Hansen's MagNET

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about The Electric Bike I Want – the Brammo Empulse. The Brammo Empulse is a street legal machine, with a top speed of 100 miles per hour, and it’s to-the-bone design is evil, in a good way. Now the company behind the Empulse is showing off a new, and even crazier machine – the Brammo Empulse RR – designed for competing on the track.

The Empulse RR comes with a full body, and it’s Parker Motion AC synchronous electric engine delivers 80 horsepower peak (60 continuous), and 60 pound feet of torque. The downside is the weight, since the 80 horses will have to carry no less than 460 pounds.

Although this machine, with a top speed of 130 miles per hour on the dyno roll, is made for the track, it’s the blueprint for the next street machine from Brammo.

To me the advantage in performance over it’s naked brother, the Empulse, doesn’t mean so much. I think 100 miles per hour is more than enough, so although I find it fascinating to follow what the boys at Brammo are working on, I still want my Brammo Impulse. ‘Cause as I said before, it looks so damn devilish – and I’m in love.

Photo: Jim Merithew / Wired.com

Yesterday I received yet another reply from the US Embassy in Copenhagen. Again, the answer was to the point and friendly. And my options for not getting married are running out – which is a little sad. The thing is that I have a thing with numbers. I don’t want to marry just any date. This is silly, I know, but getting married 10.10.10 seems better to me than getting married 7.29.10. And I already have a date in my head, and it’s none of the ones just mentioned. No one but me knows this date, not even my wonderful woman. Not yet.

There are only a couple of non-marriage options left. One of them is getting some land and growing my own crops. Although I am not exactly the farmer type, I am seriously considering this. It could be a great learning experience, and being emerged in nature cannot harm anyone. On the contrary, it might be good for me, since I tend to sit inside all too often. Mostly with my fingers on the keys.

Non-farmer farmer

I have read a little about farming – and permaculture (which I find very interesting) – and the rule of thumb seems to be one acre to feed one human being. This greatly varies, and to compensate for my lack of farmer skills, I better get something like 7-8 acres. With such a piece of land, I should be able to feed my wonderful woman, and myself. So far, so good. But simply bringing food on the table doesn’t make up for even half a salary – so I better do something else besides this. But what?

National hamster coach

Training our tiny hamster to run only one way in her running wheel. And when she can do that, buy a thousand more tiny hamsters, placing them all on a gigantic running wheel, and telling them to follow Buggy, crossing my fingers she will take the lead. With a little basic engineering, I should be able to have these speedy creatures create enough electricity to supply our single-family household. As far as I know, one hamster can generate 2-3 volts, but for how long?. And how much electricity do they generate per seed – seed I grow in my own extra large garden, of course. I guess I  have to run some experiments, and collect some statistically valid data.

- or maybe I should just get married, even on an odd date.

What is success? It’s a question, if not as old as man, then at least as old as the man’s firstborn baby. Which is funny, since the answer is quite obvious. And instead of dragging it out, I will get straight to it. But first I need to clarify what kind of success I am talking about. I am talking about your own personal success. And the answer is: success is being able to define success. Simple, isn’t it?

To me it’s obvious. It cannot be any other way. A little more precisely: Success is being able to define your own success. If you think this sounds like an idiotic definition, you are – with one word: wrong. At least if you ask me. Let me explain why.

The unspoken axiom

First, I need to reveal the unspoken axiom behind this definition. And that is that happiness is our highest aim. If you – for various (and to me mysterious) reasons – do not agree with this, then you might forever disagree with me. So I continue from here assuming we agree that happiness is what we aspire to, while hoping that you – if you do not agree with me at this point – will come to the same conclusion sooner or later. On a side note, I must admit that I for many years was lead to – falsely – believe that happiness wasn’t an aim worth pursuing. But now I am wiser. And with this assumption in place, I will now illustrate why personal success equals being able to define your own success.

But first another assumption. Yes, I know, it’s assumption upon assumption, and the ground beneath our feet isn’t rock solid – I’ll admit that. But you know what? That’s okay, for a plethora of reasons – one of them being that we are defining our own success, another being that life is more fun and exciting, when it’s wobbling a little.

Assumption number two

The second assumption is that happiness is strongly related to how much we differ from ourselves. What I mean by this is that happiness springs from us being who we are, not pretending to be someone, or something, we are not. In other words: our happiness is (somewhat) proportional to our own authenticity. I write somewhat in parentheses, since there are other factors that play a role as well.

From this starting point – a) happiness is our highest aim, and b) happiness springs from being authentic – it follows that success equals being able to define success – as stated in the beginning.

Success is not

There is no objective measure for success, and the typical measures of success – all set by society, not ourselves – are not helping us. Instead, they are more likely to mislead us. If, for example, we fall into the trap of belief that success equals having a well-paid job, then naturally we will strive for that. If we work hard to archive this, and if we are lucky, then we might attain it. But what have we really attained? Nothing of true value, since ten suitcases stuffed with $100 bills and a handful of Ferrari’s in the garage, is no guarantee for happiness – and therefore not success. Except if the attainment of this material wealth is triggered by impulses in us not forced on us by society or other people.

It’s important to fully understand this. I do not claim that five Ferrari’s in the garage cannot be our criteria for success. I am only saying that wealth isn’t an objective measure of success, and that there is no such thing. However, there might be some people who – when them allow their authentic I to speak – might hear it saying: For me success is to have a row of sports cars in the garage. I find this highly unlikely, but if that’s what their unpolluted self really desires, then they better follow that dream.

Follow your unpolluted self

Follow your unpolluted self, and success – true success – will be yours. Since, when you follow your own authentic self, you are doing exactly this: defining your own success, without being lead astray by what the people around you, and people through the times whom you have never met, believed to be success. If you, without reflection, strive to attain success as defined by others, you are following their dreams – not your own. You might succeed (in the typical sense of the word), and make them happy, but your so-called success will not be real success. So stop for a moment.

Stop and listen. Listen to your own unpolluted self – if you can hear it crying through the smog. Sit still, allow the smog to clear, and be patient, this might take a long time. Pay close attention, and don’t give up. Even if you don’t hear a thing, keep listening – sooner or later you will hear it. But as I said, it might take a while. Either because the smog is as dense as frozen tar, or because your self has given up, or momentarily lost it’s voice.

But don’t give up, since this this endeavor will be one of the most valuable, and when you finally hear the voice of your self (yourself), then you will know what success is – for you. When that happens, you have taken the first step on the path to a life truly worth living.

I wish you a good journey, and the best of luck.

If you don’t have a hangar – but just a garage – and still you want to fly on the wings of love, what should you do? You should buy, or rather preorder, a Terrafugia. It’s half car half plane, and it’s supposed to fly at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh next year.

The Terrafugia is powered by a 100 horsepower four-cylinder aircraft engine, which should give it a cruise speed of 105 miles per hour, and close to a 500 miles range, between gas stations – yes, gas stations, this car, plane, or whatever you want to call it, will be street legal.

The CEO of the company behind this machine says the Terrafugia will be the safest light sport aircraft on the marked, since it has to have crash safely features normally only found in cars.

More than 80 customers have already ordered their wing of love, and the company is reevaluating the price – previously announced to be $194,000 – so with a little luck we might all be able to afford one now. Depending on whether the price is adjusted up or down, of course.

It’s that easy.

A lot of people drive a car, since they think they save time, compared to walking and biking. But they don’t. Only when you look at the isolated event – driving a car versus biking – the car is faster. But when you factor everything in, it turns out the car is having a hard time keeping up with the bike. There are various factors, here I will go over one of them: costs. I will do it swiftly.

Driving and working

Obviously a car is more expensive than a regular bike, although how much greater depends on were you live. In the US the typical running cost per mile is around $0.30, including everything. So if you drive 10,000 miles a year, it costs you around $3.000 annually to drive your car. Assuming a yearly salary of $30.000 when taxes are paid, it turns out you spend around 10 percent of your working hours to pay for your car. In round figures you work around 2,000 hours a year, so 200 hours hours are spend with one purpose only: to pay for the car. In comparison the yearly costs for a bicycle are negligible.

To drive the 10,000 miles you drive in a year, you are sitting in your car around 200 hours, assuming an average speed of 50 miles per hour. So all in all you spend 400 hours yearly to get around by car, if you add the 200 working hours to the 200 hours you sit in your car.

Pure biking

If you instead got around purely by your own means, driving a bike, you would spend less than 700 hours on your bike, assuming an average speed of 15 miles per hour, and still 10,000 miles traveled yearly. In other words, it’s not three times faster to drive a car, than biking – it’s not even twice as fast. And this is in the US, where both car prices and gasoline prices are rather low. In a country like Denmark, where you pay almost three times more for a car than in America, it’s basically as fast to bike as driving a car – if you factor in your working hours.

In a follow-up article I will look at how the health factor speaks in favor of the bike as well, not only for staying healthy, but from a time perspective.

The researchers at CERN, near Geneva, are getting closer to a full understanding of the much talked about God particle they have been looking for, for quite some time by now. And the ones to thank for this are two first-year physics students, who were visiting the 27 kilometer circumference tunnel on July 21st.

Dave Nobel and James Ginter visited the CERN lab with 17 other physics freshmen, and their teacher, Professor James Achenbach. That was on Wednesday, July 21st, and there was nothing unusual about it. In accordance with protocol, Professor Achenbach had sent an application to CERN 72 months before the scheduled visit, and had been granted permission to bring an uneven number of students to the facility. And so he did.

