If it swaps out with the back wheel on a traditional bike, it looks like it relies on the traditional rim brakes to stop. Unless it relies on triggering a regenerative brake from a smartphone, which sounds utterly impractical.
You could probably create one of these electric drive wheels that swaps out with a coaster brake wheel (the one where you back-pedal to stop), but that seems like it wouldn't stop the bike as fast as a coaster brake.
How about a law that says movie stars can only make 100 times what the lowest wage guy on the movie set makes? Perhaps recording artists should only make some multiple of what some guy in the studio does? Maybe authors can only make some multiple of what the editors at their publishing houses make?
Does anyone really believe laws like that that would lead to net improvements in those areas, or for society in general?
Here's what I worry about: the future. Income is tied to education success in so many ways - better prenatal healthcare, better access to schools, more stable homes, etc.
A large gap between the rich and the poor means we're taking a random segment of the future generation and not allowing them to grow to their full potential.
That's troubling as a future.
As for recording artists or movie stars, royalties are different from wages. Still, I wonder - would we be better or worse off if those were just another job? Does society benefit from having multi-million dollar movie stars? Or if we fill those roles with still-talented but unknown actors, would the result be almost the same?
Now we're mixing data from different years (so this is a rough estimate), but I'm seeing a total of 65.1 billion kwh/year from solar + wind, with a usage of 549.1 billion kwh/year. So about 12%. Compare this to to the 94.1 billion kwh/year from nuclear.
Now this neglects another problem - the variability of solar and wind. If solar and wind make up a small fraction of the grid, or it's possible to sell to neighboring countries, it's pretty easy to sell excess energy when it's windy/sunny, and use other power plants when it's not. I'm not sure what overcapacity the US would need if it primarily resorted to wind & solar power.
Not to mention the false dichotomy. We can build solar, we can build wind, we can build nuclear - but we can also build coal power plants, natural gas power plants, and oil power plants.
There's nothing preventing us from building both nuclear and renewable energy power plants in order to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel power plants. If you believe that anthropological global warming is a real problem, I'd suggest that reducing CO2 emissions through a combination of solar, wind & nuclear would be quicker than reducing CO2 emissions by just wind & solar, or by just nuclear.
> Sorry, you're claiming taxis and trains have lower costs than driving? Where the hell are you living? I'd love to be there!
Figure it like this - loosely, the IRS thinks fifty cents/mile is fair compensation. So for every mile you go, that's two quarters.
Taxis are higher than fifty cents a mile. Trains, at least commuter rail, are much cheaper.
If you really want to to dissect the IRS figure per mile, figure out the price you'll buy the vehicle for, the price you'll sell the vehicle, split the difference, and add up all expected maintenance (check the manual, then don't forget to add tires, suspension components, windshield wipers, etc). Add a few more thousands for unexpected repairs. Divide this by expected mileage, then add up the cost of gasoline per mile. This is close to your real cost in owning a vehicle. It's a lot higher than you likely think.
But most people in the US don't keep a financial ledger or a budget. We don't realize how much we pay for the privilege of driving.
The cheapness of the energy is IMO the largest part of the problem. We have way too many devices slowly sipping the power, while an average house still leaks way too much of the (heat) energy. We are overconsuming way too many goods (which cost energy to produce) and then go through even more energy wasting to compensate the overconsumption.
While I am frustrated at the inefficiencies found in a modern house or office, I see cheap energy being both part of the problem and part of the solution.
You've given an example of how it is part of the problem.
Here's how it's part of the solution: Some sustainable methods require far more energy than non-sustainable methods. One simple example would be sewage. What takes far more energy?: Simply dumping the sewage directly into a lake, or processing the sewage until the result is pure enough to drink?
If you're worried about how much energy is being used, I'd suggest the following to advocate for incentives to minimize energy usage. One obvious example would be electrical bills. There's frequently a reoccuring monthly flat fee, as well as the cost per kwh. Say $10 flat fee, plus $0.10 per kwh. A household that uses a miniscule 100 kwh/mo ends up paying $20 A household that uses a massive 1000 kwh/mo ends up paying $110. Even though the later household uses ten times more energy, it pays a bill less than six times as large. The closer and closer one gets to minimizing energy usage, the less of an incentive it becomes, since the flat fees become more and more of the bill.
