Irwindale Speedway VP Calls Out Carmakers For Their Glorification Of Street Racing. Modern cars are fast. Sometimes very, very fast. And occasionally even faster than you could possibly use on public roads. That makes fast cars tricky to advertisecommercials showing these fast cars racing on public roads could be seen as a tacit endorsement of illegal street racing, and big carmakers would never do that, right Right Doug Stokes, VP of Communication at Irwindale Event Center you know, the Speedway and has spent his life in motorsports. Recently, Doug saw the latest of many car commercials that showed a carmakers fast car being fast on normal, city streets. Dougs no fool he knows that in commercials, roads are closed, and everything is staged, but theres no question about the implication of the ad buy this car so you can drive it fast. Anywhere. An open letter to the industry 0. Who the hell do I have to complain to It was just a quiet Sunday afternoon, my wife and I were watching the U. S. Open finals on TV. There were, of course, number of adverts from top tier companies and then there was one, near the end of the match, that made the two of us whoop louder than the sellout crowd at Flushing Meadows. The ad that stunned us was a Mercedes Benz commercial which shows a number of growling drag racing vehicles racing against a new model Mercedes. TbpExAQQvAc/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Watch Racing Extinction Tube Free' title='Watch Racing Extinction Tube Free' />The machines including a funny car, a dragster, and a full out drag bike and the Mercedes line up curb to curb on what looks like a city street, a traffic light goes green and the machines leap forward in a five wide drag race the Mercedes gets to the end of the block first. Apparently it wins what looks everything like a patently illegal street race and the voice over indicates what Mercedes model it was and indicates that it would be a good idea for the people watching to buy this car I guess based on its track er, street racing record. I frankly dont think that it was the very best example of The Best or Nothing slogan that tags the advert. Likewise, a recent at least here in Los Angeles TV commercial shows two late model BMWs seemingly racing each other through a it seems deserted industrial site with a quick close up of another was it one of the two street racers BMW cornering very hard, so hard that the driver needs to crank in a huge amount of opposite to keep control as the car slides right up to a painted double line thats NOT on a race course, but apparently on a normal street somewhere. There you go, The Ultimate Driving Machine going way, way too fast apparently on city streets. And then we have Fiat Chrysler running a whole flight of TV ads that show a wide range of way too fast activities with two or more cars quite apparently racing each other. Of course building a car the Dodge Demon thats banned from competing in as delivered form by the NHRA, and then bragging about it in print in enthusiast magazines says at least to my ear Race this one the street, because it is so powerful that NHRA wants you to install a big old honking roll cage if you ever want run it at the drag strip. A quick word about myself if I may, Im the VP of communications at Irwindale Event Center located about 2. East of Los Angeles. We operate a half mile NASCAR sanctioned paved oval and an eighth mile NHRA sanctioned drag strip. We opened the drag strip in 2. California that operates on a weekly basis all year long. Thousands upon thousands of drivers young, old and in between have used our facility to have some safe, controlled, high speed fun with their performance cars. Its almost impossible to prove a negative, however, I think that our drag strip has helped to dampen illegal street racing in the area. And, from that perspective I feel that I can say the following Yeah, sure, yup, correct, youre right I know those commercial are a fantasy, innocent, innocuous metaphors, simply flights of advertising license. On the other hand, all of the above automobile commercials most blatantly portray and appear to glorify illegal street racing. And supering in some sort of tiny closed course, do not attempt screen when the hottest model Dodge cars are purposely seen racing with each other or in earlier TV adverts, joyfully driving right through the middle of an idyllic outdoor wedding party knocking over tables and scattering people like a terrorists. Finally and directly to all three of the above manufacturers, as well as any others that Ive missed All of you know that you can show the fun of cool, high performance driving without using and thereby glamorizing often deadly and illegal street racing no how much you see it as harmless marketing hyperbole. You are all better than that, Im sure. Doug Stokes. PS Id like to invite anyone in the industry who wants to see what Im talking about out for one of our Thursday Night Thunder events at Irwindale Dragstrip. Im not scared to say it I love a good Subway sandwich. My dad used to take me to the only Subway in town after we went grocery shopping, and I remember tracking. Gizmodo sat down with Mezrich to talk about a few of the themes present in his book, as well as the future of deextinction and scientific breakthroughs in general. Heck. Ill even buy you a hot dog, soda, and a bag of chips. Its worth emphasizing, as Doug mentioned in his letter, that hes not against fast driving. Watch Racing Extinction Tube Free' title='Watch Racing Extinction Tube Free' />At all. In fact, Irwindale has been providing a safe place for people to take their fast cars for years, and even has a weekly event to let anyone race their own car for only 2. Doug has makes some really good points here street racing kills people, those involved in the race and otherwise, and car manufacturers should own up to their involvement and glorification of racing on public roads. Why Bringing Back a Wooly Mammoth Is No Longer Science Fiction. Dr. George Church is a real life Dr. Frankenstein. The inventor of CRISPR and one of the minds behind the Human Genome Project is no longer content just reading and editing DNAnow he wants to make new life. In Ben Mezrichs latest book, Wooly The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of Historys Most Iconic Extinct Creatures, Church and his Harvard lab try to do the impossible, and clone an extinct Woolly mammoth back into existence. Mezrich, author of the books that would become the feature films 2. The Social Network, seems to have graduated from college to a bioengineering Ph. D with his latest work, which is chock full of scientific explanation detailing every aspect of the Church labs efforts to rewrite the DNA of an elephant to look like