What's the long German word for shame?

The scrubbing chemistry is also what gave away Volkswagen’s alleged cover-up. In 2013, a small non-profit group decided to compare diesel emissions from European cars, which are notoriously high, with the US versions of the same vehicles. A team led by Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, worked with emissions researchers at West Virginia University to test three four-cylinder 2.0-liter diesel cars in the Los Angeles area: a Jetta, a Passat, and a BMW. Only the BMW passed.
 

“We felt that it would be possible to get low emissions for diesels,” Kodjak said. “You can imagine our surprise when we found two of the three vehicles had significant emissions.”
 

The ICCT reported its findings to the EPA and the California Air Resources Board. Regulators met with VW officials in 2014 and the automaker agreed to fix the problem with a voluntary recall. But in July 2015, CARB did some follow up testing and again the cars failed—the scrubber technology was present, but off most of the time.
 

How this happened is pretty neat. Michigan’s Stefanopolou says computer sensors monitored the steering column. Under normal driving conditions, the column oscillates as the driver negotiates turns. But during emissions testing, the wheels of the car move, but the steering wheel doesn’t. That seems to have have been the signal for the “defeat device” to turn the catalytic scrubber up to full power, allowing the car to pass the test.
 

Clever detective work catching Volkswagen in this nefarious scheme. The Guardian does the math on the potential damage:

The rigging of emissions tests may have added nearly a million tonnes of air pollution by VW cars annually – roughly the same as the UK’s combined emissions for all power stations, vehicles, industry and agriculture. According to a Guardian analysis, the 482,000 non-compliant US vehicles would have released between 10,392 and 41,571 tonnes of NOx annually at an average US mileage, rather than the 1,039 tonnes the EPA standards would imply. Scaled to the 11m global vehicles, that would mean up to 948,691 tonnes of NOx emissions annually. Western Europe’s biggest power station, Drax in the UK, emits 39,000 tonnes of NOx each year.
 

Now some expert should translate that into a rough number of deaths or years of human life expunged. It's tantamount to indirect murder, and it's laughable that CEO Martin Winterkorn refuses to resign. It will be fascinating to see who concocted the scheme and how it was agreed upon.

At the very least, Winterkorn and others responsible should be forced to walk naked through the streets while people shout, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and throw fruit at them.

UPDATE: Just a few hours after I posted this Winterkorn resigned. He maintains he had no idea of this scheme, and it's quite possible that's true. It will still be interesting to see just how the scheme was concocted and how it was approved and carried out without Winterkorn's knowledge. Breakdowns are often more revealing than successes.

The Hottest Restaurant of 2081

Matt Buchanan conjures an interview with New York's hottest chef...of the year 2081.

On a warm, very yellow November morning, I met the chef Paul Nova in front of his new restaurant, Farm & Table, which is finally set to open next week after two years of intensely secret research and development. 2081’s most anticipated new opening occupies the first flood-safe floor of a six-story trapezoid of condos, but it's a remarkable contrast to the checkerboard of glass and steel that wraps around the top five stories—bright, heavy wood doors open into a room of fifty seats that's lit by scavenged orange incandescent bulbs, littered with the occasional hunk of heirloom cast-iron industrial equipment. Otherwise, the space is a collection of all-wood everything, from wall to wall to wall—festooned with the occasional animal trophy, half of the species extinct—that looks and feels sturdy and knotted, not like re-composited bamboo or synthetics, but old, lived-in wood from trees that once grew tall and strong.
 

Nova’s new project is both of a piece and pointedly different from his first megahit restaurant. Toro! Toro! Toro! was a revival of the clubby, twentieth-century fin de siècle sushi restaurants where Nova’s exquisitely perfect reproductions of extinct fish—in terms of fidelity of texture and clarity of flavor, years beyond practically any other plant-based replication of seafood in the last decade—revealed him as a trailblazer in the medium of engineered protein. Predictably, it spawned wave after wave of imitators, and while no one has come close to his craftsmanship or success, the rumors are that with his second revivalist restaurant, Nova is pushing beyond optimized protein to a new horizon, one that has been uncharted for years: real meat.
 

I often ask people what common practice of today will be regarded by subsequent generations as horrific, because it's inevitable, isn't it? As much as I'd like to say retweeting praise, I'm more confident that we'll look back on our raising of animals in horrific conditions for our consumption to be abhorrent.

That's not the only thing Buchanan imagines will be an opportunity for nostalgia in 2081.

The biggest aspect of it, besides the real food, will be real service. We're going a step further than Toro! Toro! Toro!, and you won't even interact with any software when you come in: We're going to have human hosts in these wonderful knit hats and chambray shirts and classic selvedge jeans who take you to your seat, another human who takes your order, and another who brings the food to you, and yet another who clears the table. I don't know any other restaurant that will have as many bodies as ours will, certainly not as carefully adorned in period dress.
 

You'll even get the bill written down on paper—we found a lot of these GREAT vintage Moleskine pads, very period—and you'll pay a separate small fee, like twenty percent, to the servers if they do a good job. (It sounds weird, but people used to do this routinely! We're including a keepsake booklet for every guest that explains how to figure out the amount.) We're even chucking dynamic pricing for this restaurant. The only things that'll be different than how it used to be back then is that you can't pay with paper like people used to, because of the blockchain, though if we could figure out a way to make that work, we totally would.

