times fall off on course, or competitors in dual driver cars forget to change numbers between runs, and it's tough to be certain you'd have something consistent to try to recognize.

The national T&S system uses a wireless barcode reader operated by a worker in the starting queue to read stickers placed on competitors helmets to register cars in the T&S software. Locally, we position the T&S trailer to allow the operators to manually enter vehicles as they enter the start queue. Human eyes really are the most flexible here "shouldn't 80ES be 180ES?".

I like one of the comments above about a webcam triggered by the finish light taking a picture with a clock display in it. Unless there was OCR to immediately post the result to the software, the results feedback would be too slow for our region- we have real time announcement of finish stats, and the software can post results to a web server real time for smartphone access in paddock. The T&S software uploads a small file to the web server in the 20ish second gap between finishing cars.

Apologies for not offering solutions, but hopefully the extra info about some of the issues can help shape a solution.

Here's a link to Manna, a great read: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Agree with your other points, but capitalism works because it accounts for greed. Many of the other systems fail because they don't.

FTA "“You’re the ones who’ve been slacking off!” proclaims Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University (and one of the other speakers at Future Tense). He refers, of course, to SF writers. The scientists and engineers, he seems to be saying, are ready and looking for things to do. Time for the SF writers to start pulling their weight and supplying big visions that make sense."

Daniel Suarez provided some interesting near term solutions to some of these stagnation issues in his recent very enjoyable "Daemon" and "Freedom" novels. Sad that I also agree with his vision that these solutions would be violently resisted by various interests.

Good luck fitting a useful EDR to a pre-OBD vehicle. NHTSA means to mandate EDRs in all new vehicles. Here's a more accurate article: http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/feds-to-require.php