US Army Staff Sgt. Christian Begge lost his right leg at the knee and his left leg just above the ankle after two IEDs exploded near his Humvee in Iraq about a year ago. On Tuesday this week he went running with President George W. Bush at the White House in Washington, D.C. fulfilling a promise after a visit a Brooke Army Medical Center in January.
Bagge’s true achievement is not that he is running with President Bush, but his dedication and positive outlook told life. Words can tell only so much, but listening to him speak (see video clip below) shows what an incredible man he is. Begge admits that he just wanted back the normalcy of his daily routine. He says, “its been an extremely long journey to this point†because he “wanted to do everything he did before.â€
We all need stories like Bagge’s in a world full of pessimism as it reminds us that true strength of character comes from within. It not only helps the injured to recover and conquer the next hurdle, but it is uplifting to everyone when this positive outlook and attitude is displayed.
I admire the mental and physical strength of Sgt. Christian Begge to be able to recover to the point he can run with the President, but even more the fact that his tour in Iraq, the terrorists IEDs and his long recovery did not shake his outstanding character is something I truly admire.
An article in Edmonds.com tickled some Volkswagen diesel lovers with new information on the 2008 VW common-rail diesels. As most VW TDI (diesel) fans know, Volkswagen will not be producing a 2007 diesel model for North American. (link) Although they have dropped the Jetta and New Beetle TDIs for 2007, the article is encouraging for 2008 model year since an all-new common-rail diesel is planned. VW intends to use the new 2.0-liter diesel engine which is estimated to produce 140 horsepower and over 200 pound-feet of torque. The change from TDI Pumpe-Duse technology is necessary to meet tougher U.S. regulations. Who knows … it might be a change worth waiting for?
Interesting airplane crash story with a positive ending. Forty-five year-old Alain Vasserot was piloting a small plane on Sunday evening in California when things when awry. While attempting to land at Palomar Airport just before 7:30 in Carlsbad, he ended up landing in a tree. Yes … landed in a tree. All pilots (and non-pilots with commonsense) know that trees are something we try to avoid at all cost. Nevertheless in Mr. Vasserot’s case the tree might have saved his life, as after lodging his plane firmly in the treetop he was able to safely wait for rescue crews. They were able to ladder their way to the airplane and bring him safely to the ground without major injury. Like they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing … but I’m not sure this scenerio was considered? Although … he had to climb down and didn’t ‘just walk away’ … or is that just semantics?
🙂
With the cost of fuel hovering just below $3.00 a gallon, alternative vehicles are becoming more and more attractive to average citizens. Unfortunately most alternative vehicles are only suited for weekend mechanics or people with expendable income. Enter Myers Motors and their all electric NmG (No More Gas). I had the good fortune last week while traveling to stop and visit with Dana Meyers, the president of Myers Motors. We had an enjoyable interview and a test drive in their little electric vehicle in Tallmadge Ohio.
The Myers Motors design originally was part of the Corbin Motors company in Hollister California. The Sparrow as it was known, was built between 2000 to late 2002 before Corbin Motors filed bankruptcy. The futuristic looking electric car (licensed as a motorcycle) sold for a reasonable MSRP $13,900 to about 350 fortunate owners. Myers Motors purchased the assets including a bunch of ‘shells’ and redesigned (and continues improve) the electrics and drive train. This new vehicle, the NmG, runs on three wheels, handles like a go-cart. It accelerates extraordinarily quickly to a top speed of 70 mph; believe me it is quick — I shockingly found this out while pulling into traffic and chirping the single rear drive wheel. I think I was expecting golf cart like acceleration.
According to Dana Myers, he sees a bright future for electric vehicles. Not only is their vehicle unique, it is also reasonable to operate. The simple electrics are designed to recharge at home from either a 220 or 110 outlet and can be fully recharged in 6-8 hours for about 55 cents at 11 cents per kilowatt hour. (quicker with the 220 charger) Myers research shows that most people commute less than 20 miles and are with one person in the vehicle where the NmG is perfectly suited. My primary pet peeve with the all electric NmG is that the range using 13 gell cell batteries is only about 30 hours. (see online manual)
Nevertheless, the electric NmG was very impressive. The hand built vehicles are constructed by craftsmen in a nice size facility in northeastern Ohio. (close to Akron) From the electric windows to the excellent instrumentation, I felt my lime green test ride was surprisingly comfortable. The little one seater has windshield wipers, heater/defroster, audio system and a cute little 6 cubic foot trunk. The would be gas door hids a recharging plug.
Dana Myers had to make several concessions to keep the MSRP at $24,900, this includes the very safe but somewhat low tech batteries that give an unacceptable range even for electric vehicles, in my opinion. It will be interesting to see just what can be accomplished with A123 Battery package or an eventual fuel cell system?
All in all, I enjoyed my visit with Dana and his enthusiasm for the NmG. I wish him well at marketing a one seat vehicle that can only go 30 miles between charges. If you are interested in adding a fun to drive EV to your garage, be sure to contact Myers Motors at 330.630.3768 or visit www.myersmotors.com to checkout the NmG.
***MSNBC has an easy read on some future EVs and hybrids here.
***GreenCarCongress had a good post about the Toyota RAV4 EV as well, one of the more promising real sized EVs.
A Businessweek article detailed a push in Brazil to use soy and other oil seed vegetable oils with their petroleum diesel. Brazil is already a leader in moving to ethanol, and this new biofuel will add to its sugarcane alcohol fuel.