Another idea would be to incentivize creating devices with low standby-power usage. This could be done through mandatory reporting on the device itself (e.g. estimate 22 hours of standby use of power each day and have the item display the yearly standby electrical cost) or through a tax based on how much energy a device uses instandby mode.
But I think another step is education. There's low energy usage houses. I'd *like* a low energy house myself, something like a Passivhaus, but most USians aren't even aware of the idea.
Politician: We're commissioning a study on biodiversity. But this study strictly focuses on intelligent design, so don't include anything about evolution. After all, we should explore alternative explanations for a prevailing theory.
Biologist: We refuse to participate in your misleading, artificially limited study.
Idiot Slashdot Commenters: The biologists are an evolutionist cult! They're... they're building a cathedral! Science isn't just confirming what you know! Real scientists would do the investigation to learn more about intelligent design!
What if it went instead like this?
Politician: We're commissioning a study on biodiversity. But this study strictly focuses on intelligent design, so don't include anything about evolution. After all, we should explore alternative explanations for a prevailing theory.
Biologist: We've done the research, and have concluded that intelligent design is a poor explanation for biodiversity due to...
Idiot Slashdot Commenters: Why did we waste money studying this?
:p
But as you admit, cyclical climate change is a real phenomenon. If we understand it better, we can also understand how much we're forcing AGW due to our emissions.
So the real conversation goes something like this:
Politician: Investigate the cyclical reasons behind climate change.
Scientist: We find that, on average, cyclical reasons can only explain 5% of the observed climate change. Here's a detailed breakdown of the data...
I've biked that area, and let me tell you something:
On Lyndale, the alternative route would be Bryant, a bike boulevard. It has marked bike lanes and is optimized for bicycle traffic, as well as being connected to both the Greenway and the Wedgetip bridge.
It's also a driver's "sneak route", and I've experienced automobile drivers being aggressive on it.
I've also ridden Lyndale. Why? Because I was going to a store on Lyndale. A lot of cyclists in that area are biking for utility, and most bike routes don't go directly to a store.
Bring on the equiality I say - time to register those bikes
I'm fine with this if there was a national system in order to register and recover stolen bicycles.
have manditory fitness checks for they safety and test/license to riders for the road?
I'm fine with this if we give automobile drivers tests as well to judge their reaction time and ability to drive. None of this "pass the eye test and renew" sloppiness. Since automobile accidents are a major cause of death, it just seems sensible to have stricter licensing.
Then there is the issue of road taxes, etc - time they started paying their share?
Since local roads tend to be paid out of property taxes, they already do pay more than their fair share. But I'd be totally up with having odometers on bikes to measure their usage, and calculate the damage they do to roads if we also make automobiles pay their fare share based on mileage and weight of the vehicle. Oh, and for parking spots (why should they get a free ride). And another fee for winter plowing (after all, cars mostly benefit from winter plowing). Oh, and for frequent pedestrian bridges and other routes for when their roads destroy walkability.
Damn those two way streets, cyclists are special and shouldnt have to do THOSE things, right?
I'm not being sarcastic. If automobiles finally start to pay their fair share, I'm for bikes paying their share as well. Because I know that the cost of driving will go up far more than the cost of biking, and that will push more people to biking, which increases safety.
Right now the average automobile in the US is getting heavily subsidized. It's to the point where Oregon (IIRC) has calculated that bicyclists are a net gain while automobile drivers are a loss. So let's talk about two-way streets, and how subsidized automobile drivers feel entitled to the roads.
The only time I've been hit by a car (very minor, thank God, with no injuries), is during the day, heading north (no sun in anyone's eyes) during clear weather.
I was stopped at a stop sign and the vehicle behind me rear-ended me. I'm assuming the driver was distracted and had trained herself to look for car-sized vehicles on the road.
If I look at fatalities in my area, I do recall one where the cyclist was riding against traffic. However, that's the exception rather than the rule. The other fatalities tend to be the automobile driver's fault - running a stop sign while speeding, failing to see the cyclist on the road, passing on the shoulder to get past a left-turning car, hit-and-run, failure to check the bike lane before executing a turn, etc.
I suspect that if cyclists regularly had safety cameras recording their rides, we'd find a few of the accidents where the driver claimed the cyclist just appeared out of nowhere and there's no living cyclist to disagree are actually cases of distracted automobile drivers. I also strongly suspect the phrase "the sun was in my eyes" is automobile drive code for "I was checking my cell phone".
If you're into cycling statistics, also look at "The Art of Cycling" by Robert Hurst. He has some statistics in that book. However it is first and foremost a book on bicycling techniques (mostly common sense, IMO, but otherwise good).
But it's kind of hard to figure out how safe/unsafe cycling is though.
Take where I live for example. You have five groups of cyclists on the roads and sidewalks.
The first are kids. Young, dumb, prone to screwing around, but not really playing in heavy traffic. Probably more prone to being injured, not to being killed.
The second are the adult novices. Far more prone to ride in heavy traffic, but inexperienced, and not that fond of traffic laws. Some think they are invincible and they ride that way. College kids away from home who can't afford a car tend to fall into this crowd. So are the DUI idiots who no longer have a vehicle to drive.
The third group would be the daily commuters. Far more prone to follow traffic laws. Far more experienced. But they'll ride in heavy traffic, during rush hour.
The fourth are the road warriors. They are training. Also tend to be more experienced, but they'll usually avoid heavy traffic (slows 'em down).
The fifth are the offroad cyclists and their related kin. Anyone who drops "singletrack" into their conversation about what they are doing that weekend.:) They tend to have a story about the last time they went over their handlebars.
Very different groups, and with, what I suspect, are very different accident profiles.
They have a camping stove that is somewhat similar, but with the added advantage of having forced air.
It's basically a coffee-can sized container with a fan on the bottom to force air through the fuel. They usually run on rechargeable batteries, but they can also be powered by a solar cell (or the batteries can be recharged with a solar cell).
It seems to me that this would be a much better solution compared to inventing something completely new. If appropriately-sized containers can be found or fabricated in these areas, only the fan/battery pack + solar charger needs to be sold in a kit. The solar charger could be USB out, which would allow cell phones to also be charged, encouraging uptake where cell phones are used as the primary source of communications. Alternatively, the fuel itself will create a heat differential. There may be a cost-effective way to have the heat differential recharge the battery Some backpacking stoves already do these, but they are spendy.
It would be interesting to compare these stove (I think they are commonly called biomass fuel stoves for camping), and compare it to a less-technical design such as a rocket stove (somewhat similar theory, but no moving parts), and compare both to just a sheet-metal non-complex stove. What's the best price point? What about the efficiency compared to the presently used setups? What about the durability?
This project to invent a new stove seems a combination of not-invented-here syndrome and best-is-the-enemy-of-good-enough.
It's a really fun read, IMO, at least in the beginning. Middle and ending, especially with the codas, are a tad weak.
Overall, I thought it was a good book, but not Hugo-class. It's more of a book that starts out as a parody of Star Trek/etc, and ends up trying to pull a working plot out of that parody.
The thing is, we're still making humans at an accelerating rate.
Actually, we're still making humans at a decelerating rate.
Human population growth rates peaked in the 1960s and have been falling ever since. That means the population is growing, but it isn't growing as fast (percentage wise) as it was before.
The problem with auto transmissions is that they aren't actually better than the manual function they replace (again, except arguably for DSG transmissions, which are only found in a couple of makes, namely VW and its subsidiaries and also some Fords). They have significantly reduced performance, greatly increased complexity and reduced reliability, and significantly reduced fuel economy.
I suspect if you look at modern automatic transmissions, you'd be surprised, especially with some models which may see a 1 mpg difference between automatic and manual versions (and this is for vehicles that get over 30 mpg).
Better tech, electronic shifting, and more gears does wonders.
It always surprises me that people forget - if you allow the president a power grab, you're giving that power to a future President Palin or whoever. Don't want Palin making your healthcare choices, including contraceptives? Keep the federal government out of health care.
But I can vote a future President Palin out of office.
Right now, a lot of healthcare choices are coerced by health insurance - which doctors I can visit, where I can go, what is covered. The decisions are made by people I don't know, people I have no control over, people I can't remove from their position.
Humans are not brought into heat by the absence of young
You may want to read about nursing and the absence of ovulation. You also should follow that up with how long nursing goes on in hunter-gatherer societies.
Not to mention that nursing is a heavy calorie drain. Even if ovulation does occur when a mother is nursing, nursing a year old child is a heavy calorie drain - calories that can contribute to a new male's child instead. There's also the time element - killing another male's child increases the time a female can spend on the male's child.
killing offspring is directly opposed to the core of evolutionary theory
I don't think you understand the core of evolutionary theory if you think that males who don't kill their rival's children (and thus increase their own child's reproductive success) aren't going to outbreed those who do.
Now that I think about it, this would also support infanticide even committed by females. Imagine a band of hominids. In this band there's a few breeding pairs, as well as males too young to get mates, and females that are currently uncommitted. If the uncommitted female can successfully breed with a "cheating" male already in a breeding pair, that will reduce the time and resources given to that male's breeding partner. Plus there's always the chance of the uncommitted female permanently stealing away the male. But if that female cannot protect her own offspring, the incentive to cheat will be less. So if a female can kill her male partner's children by another female, there's an incentive there.
X10 was really good if you wanted to have your stuff come on/off on a timer. Often forget to turn on the porch light at night? Never again. On vacation? Lights and TV can come on and off automatically, in case someone is watching the house.
Was also good for apartments who always seemed to have the switch controlled plug in the wrong place. And its nice to be able to walk in with a bunch of grocery and have your lights come on in the room automatically..
Sure, it had its problems but it isn't total crap either.
My experience was similar. Cheap enough. But it worked for me. I wouldn't trust it with something that could burn the house down if it accidentally turned on, or something that would result in the pipes freezing if it accidentally turned off, but it was good at controlling lights and other simple on/off electrical devices.
The way to solve that was to have 50 states and very little federal law thus creating competition among the states for population, which directly correlates with their tax revenues. Now that the federal government took over everything and made most of the states indentured servants, finding another country is the only real option left if you don't like your government's way of managing things.
There's still some states powers, especially in regards to taxation. It's very possible in many areas to live in one state and travel to another for employment or for other reasons. Which may be indicative of a flaw in the idea of regions competing against each other - when the fastest travel time was a horse, it could make sense to let states compete against each other. But nowadays, with the same idea of letting states compete against each other, it may make sense for me to live right over the border in a low-tax state, and commute each day across the border into a high-tax state whose better-maintained infrastructure (roads, schools, etc) creates a better economy.
This has nothing to do with pollution, or the misuse of the planets finite resources. Its about everything from research on dogs means diabetics today don't die, or humans don't do blind by spaying shampoo in baby rabbits eyes (the fact that the discussion is about chimps at all annoys me...as they are prettier). Its not pretty, its ugly science. The only real question is the validity of that science.
There's also the question of ethics. We have data from the Nazi human experimentation on hypothermia, and while it has provided important data on how the human body reacts to freezing, few people would say that such experimentation on human beings is ethical.
Chimps and other great-apes aren't human. But they are our nearest relatives, and mentally they do appear to be one of the smarter animals. They may be near enough to humans, cognitively, that some will consider such experimentation on great apes to be unethical.
Slashdot Mirror
How is this regenerative?
If it swaps out with the back wheel on a traditional bike, it looks like it relies on the traditional rim brakes to stop. Unless it relies on triggering a regenerative brake from a smartphone, which sounds utterly impractical.
You could probably create one of these electric drive wheels that swaps out with a coaster brake wheel (the one where you back-pedal to stop), but that seems like it wouldn't stop the bike as fast as a coaster brake.
What about humans who also lack responsibilities - the severely disabled (either temporary or permanently), or the very young?
Wouldn't they also lack rights then? It's not like a newborn has any responsibilities. Nor do coma patients.
Here's what I worry about: the future. Income is tied to education success in so many ways - better prenatal healthcare, better access to schools, more stable homes, etc.
A large gap between the rich and the poor means we're taking a random segment of the future generation and not allowing them to grow to their full potential.
That's troubling as a future.
As for recording artists or movie stars, royalties are different from wages. Still, I wonder - would we be better or worse off if those were just another job? Does society benefit from having multi-million dollar movie stars? Or if we fill those roles with still-talented but unknown actors, would the result be almost the same?
The tow ball size indicates the weight limit of the hitch.
Although there's so many options nowadays that the original purpose is probably invalidated.
Lets check on Germany and run the numbers.
Germany peaked at 23.9 GW. At the peak, it was providing for 40% of Germany's electrical usage. Impressive.
But that's the peak. How about overall?
Wolfram Alpha gives 549.1 billion kwh/year for German's total electricity consumption. It also gives 19.1 billion kwh a year from solar, tide or waves and 46 billion kwh a year from wind.
Now we're mixing data from different years (so this is a rough estimate), but I'm seeing a total of 65.1 billion kwh/year from solar + wind, with a usage of 549.1 billion kwh/year. So about 12%. Compare this to to the 94.1 billion kwh/year from nuclear.
Now this neglects another problem - the variability of solar and wind. If solar and wind make up a small fraction of the grid, or it's possible to sell to neighboring countries, it's pretty easy to sell excess energy when it's windy/sunny, and use other power plants when it's not. I'm not sure what overcapacity the US would need if it primarily resorted to wind & solar power.
Not to mention the false dichotomy. We can build solar, we can build wind, we can build nuclear - but we can also build coal power plants, natural gas power plants, and oil power plants.
There's nothing preventing us from building both nuclear and renewable energy power plants in order to reduce the reliance on fossil fuel power plants. If you believe that anthropological global warming is a real problem, I'd suggest that reducing CO2 emissions through a combination of solar, wind & nuclear would be quicker than reducing CO2 emissions by just wind & solar, or by just nuclear.
> Sorry, you're claiming taxis and trains have lower costs than driving? Where the hell are you living? I'd love to be there! Figure it like this - loosely, the IRS thinks fifty cents/mile is fair compensation. So for every mile you go, that's two quarters. Taxis are higher than fifty cents a mile. Trains, at least commuter rail, are much cheaper. If you really want to to dissect the IRS figure per mile, figure out the price you'll buy the vehicle for, the price you'll sell the vehicle, split the difference, and add up all expected maintenance (check the manual, then don't forget to add tires, suspension components, windshield wipers, etc). Add a few more thousands for unexpected repairs. Divide this by expected mileage, then add up the cost of gasoline per mile. This is close to your real cost in owning a vehicle. It's a lot higher than you likely think. But most people in the US don't keep a financial ledger or a budget. We don't realize how much we pay for the privilege of driving.
While I am frustrated at the inefficiencies found in a modern house or office, I see cheap energy being both part of the problem and part of the solution.
You've given an example of how it is part of the problem.
Here's how it's part of the solution: Some sustainable methods require far more energy than non-sustainable methods. One simple example would be sewage. What takes far more energy?: Simply dumping the sewage directly into a lake, or processing the sewage until the result is pure enough to drink?
If you're worried about how much energy is being used, I'd suggest the following to advocate for incentives to minimize energy usage. One obvious example would be electrical bills. There's frequently a reoccuring monthly flat fee, as well as the cost per kwh. Say $10 flat fee, plus $0.10 per kwh. A household that uses a miniscule 100 kwh/mo ends up paying $20 A household that uses a massive 1000 kwh/mo ends up paying $110. Even though the later household uses ten times more energy, it pays a bill less than six times as large. The closer and closer one gets to minimizing energy usage, the less of an incentive it becomes, since the flat fees become more and more of the bill.
Another idea would be to incentivize creating devices with low standby-power usage. This could be done through mandatory reporting on the device itself (e.g. estimate 22 hours of standby use of power each day and have the item display the yearly standby electrical cost) or through a tax based on how much energy a device uses instandby mode.
But I think another step is education. There's low energy usage houses. I'd *like* a low energy house myself, something like a Passivhaus, but most USians aren't even aware of the idea.
What if it went instead like this?
Politician: We're commissioning a study on biodiversity. But this study strictly focuses on intelligent design, so don't include anything about evolution. After all, we should explore alternative explanations for a prevailing theory.
Biologist: We've done the research, and have concluded that intelligent design is a poor explanation for biodiversity due to...
