Slashdot Mirror
Building a Better Motorized Bicycle
toyotaboy writes "Saw this in 'design news' magazine. It's a bicycle using an engine that looks like something pulled off of an R/C airplane. He uses a gear reduction system as well as a overrunning clutch to keep the engine running while stopped. Claims to get 20 mile range from its 1/4 gallon gas tank (80mpg). If you figure most engines like that are 30k rpm with 1:100 gear reduction, and an average bike rim is 26", you should get potentially 1,458,000 inches per hour, or 23mph! He goes on to say that similar devices in electric form (segway) fail because of their heavy 80lb weight and limited 10-15 mile range (and where do you recharge?) This thing can be filled back up at any gas station."
I'd rather ride her instead.
Your sentences apostrophe's are in the wrong place's.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
YOU LOOSE! GOOD DAY, SIR!
Sites that require JavaScript and cookies enabled (I reject most cookies) just to browse around suck.
(Veering offtopic for a second, does anyone know how to disable auto-refresh in Mozilla, or if it can be disabled? I think that'd fix their problem...and it'd also be good for dealing with Anti-Leech.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Revolution, Hemp Style Now
By David Morris, AlterNet
January 20, 2003
In 1992 a consortium of 20 British farmers requested permission to grow industrial hemp, a crop that had been banned since 1971. Home Office Minister Michael Jack saw no reason to oppose the request since industrial hemp had been grown for years on the Continent "without any problems". The farmers received licenses to cultivate 1500 acres.
In 1993 a consortium of 10 Canadian farmers requested permission to grow hemp, a crop that had been banned since 1923. The federal government informed them the law would have to be changed before commercial plots could be harvested. However, seeing that "farmers in Canada are very interested in it", Health Minister Diane Marleau issued a permit for 18 acres of experimental plots. The next year Parliament enabled commercial harvests.
In the United States, a vigorous pro-industrial hemp movement emerged at the same time. Informed and inspired by Jack Herer's 1985 best seller, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, the movement agitated for the recommercialization of industrial hemp in a country with a rich hemp history: George Washington planted hemp, Benjamin Franklin used hemp paper, Thomas Jefferson smuggled in hemp seeds from Europe.
By the early 1990s, hundreds of retail stores were selling hemp textile products. In 1994, a trade group, the Hemp Industries Association(HIA) was formed. The next year the North American Industrial Hemp Council(NAIHC) was established. Its Board included representatives from some of the country's largest textile and paper companies. In 1996 the American Farm Bureau, the nation's largest farm organization, adopted a resolution in favor of hemp research. By 2000, half the state legislatures had debated resolutions in support of hemp; a dozen enacted pro-hemp statutes. Hawaii permitted experimental plots. North Dakota legalized commercial cultivation.(The other 49 states still have laws that mirror the federal ban. The federal ban still prohibits hemp cultivation in North Dakota.)
Yet despite this upwelling of support by industry and farmers, not a single acre of industrial hemp has been harvested in the United States. Why?
The answer is that while in other countries the road to hemp legalization goes through agricultural, or health or food agencies, in the United States there is only one road to approval - through the Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA). And for the DEA, the cultivation of hemp subverts and even contradicts its mission.
It is one of the ironies of history that the industrial hemp movement reemerged just as the United States escalated its war on drugs. In 1986 the DEA was a modest agency with a modest reach. That year the White House appointed a drug czar and by Executive Order subjected all federal employees to urine testing for drugs. The DEA's budget and reach and powers dramatically expanded.
Consider some numbers. In 1985, the federal war on drugs cost about $1.5 billion. That was about one third of federal spending on the environment, one sixth of spending on energy and only 3 percent of federal spending on agriculture. Today, the drug war budget is over $20 billion, three times the environment budget, 50 percent more than the energy budget and approaching 30 percent of the entire agriculture budget. And in the post September 11th climate the drug war has become intimately intertwined with the escalating war on terrorism.
In 1979 the federal government allowed drug agents to seize the assets of suspected drug dealers or users. Since then, US law enforcement officials have seized almost $10 billion worth of cash and property. By the late 1990s some $1 billion a year worth of assets was being confiscated annually. The police came to depend on drug money to fund their operations.
The federal government pumped tens of millions of dollars into DARE, a program that sent police officers into elementary schools in virtually every school district to lecture them on the dangers of drug
help out.