Petrobras, the state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, said the new fuel, called H-Bio, was developed over 18 months by mixing refinery petroleum with oil from soy, sunflower seeds, cotton and castor beans. The new H-Bio fuel is different from biodiesel in that it is not processed but that the oil is blended in amounts up to 15% with petroleum diesel at the refinery level.
Petrobras predicted that three refineries would produce the new fuel by 2007.
In May I posted a story on “Water Power for you car” and received a few comments and couple of emails wanting more information. I attempted to dig for a bit more and sent an email to the developer. I was sent a promotional video clip that is included below. Basically the equipment was designed for the metalworking industry but could have application anywhere clean hydrogen fuel is needed. Here’s a link to a ScienceDirect abstract, or the full PDF for those with a science oriented mind.
My primary reason for trying to contact the developer was to see some actual numbers on how much amperage is used to create a particular amount of gas in to provide the BTUs. I’ve yet to find that out. (any sleuths out there?)
Imagine moving a full DVD movie through a network in 5 seconds … impossible? Yes for now, but the engineers and researchers over at IBM have build a transistor that runs faster than anything we currently have. Imagine the speeds that electronic devices could process data if they were zooming at speeds 250 times faster than cell phones? Imagine cooled chipsets in computers clocking up near 500 gigahertz … they would be “ultra-fast” says an article on msnbc/msn.
“What we’ve been doing in the last several years is pushing the absolute limits of silicon technology,” said Bernie Meyerson, head of semiconductor research for IBM. Researchers achieved speeds about 100 time faster than current chips in computers from transistors from silicon “laced” with the chemical element germanium. The test transistor achieved a speed of 500 gigahertz by a group from IBM working with the Georgia Institute of Technology, but only when they cooled it to absolute zero — yet the numbers were still impressive running it at room temperature: 300 gigahertz. (this humbles my notebook with an Intel Pentium M running at 1.7 gHz — room temperature.) According the the article, “Meyerson forecasts that the advances will show up in real products within a couple years.” I’m thinking maybe I should wait a little while to buy a new computers or upgrade my network components?
I don’t have much time to post much commentary today, but I will include a forwarded video from where else … YouTube.com. A friend of mine mentioned it me and since I’ve enjoyed almost everything the program TopGear produces thought this was worth including on my blog.
Enjoy. 😀
A friend of mine forwarded a bit of news making it around the IT security circles which deals with a company we all know: Google. Kelly Jackson Higgin posted the article at DarkReading.com about a Trojan keylogger discovered by Websense; Google quickly shut down the offending URL. Unless you use the http://www.googlepages.com site you are most likely not at risk from this particular Trojan, but it does go to show the risk in clicking links on pages.
This Trojan was purported to infect a users computer through a planted link. This link would download a sleeping keylogger which would then monitor sites the user visited. The obvious risk would be to visit a bank, broker or value oriented secure site as the keylogger records a users keystrokes. Do be careful.
Sony has been showing off its Reader at several of the consumer electronic events around the country and from the reviews looks to be a winner of a product. The small size, clear text, and long battery life as well storage capacity should make this a winner. The only thing holding it back might be a high retail price point and Sony’s notorious proprietary way of preventing expansion. (although literature does say that the Reader will support both Sony’s Memory stick AND the more universal SD Cards) Unfortunately the announced availability of this summer has been delayed. Expect a late summer or early fall release now but they obviously would not want to miss the holiday season.
Travelers will most likely love the Sony® Reader and will be anxious to fill their device with electronic books. It is as small as a paperback book, 6.9†by 4.9†by .5†and weighs a mere 9 ounces. Its rechargeable battery lasts about 7,500 page turns and can be recharged in as little as 4 hours with an AC adapter.
Besides the online stores marketing books, I’d recommend the open source project called Project Gutenberg where all texts are free. (great for non-Sony Reader buyers too as the electronic version are available for computers, etc) I’m not sure I’m ready to jump on the Sony Reader bandwagon just yet, but I’m anxious to spend an evening ‘testing’ it.
US Army Staff Sgt. Christian Begge lost his right leg at the knee and his left leg just above the ankle after two IEDs exploded near his Humvee in Iraq about a year ago. On Tuesday this week he went running with President George W. Bush at the White House in Washington, D.C. fulfilling a promise after a visit a Brooke Army Medical Center in January.
An article in 
Interesting 
The Myers Motors design originally was part of the Corbin Motors company in Hollister California. The 
In May I posted a story on “
Imagine moving a full DVD movie through a network in 5 seconds … impossible? Yes for now, but the engineers and researchers over at IBM have build a transistor that runs faster than anything we currently have. Imagine the speeds that electronic devices could process data if they were zooming at speeds 250 times faster than cell phones? Imagine cooled chipsets in computers clocking up near 500 gigahertz … they would be “ultra-fast” says an article on 
I don’t have much time to post much commentary today, but I will include a forwarded video from where else … 
Kelly Jackson Higgin posted the 
Sony has been showing off its 
Travelers will most likely love the Sony® Reader and will be anxious to fill their device with electronic books. It is as small as a paperback book, 6.9†by 4.9†by .5†and weighs a mere 9 ounces. Its rechargeable battery lasts about 7,500 page turns and can be recharged in as little as 4 hours with an AC adapter.