Idiot Slashdot Commenters: Why did we waste money studying this?
But as you admit, cyclical climate change is a real phenomenon. If we understand it better, we can also understand how much we're forcing AGW due to our emissions.
So the real conversation goes something like this:
Politician: Investigate the cyclical reasons behind climate change.
Scientist: We find that, on average, cyclical reasons can only explain 5% of the observed climate change. Here's a detailed breakdown of the data...
I've biked that area, and let me tell you something:
On Lyndale, the alternative route would be Bryant, a bike boulevard. It has marked bike lanes and is optimized for bicycle traffic, as well as being connected to both the Greenway and the Wedgetip bridge.
It's also a driver's "sneak route", and I've experienced automobile drivers being aggressive on it.
I've also ridden Lyndale. Why? Because I was going to a store on Lyndale. A lot of cyclists in that area are biking for utility, and most bike routes don't go directly to a store.
I'm fine with this if there was a national system in order to register and recover stolen bicycles.
I'm fine with this if we give automobile drivers tests as well to judge their reaction time and ability to drive. None of this "pass the eye test and renew" sloppiness. Since automobile accidents are a major cause of death, it just seems sensible to have stricter licensing.
Since local roads tend to be paid out of property taxes, they already do pay more than their fair share. But I'd be totally up with having odometers on bikes to measure their usage, and calculate the damage they do to roads if we also make automobiles pay their fare share based on mileage and weight of the vehicle. Oh, and for parking spots (why should they get a free ride). And another fee for winter plowing (after all, cars mostly benefit from winter plowing). Oh, and for frequent pedestrian bridges and other routes for when their roads destroy walkability.
I'm not being sarcastic. If automobiles finally start to pay their fair share, I'm for bikes paying their share as well. Because I know that the cost of driving will go up far more than the cost of biking, and that will push more people to biking, which increases safety.
Right now the average automobile in the US is getting heavily subsidized. It's to the point where Oregon (IIRC) has calculated that bicyclists are a net gain while automobile drivers are a loss. So let's talk about two-way streets, and how subsidized automobile drivers feel entitled to the roads.
Anecdotally, I can believe this.
The only time I've been hit by a car (very minor, thank God, with no injuries), is during the day, heading north (no sun in anyone's eyes) during clear weather.
I was stopped at a stop sign and the vehicle behind me rear-ended me. I'm assuming the driver was distracted and had trained herself to look for car-sized vehicles on the road.
If I look at fatalities in my area, I do recall one where the cyclist was riding against traffic. However, that's the exception rather than the rule. The other fatalities tend to be the automobile driver's fault - running a stop sign while speeding, failing to see the cyclist on the road, passing on the shoulder to get past a left-turning car, hit-and-run, failure to check the bike lane before executing a turn, etc.
I suspect that if cyclists regularly had safety cameras recording their rides, we'd find a few of the accidents where the driver claimed the cyclist just appeared out of nowhere and there's no living cyclist to disagree are actually cases of distracted automobile drivers. I also strongly suspect the phrase "the sun was in my eyes" is automobile drive code for "I was checking my cell phone".
YMMV.
Agreed with "Traffic", it's a great read.
If you're into cycling statistics, also look at "The Art of Cycling" by Robert Hurst. He has some statistics in that book. However it is first and foremost a book on bicycling techniques (mostly common sense, IMO, but otherwise good).
But it's kind of hard to figure out how safe/unsafe cycling is though.
Take where I live for example. You have five groups of cyclists on the roads and sidewalks.
Very different groups, and with, what I suspect, are very different accident profiles.
What about bald women? It's rare, but it's possible to get male pattern baldness in women.
I suspect they find dating quite difficult.
They have a camping stove that is somewhat similar, but with the added advantage of having forced air.
It's basically a coffee-can sized container with a fan on the bottom to force air through the fuel. They usually run on rechargeable batteries, but they can also be powered by a solar cell (or the batteries can be recharged with a solar cell).
It seems to me that this would be a much better solution compared to inventing something completely new. If appropriately-sized containers can be found or fabricated in these areas, only the fan/battery pack + solar charger needs to be sold in a kit. The solar charger could be USB out, which would allow cell phones to also be charged, encouraging uptake where cell phones are used as the primary source of communications. Alternatively, the fuel itself will create a heat differential. There may be a cost-effective way to have the heat differential recharge the battery Some backpacking stoves already do these, but they are spendy.
It would be interesting to compare these stove (I think they are commonly called biomass fuel stoves for camping), and compare it to a less-technical design such as a rocket stove (somewhat similar theory, but no moving parts), and compare both to just a sheet-metal non-complex stove. What's the best price point? What about the efficiency compared to the presently used setups? What about the durability?
This project to invent a new stove seems a combination of not-invented-here syndrome and best-is-the-enemy-of-good-enough.
It's a really fun read, IMO, at least in the beginning. Middle and ending, especially with the codas, are a tad weak.
Overall, I thought it was a good book, but not Hugo-class. It's more of a book that starts out as a parody of Star Trek/etc, and ends up trying to pull a working plot out of that parody.
Could the warning label be more clear? I'm specifically thinking of "this is dangerous to children because ingestion can cause [problem]".
Actually, we're still making humans at a decelerating rate.
Human population growth rates peaked in the 1960s and have been falling ever since. That means the population is growing, but it isn't growing as fast (percentage wise) as it was before.
I just find the following part humorous: "a sort of Ctrl-Z"
Why is that humorous to me? Because I use Opera, which maps "control-z" to restore an accidentally closed tab. ;)
I suspect if you look at modern automatic transmissions, you'd be surprised, especially with some models which may see a 1 mpg difference between automatic and manual versions (and this is for vehicles that get over 30 mpg).
Better tech, electronic shifting, and more gears does wonders.
But I can vote a future President Palin out of office.
Right now, a lot of healthcare choices are coerced by health insurance - which doctors I can visit, where I can go, what is covered. The decisions are made by people I don't know, people I have no control over, people I can't remove from their position.
You may want to read about nursing and the absence of ovulation. You also should follow that up with how long nursing goes on in hunter-gatherer societies.
Not to mention that nursing is a heavy calorie drain. Even if ovulation does occur when a mother is nursing, nursing a year old child is a heavy calorie drain - calories that can contribute to a new male's child instead. There's also the time element - killing another male's child increases the time a female can spend on the male's child.
I don't think you understand the core of evolutionary theory if you think that males who don't kill their rival's children (and thus increase their own child's reproductive success) aren't going to outbreed those who do.
Now that I think about it, this would also support infanticide even committed by females. Imagine a band of hominids. In this band there's a few breeding pairs, as well as males too young to get mates, and females that are currently uncommitted. If the uncommitted female can successfully breed with a "cheating" male already in a breeding pair, that will reduce the time and resources given to that male's breeding partner. Plus there's always the chance of the uncommitted female permanently stealing away the male. But if that female cannot protect her own offspring, the incentive to cheat will be less. So if a female can kill her male partner's children by another female, there's an incentive there.
My experience was similar. Cheap enough. But it worked for me. I wouldn't trust it with something that could burn the house down if it accidentally turned on, or something that would result in the pipes freezing if it accidentally turned off, but it was good at controlling lights and other simple on/off electrical devices.
There's still some states powers, especially in regards to taxation. It's very possible in many areas to live in one state and travel to another for employment or for other reasons. Which may be indicative of a flaw in the idea of regions competing against each other - when the fastest travel time was a horse, it could make sense to let states compete against each other. But nowadays, with the same idea of letting states compete against each other, it may make sense for me to live right over the border in a low-tax state, and commute each day across the border into a high-tax state whose better-maintained infrastructure (roads, schools, etc) creates a better economy.
There's also the question of ethics. We have data from the Nazi human experimentation on hypothermia, and while it has provided important data on how the human body reacts to freezing, few people would say that such experimentation on human beings is ethical.
Chimps and other great-apes aren't human. But they are our nearest relatives, and mentally they do appear to be one of the smarter animals. They may be near enough to humans, cognitively, that some will consider such experimentation on great apes to be unethical.
Actually, he could do something like a Surly Big Dummy, a Bullitt Cargo Bicycle or a BOB bicycle trailer or even a BAW trailer.