What We Are Reading – The Up in the Air Edition

I feel like I always end up writing these posts while I’m stuck in an airport. Regardless, without further ado, here is your next installment of “What We’re Reading”.

Much has happened since our last post, so our reading list spans stories that go between the motorcycle industry and also non-endemic media outlets.

This edition focuses heavily on technology and the media, a topic that is of course near and dear to my heart…don’t worry, there’s still a bit of “it’s loud and goes fast” articles in here too.

Part clearinghouse for stories that we will never get our full attention, and part book club for our loyal readers who are doing their best to survive the work day, say hello to the next installment of the “What We’re Reading” column series.

“A Lap Around…” – Asphalt & Rubber

If you will allow me a brief moment for some self promotion, I wanted to highlight a series racing of stories that Steve English has been working on, where top riders describe how they get around some of the challenging tracks in the world.

So far, we have had Eugene Laverty, Jonathan Rea, and now Michael Laverty on the site to describe for us Imola, Donington Park, and Brno – and the insights that these racers share with Steve are on another level.

It is a great series so far, and I am truly enjoying it on a personal level. You should be too.

“Getting Personal: The KTM Max Hazan Built for Himself” – BikeEXIF

I have already shown some serious moto-lust for Max Hazan’s latest build, which takes a KTM 950 and turns it into track-shredding, wheelie-popping, no-good hooligan machine.

There is really nothing more to add to this, other than a good excuse to take a second-look at the machine, courtesy of our friends at BikeEXIF.

You can find older KTM v-twins on the market for cheap right now, and Hazan’s work here shows what sort of fun-machine you can make from them.

It looks delicious. Go see at BikeEXIF’s photos, stare at them in a lecherous manner, and enjoy the detailed description they got from the maker.

“Watch VW Test the I.D. R Pikes Peak Race Car Aerodynamics” – AutoBlog

Another story that I am sharing simply because I think the project is cool, Volkswagen’s I.D. R Pikes Peak race car is out to get the electric record at America’s Mountain this year.

There are a couple things here that intrigue me. First off, VW’s extensive use of rapid prototyping in order to try different aerodynamic parts – VW says close to 2,000 parts were made. That’s a lot.

The other aspect that intrigues me is the unique challenge that Pikes Peak brings to a car that relies heavily on downforce for its cornering abilities.

The rapid rise in elevation at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb means that over the length of the course, the downforce from the car’s wings is going to change substantially.

Some really basic gorilla math shows this will be between a 25% to 33% drop in available downforce. I reiterate…that’s a lot.

This poses an interesting challenge not only to the drivers, who must constant recalibrate where is the fine line of turning and crash; but it is also a challenge to the engineers, who must find a balance of downforce at the lower sections of the course, as well as the upper sections.

“Process Takes CO? from the Air, Converts It to Carbon Nanotubes” – Ars Technica

What if I told you that the tailpipe on your motorcycle could one day be a carbon fiber making machine? That is the plan for researchers, who have figured out how to take the global warming CO? out of the air, and turn it into carbon nanotubes.

It is an intriguing idea, though not completely new. The concept has been around for a while, though it usually involves pumping the carbon deep into the earth where it becomes rock again (there has actually been a lot of progress on making this process make sense, from an energy consumption perspective).

But, why not take the carbon and do something more useful with it? That is the goal of researchers at Vanderbilt University.

Obviously it is very early days with this concept, but coupled to renewable energy resources, there is a good two-for-one proposition here with producing industrial carbon and helping curb global warming.

This article is pretty technical in its look at the concept, but it is interesting to see how scientists are looking at carbon mitigation, and basic terraforming principles.

“Facebook, Snapchat and the Dawn of the Post-Truth Era” – Wired

One of the early lines to this story really gets me: “Mark Zuckerberg, or really, his News Feed algorithm, is now editor-in-chief of the world’s content (for better or worse).” Let that sink in for a moment…

Here’s another one that grabbed me: “In our new media reality, everything is in a Rashomon effect, and real discourse becomes impossible.”

For those who aren’t into Japanese film and the work of Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon is a movie that plays on the subjective nature of truth – showing the same event from multiple perspectives, which ultimately leaves the viewer unsure of which reality to believe.

Does this sound familiar at all to our current media landscape?

Ultimately, I don’t agree with the author’s conclusion, which seems to suggest some sort of reversion back to a caveman understanding of the world, but the struggle is very real. Truth is ultimately a lie agreed upon.

Who will be making those agreements will be the future’s problem. We live in a time where we choose the facts that we want to believe – a concept that even extends into the motorcycle industry, I should point out.

We eschew expert opinions now, supplanting our own sophomoric perspectives because of an assumption that since we have the same soapbox – in this case the internet – that all opinions and experiences are therefore equal. Call it intellectual socialism, if you want.

“NASCAR’s High-Tech World: Leave Any Preconceptions Behind for This Deep-Dive” – Ars Technica

I will admit that a small part of me added this story into the list just to troll our readers. Other than its legion of fans, could there be a sporting event that is more hated than NASCAR?

The series has waned in the past few years, but it still dominates the life of a certain crop of loyal fans. For as basic and simple that turning left for a couple hours seems, the sport is in fact highly complex, and it operates at a level that is on par with F1, MotoGP, and any major ball and stick sport.

As the title suggests though, leave your preconception of NASCAR behind, and see what this sport is doing to stay modern.

There are some lessons here for motorsport of a two-wheeled variety, and while DMG may have run AMA Pro Racing into the ground, they are not devoid of good ideas.

“Canceling Roseanne Wasn’t About Conviction – It Was About Capital” – Wired

You have probably just begun to forget about Roseanne Barr’s overtly racist tweets, which lead to the canceling of her hit TV show at ABC.

So, I apologize in advance for digging up another Hollywood distraction from your consciousness, but Wired’s dissection of what goes on behind the scenes in crisis management is facinating…in a driving-by-a-train-wreck sort of way.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst is a pretty good maxim to live by, and there is an entire industry built around this concept

I like too how Wired shows how companies walk the line between between moral decisions and economic decisions – or more importantly, how moral decisions have economic impacts. I would argue that very few companies operate altruistically.

At the end of reading the story though, I’m reminded of moto-journalist Kevin Ash’s passing, at a BMW Motorrad press launch in South Africa for the BMW R1200GS. For an event that was stocked with journalists, very few details emerged about what actually happened.

It’s always bothered me, and been in the back of my mind for half a decade now…but what really lingered were the comments afterwards from a press officer from a rival brand: “that was some impressive crisis management.”

Ok, that is what we have been reading this past week. What about you? What has caught your attention? Share the links and stories that have been feeding your internet browser in the comments section, so others can enjoy and discuss them.