Paradise Papers: PH guide
Some suggestions to help you hide your wealth not only offshore, but offland
That may indeed be the case for certain news stories, and for those of a more delicate constitution, but for powerfully-built PH Director types who like to pick up useful (and ideally free) investment advice, this week's Paradise Papers revelations have been essential viewing.
Over the years, our Show Us Your Real Estate Pawn thread has uncovered many inspired garaging solutions, but for the ultimate combination of massive floor space, dinner-clean floors, heavy engineering and furtiveness, few can rival this setup on the shores of California's Lake Tahoe.
This vid was a sales promo back in 2012, so we assume there's a new owner now enjoying this property's Tracy Island-made-real features, safe in the knowledge that even snooping taxmen tooled up with camera drones won't be able to spot their guilty secret.
The big problem with just about every flying car since Popular Science began publishing in the late 1870s is that none of them really fly. Well, some of them do, but the tradeoff is that you have to look past some pretty big design compromises ranging from gopping on-road styling to inadvertent pedestrian incineration and/or beheading.
The Terrafugia TF-X is different in that it appears to be a) serious and b) stylish. Terrafugia has the usual team of award-winning MIT-trained aerospace engineers behind it, with one goal: "to make general aviation safer, more convenient, more fun, and more accessible."
TF-X testing begins in 2018, and a production date of 8-12 years from now is being talked about. Applying the normal standards of flying car development, that'll take us up to 2045 or so, by which time it's entirely possible that rich people might not want to go out much at all.
Twenty minutes after you've been shopping for poop sacks at Lidl or roosting up the dirt on your farm you can be up, up and away. Here's a rather touching vid of spunky TV reporter Polly doing just that, showing plenty of gumption (and filling up a bit) on a 2016 Maverick flight. Presumably nobody showed her this 2013 vid of the Maverick not doing quite so well.
Flight always seems less dangerous when it's only a few inches off the ground. That doesn't really solve our traffic problems, but you can't criticise this Volkswagen hovercar on pedestrian friendliness. It floats along using nothing more than blue light coming out of its bottom. Unfortunately we can't quite read the technical explanation, but why oh why are we wasting our time with all these other alternative power sources when there's free blue light to be had?
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff