THE might of the US military has arrived in Canberra ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to the national capital on Wednesday.

A C-17 Globemaster which is believed to have on board the President’s Cadillac limousine, dubbed the Obamamobile, touched down on Saturday.

The car travels the world with the President and can reportedly repel any kind of attack, including one using chemical weapons. A US Marine Corps Black Hawk helicopter was patrolling over the nation’s capital yesterday and US officials have been in Canberra for days planning the trip.

You just know the tech will get better, so get ready for getting a tickets for distracted driving for picking your nose.

Developed by Simicon, this new speed sensor promises to take highway surveillance to new heights of precision. Unlike most photo radar systems, which track only one violator at a time, Simicon’s device can simultaneously identify and follow up to 32 vehicles across four lanes. Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle’s license plate. It’s also capable of instantly measuring a car’s speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX.

Plus, this device is compact and durable enough to be mounted upon a tripod or atop a road sign, making it even harder for drivers to spot. Fortunately, though, you still have time to change your dragster ways, as distributor Peak Gain Systems won’t be bringing the Cordon to North America until the first quarter of 2012. Cruise past the break to see some footage of a field trial that’s currently underway — cars tagged with a green dot are traveling below the speed limit, those with a yellow marking are chugging along within an acceptable range above the limit, while vehicles with a red tab are just asking for trouble.

Driver Dan Wheldon was killed in a crash on Sunday early in the Izod IndyCar Championships in Las Vegas. Wheldon’s car was one of many that went flipped in the air and caught fire.

Wheldon would have shared a $5 million bonus with one fan if he had won the 300-mile race.

The incident on the 11th lap happened when Wade Cunningham ran into the back of J.R. Hildebrand and then Hildebrand’s car went airborne, which triggered the huge wreck. The large stretch of the backstretch was heavily littered with debris, and the SAFER barrier on the outside wall sustained significant damage.

“I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ryan Briscoe said. “The debris we all had to drive through the lap later, it looked like a war scene from Terminator or something. I mean, there were just pieces of metal and car on fire in the middle of the track with no car attached to it and just debris everywhere. So it was scary, and your first thoughts are hoping that no one is hurt because there’s just stuff everywhere. Crazy.”

Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt — the much-touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.”

This excerpt is only a small part of a fascinating, hard-hitting analysis of why the current state of batteries and the paucity of some materials needed to make them make replacing gas-powered cars with electric vehicles worldwide an impractical pipe dream at best.

The following comparisons assume that a new car with an internal combustion engine will use 400 gallons of fuel for 12,000 miles of annual driving. For the sake of simplicity, they assume a total of 96 kWh of batteries are available to reduce societal fuel consumption. The numbers are easily scalable.

* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of 64 Prius-class hybrids that will each save 160 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 10,240 gallons per year;
* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of six Volt-class plug-in hybrids that will each save 300 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 1,800 gallons per year; and
* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of four Leaf class electric vehicles that will each save 400 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 1,600 gallons per year.

This example highlights the fundamental flaw in all vehicle electrification schemes. When batteries are used to recover and reuse braking energy that would otherwise be wasted, a single kWh of capacity can save up to 107 gallons of fuel per year. When batteries are used as fuel tank replacements, a single kWh of capacity can only save 19 gallons of fuel per year and most of the fuel savings at the vehicle level will be offset by increased fuel consumption in power plants.

Using batteries to enable energy efficiency technologies like recuperative braking is sensible conservation.

Using batteries as fuel tank replacements is a zero-sum game that consumes huge quantities of metals for the sole purpose of substituting electricity for oil. Since roughly 45% of domestic electric power is from coal fired plants and that percentage will decline very slowly, the only rational conclusion is that electric drive is unconscionable waste and pollution masquerading as conservation.

Found by John Ligums.

Planes, trains and automobiles — the Transportation Security Administration is now inspecting them all. And trolleys, ferries, subways and even private cars. For several years now, TSA has coordinated with local and federal law enforcement agencies to perform inspections and large-scale training operations through its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, targeting random transportation centers and giving unsuspecting citizens its trademark pat-downs. (AFL-CIO wins representation of TSA agents)

TSA conducted more than 8,000 VIPR operations in the past 12 months alone, including more than 3,700 operations in mass transit and passenger railroad venues. In 2009, the total cost to taxpayers was $30 million. And now the agency is requesting funding for 12 more VIPR teams, which would bring the total to 37 squads and a budget of almost $110 million a year.