Wingless bird flies over the ground


 

SCULPTURE OR DESIGN?


 

This beautifully strange object might be classified as both, for it is fully functional, and it does evoke a futuristic, otherworldly sense for the viewer. 

 

 

 

As a hybrid-electric two-seater, three wheeled transport, the Aptera can cruise freeways at 80mph and get an estimated 300 miles per gallon. The plug-in version gets 100 miles per charge. Both have a drag co-efficiency of 0.15 which enables this ‘earthbound bird’ to flow through the air. Yet even though Aptera seems to mean ‘wingless bird’, it does sport gullwing doors and its cast ‘egg’ shape is re-enforced with steel beams. Passengers are protected by standard air bags and air-conditioning and heat. In California it is permitted to drive in the fast lane without passengers, a sight certain to grab attention of the bumper-to-bumber crowd.

Aptera’s design team is led by Steve Fambro of Southern California and his vision is currently in production. Pricing for the Aptera begins at $25,000 and it is eligible for the current rebates. Reserve your own "2e" for $500 (refundable).

I imagine this piece of art would look just as stunning in your driveway as on city streets or Jay Leno’s garage (check out his endorsement).



GO SOLAR (and wind)! It is a matter of national security! I am not impressed with the auto industry's new 'economy' standards. More than 50 years ago my family and I were driving cars which got 30 or more mpg (VW and Morris Minor) ... we've simply been dragging our feet, letting the cheap oil (and a huge military expense) dictate our foreign policy as if nothing would ever change ... but things have changed and even 50 mpg cars are behind the times!


     

 

 

 

 

 

 

35k year old Venus figurine discovered

 

Sexy “Venus” may be oldest figurine yet discovered

LONDON (Reuters) – A sexually suggestive Venus figurine with oversized breasts and thighs dates back at least 35,000 years and shows ancient humans had sex on their minds, researchers said on Wednesday.The 60-millimetre-long figurine may be the oldest piece of its kind yet discovered and suggests Palaeolithic art was far more complex than many had thought, Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany wrote in the journal Nature.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.

“The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art,” Conard wrote.

“Before this discovery … female imagery was entirely unknown.”

The figurine’s enlarged breasts, bloated belly and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.

“The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly command most attention is its explicitly, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form,” he wrote.

“Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species.”

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)