Opening borders to migrants

“European countries are turning into old people’s homes. In 2050, I plan on being 80. Either I’ll be cared for by a robot or by a Syrian”
 

Simon Kuper writes a manifesto on why Europe should welcome migrants.

1. We need young workers

Many European countries are gradually turning into old people’s homes. Germany, Italy, Spain and others have some of the lowest birth rates in human history. About one-third of their populations will be aged over 65 in 2050, predicts the Pew Research Center in the US. Germany needs to import at least 350,000 people a year to keep its workforce stable, calculates the German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung. No wonder Angela Merkel has been more welcoming than David Cameron, whose country is younger. But all over Europe, carers for old people are already scarce. Norway found oil under the seabed but it would have been better off if it had discovered 50,000 nurses there instead. In 2050, I plan on being 80. Either I’ll be cared for by a robot or by a Syrian.
 

2. We have enough space for migrants

Many rightwingers think we have reached our limits. “KEEP OUT, BRITAIN IS FULL UP”, said a fairly typical front page in the Daily Express newspaper in 2009. This feeling is widespread. And it’s true that western Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on earth. Indeed, density has long been Europe’s unique selling point: with so many people of different nations closely packed together, we have always traded goods and exchanged ideas fast. 
 

But we have plenty more room. Many European cities aren’t dense enough. Places such as Brussels, Dublin and others sprawled during the automobile era. We can make space for newcomers through densification, says Stephanie Wunder, senior fellow of the Ecologic Institute in Berlin.
 

Many of the same points could be made for the U.S., and many other countries in the world.

Ban college football?

This transcript of a debate on whether to ban college football (PDF), with Buzz Bissinger and Malcolm Gladwell arguing for the ban, Tim Green and Jason Whitlock arguing against, is a good read, not least for a few humorous zingers from Bissinger. John Donavan is the moderator.

Jason Whitlock:
 

Football, whether we like it or not, whether you understand it or not when I say it, but football is America. It is the melting pot. College football is the highest level of the melting pot. Football is the Statue of Liberty.
 

19:20:45
 

College football. Your huddled masses, your poor, your tired, people yearning to breath free. I was one of those kids. Football was my access into the mainstream and a better life. My dad didn’t graduate from high school, my mother was a factory worker. I was the first person in my family to go off to college. Football brings the poor and the rich, the black and the white, the Jews and the gentiles -- it brings everybody together, particularly at the college level. 
 

[...]
 

Malcolm Gladwell:

It's about money now? They have to get hit over the head because they can't get money otherwise?
 

John Donvan: [unintelligible].
 

Jason Whitlock:

In terms of funding all the other sports you're talking about that you like. Yes, they do have to get hit over the head on Saturdays to pay for that, absolutely.
 

Buzz Bissinger:

But Jason, Jason, you're --

Jason Whitlock:

To pay for the rowing team and the soccer team and all the other sports that no one cares about. Yes.
 

19:29:48
 

John Donvan: Buzz Bissinger.
 

Buzz Bissinger:

Your argument is a perfect argument for why football should not be at academic institutions. Make it into a minor league system then. You'll get the same benefits that you're talking about. The melting pot -- by the way, the melting pot also, I think, includes Latinos and Asian-Americans. And if you can name four Jews who played football, you win the debate.
 

[laughter] 
 

And later on:

Malcolm Gladwell:

Name the last time someone shot themself in the chest because of cell phone use?
 

Tim Green:

Malcolm, you're taking --
 

Malcolm Gladwell: No, no.
 

Tim Green:

No, you're doing -- you're taking -- you're taking, as Jason said, at aberration. You're --
 

Buzz Bissinger:

I did because I use AT&T. 
 

The audience was asked to vote on the issue before the debate, and then again after the debate, and they changed their mind from one side to the other. Read the transcript or listen to the audio to find out which way they swung.

(h/t @StartupLJackson)

The Kipsang Number

In this discussion between Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompson about the World Track and Field Championships, Gladwell brought up a concept called the Kipsang Number.

I watched the marathon and was struck (as I always am watching marathons) by the same dumb, obvious point: they are fast. It’s worth dwelling on this a moment. Back when Wilson Kipsang set the world record (which was then promptly broken), my running friends and I came up with the “Kipsang number,” which represented how long could you keep up with Wilson Kipsang while he was running twenty-six miles. I am a devoted runner and my Kipsang number is less than a mile. If I’m lucky, fourteen-hundred metres. You are a really good runner, and I’m guessing your Kipsang number is two miles. The average, healthy, athletic, American, twenty-two-year old varsity athlete in a sport other than track probably has a Kipsang number of between 400 and 800 metres. To recap: you could keep up with him for a quarter of a mile, then you would collapse in exhaustion. He would keep running at the same pace for another twenty-six miles.
 

My cycling friends and I often ponder a similar number when out on group rides: on a flat road, how long can you bike at the speed that professional cyclists ride at in the flats in the peloton? Or how long can you hold the average speed of a professional climbing expert like Nairo Quintana on a cycling climb?

This would be a fun charity event, either on the track or in cycling, to invite average Joes to try to keep up with Kipsang or a strong pro cyclist like Fabio Aru for as long as possible, and soon as you fell behind, you'd be eliminated. Since that is logistically too complex to set up for all but a few people, perhaps fitness apps like Strava can add in virtual challenges like this.