a wooly mammoth. But Mezrich is even more interested in telling the stories of the people trying to make the mammoth a reality, dramatizing the lives of Church, his wife, Harvard Professor Dr. Ting Wu, their fellow scientists, researchers working for a competing cloning lab in Korea, and the conservationists at the Siberian preserve where the mammoths will finally reside. While at times his predictions feel too good to be true, Mezrichs prose rarely fails to engage. Gizmodo sat down with Mezrich to talk about a few of the themes present in his book, as well as the future of de extinction and scientific breakthroughs in general. Below is a lightly edited and condensed version of the interview. Gizmodo What brought you to extinct species revival in particular Mezrich Ive been interested in mammoths since I was a kid, basically, and Ive always been a fan of Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park, so its always been on my mind to tell a story like that. Then a couple years ago, I started hearing about Dr. George Church and the Mammoth Revival project, and I decided I just needed to tell this story. So I basically reached out to him blindly. He let me embed myself in his lab, so I spent a while just living there seeing what was going on, and just getting really into it. Gizmodo An early chapter of the book opens four years in the future, when humans have succeeded in bringing mammoths back to life. What makes you think the project will succeed so soon Mezrich Even at this moment, right now, there are three prehistoric woolly mammoth genomes alive, living in elephant cells, so were on the verge of it. I was talking to George the previous night. Even though he doesnt put a date on it, I put the four year date, but he sees that as totally possible. The slowest part of the process right now is the gestation period of an elephant. Whether well have a woolly mammoth in three years or just be very close in three years, I dont know, but a lot depends on the money and on the elephant. The initiative is how they work on it, but it is feasible. Gizmodo Lets talk about the money. Thats a huge motivating factor behind the project, but it seems like the wealthy are the ones funding scientific efforts a lot of the time Editors Note The Church Labs Genome Sequencing project is funded mainly by private computing and biotechnology companies. Is this a good thing How do you feel about science funded on the whims of oligarchs Mezrich Well its interesting, you look at this marriage between incredibly wealthy people and science, and in some ways its a very good thing. You know, in some ways it pushes science forward. Youre not gonna see and I wish you would Donald Trump pouring money into the woolly mammoth revival project, youre not seeing the government doing these things. Scientists do often have to turn to outside sources, and if someone like Peter Thiel wants to live forever, he needs to fund the things in George Churchs lab. So whatever his personal goal, its good for everybody. I look at it as a positive thing, I think big money has always influenced outside the box science, look at what Elon Musk does or whats going on at Amazon, Facebook or Google. Its very very wealthy people throwing money at crazy ideas, and hopefully we all benefit from it. Peter Thiel put in 1. Gizmodo This book and The Accidental Billionaires both had the protagonists receive additional funding from Peter Thiel. How do you feel about his involvement in particular in such immediately relevant workMezrich Yeah, Ive written about him twice. Editors Note Mezrich also covered Peter Thiel in his book Accidental Billionaires In this case the way George tells the story, he basically ran into Peter Thiel, and told him about a couple of projects. Thiel said tell me your craziest projects, and he listed a couple of them, and Thiel said, the woolly mammoth, thats the one I want to do. Watch Serendipity Online Free 2016. Gizmodo Speaking of other projects, is Church working on anything half as crazy as a mammoth Mezrich Yeah, absolutely, Church and his lab are doing the anti malaria mosquitos, working with the Gates foundation, theyre building domes over villages in Africa and releasing mosquitoes that cant carry malaria, to test them out. Also, his student Ken Esfeld at MIT is working on transgenic mice to beat lyme disease. The goal is to release 1. Lyme disease onto the island of Nantucket, which is kind of a wild story. In his lab, theyre also working on the pigs with human compatible livers. Theyve a couple of pig embryos with livers that can be used in humans. Youre looking at the future of transplantation, which is incredible. Theyre working on projects to extend lifespans but the mammoth project and the ones with the transgenic species are the craziest. Gizmodo Do you think meddling with ecosystems and reviving lost species could have negative effects on living ones Mezrich You have to be very ethical and responsible because youre working with technology that is very powerful. The same technology that allows you to create a woolly mammoth or an extinct species allows you to eliminate a species if you want. You could eliminate mosquitos Editors Note Scientists are discussing the possibility of doing this with a controversial and speculative technology called gene drive, but that brings up enormous issues in ecology. I think bringing back an extinct species like the mammoth is generally a good thing, I think that the people who dont want Church to do that are usually thinking what does it mean for the Asian elephant population, which is endangered. But its not a zero sum gamewere not giving up on these endangered species. We now have the technology to bring back a species we mostly ate out of existence. Its like a karmic righting of a wrong, and theres been a lot of talk about the sixth extinction, species are going extinct all over the place, but the fact that we can bring one back is a huge moment, I think, in human history and our ability fix the things we were breaking. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. Gizmodo Church isnt the only one working to clone a mammoth. Theres also Hwang Woo suks Korean dog cloning lab, Soaam Technologies. Can you talk about how you got involved with them Mezrich This is a wild storythis is the story of a disgraced scientist. He was the one who claimed to clone human cells, but it turns out he had been forcing his students to donate their eggs, and secondly that his clone cells are fraudulent, so hes trying to resurrect his reputation by being the first to clone a mammoth. So, he has supposedly got incredibly preserved frozen mammoths out of the ice in the Arctic in conjunction with some Russians, and is going to use those cells to clone the mammoth.