The world is an oddly serene place when you’re streaking across the salt at 400 mph.

You’ve wrestled your car, if that term applies to a 2,000-horsepower missile, into something approaching submission. The skull-rattling, vision-blurring vibration smoothed out somewhere around 300 mph, so you can see clearly again. It’s still a rough ride — you are moving 586 feet per second, after all — and noisy as hell. But, like the eye of a storm, it’s eerily calm.

“It’s very loud, but it’s very quiet because you’re tuned in,” said Amir Rosenbaum, who currently holds two land speed records and is no strange...

When food shortages and rising prices drive people to desperation, social unrest soon follows. It’s as true today as it was in 18th-century France. According to a new analysis of food prices and unrest, the 2008 global food riots and ongoing Arab Spring may be a preview of what’s coming.

“When you have food prices peak, you have all these riots. But look under the peaks, at the background trend. That’s increasing quite rapidly, too,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. “In one to two years, the background trend runs into the place where all hell breaks ...