Arriving at the CERN lab

When the professor and his students arrived at exactly 1.01 p.m., the gate opened, and they were all escorted to the waiting room, where the head of matters, Dr. Bond, greeted them with a warm smile, and a cold nod, signaling to the technicians that it was time to inject the mandatory GPS tracking devices in the neck of every visitor. The tracking device is a measure taken ever since a 31 year old female biochemist was misplaced (that’s the official word CERN used in their press release)  in the facility in January 2008. After closing hours, the woman had panicked – as the surveillance footage showed – and in a desperate attempt to escape the facility she had somehow managed to enter the particle accelerator, only to be accelerated to more than one third the speed of light the next morning, when a technician went through the morning routine preflight check.

The 31 year old woman was decelerated by Dr. Bond, as he rushed to the scene, and smacked the baseball-sized emergency button, knocking the unfortunate technician over in the process. An emergency team was rushed in, and after quite an effort on their behalf the 31 year old woman regained consciousness, kissed the paramedic on the mouth, chuckled, and whispered “Daddy”.

The neck shot

But despite the strict protocol, and Dr. Bond’s renowned attention to detail, two of Professor James Achenbach’s students didn’t get the mandatory neck shot. The reason for this is not yet officially established, but preliminary data suggest that the brothers of Dave Nobel and James Ginter each got two shots, while Dave Nobel and James Ginter didn’t get a shot at all. Whether this happened by mistake, or due to a clever scheme by Nobel, Ginter and their brothers, is still unknown.

In any case, Dave Nobel and James Ginter, managed to stay in the facility long after the rest of the students and their professor had left. While Dr. Achenbach and his students were sipping ice tea with tiny Made In China umbrellas, at a nameless cafe in Aix-les-Bains, 70 kilometers south of Geneva, the ingenious young men didn’t waste their chance. First, James Ginter read the entire P.A.M. (Particle Accelerator Manual, ed.), before settling with ease into Dr. Bond’s chair at the control board, where he started the accelerator with superior control. Meanwhile, Dave Nobel, who was born and raised a hardcore Baptist, dropped to his knees next to Ginter, and began to recite the Bible from the very first word, of the very first paragraph.

Psalm 119:60

As Nobel reached Psalm 119:60, and eloquently uttered “I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands”, something happened.

It was unbelievable, says James Ginter, I have never seen anything like it. I always made fun of Dave for his strong belief in a supreme being, but there God was, right in front of my eyes – although only for a brief second.

But his essence stayed, adds Dave Nobel. They are small, but they are there, he says proudly, gesturing for me to have a look in the electron microscope.

And he is right, there they are, no doubt about it – with God as my witness. Two tiny particles, slightly swollen, are moving around in the otherwise utterly empty test tube.

Ginter explains: It was in a lunch break last spring, Dave first tried to convince me that the researchers were on the wrong track looking for the God particle, and he adds: he kept saying God is a man, there must be two. And I guess he was right, you are looking at them right now.

Dave smiles, the God testicles – a bit swollen after the collision, but finally in our hands.

And what are you going to do with them? I ask.

They both shrug.

The job situation is – as we all know – not exactly perfect. It isn’t even good. But instead of complaining, I recommend that you read Andrew Dana Hudson’s story “What I Did When I Couldn’t Find a Job” in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s an approximately 1,500 words story, so if you are in a hurry, I’ll sum it up here.

Andrew Dana Hudson graduated in political science in May 2009, moved back to his parents, and began to send out job applications to start his professional career. After sending out more than 500 resumes for all kinds of jobs, he had been at two interviews, and had no offers, and no job. Neither had anyone he knew. Many were living with their parents, some had borrowed money to pay rent. Few had internships, mostly unpaid, some worked at a sandwich shop, one as a barista at Starbucks – and Andrew, he went to India.

He got a job in India after some correspondence back and forth with the editor and publisher of a local English-language newspaper, a guy he met when he was travelling in India two years earlier. At the newspaper, Andrew does a little photography and feature writing – and plenty of copy editing, fixing punctuation, spelling and so on.

He is getting his hands dirty, learning the craft better than he could have hoped for in the US. His “payment” is a flat to stay in and the daily meals. And he is living – comfortably – on $10 a week, on top of his rent and meals.

So, instead of complaining not being able to find a job, Andrew took the situation into his own hands. If this is not an inspiring and motivating story, I don’t know what it is. Personally, I love it.

If you have more time on your hands, I suggest you go and read Andrew’s own story, it’s well written, and it’s nice to read the story as it dripped from the tellers own tips.

One thing I really like about the US Embassy here in Denmark is their swift replies. What I like even more is that they tell you to expect one week for a reply, but actually reply in just twenty-four hours. Most often companies – and people – do the opposite: they tell you you’ll hear from them before the sun sets, but you don’t hear a thing, not even a whisper, before your beard has grown long.

But that’s not all. The US Embassy does more than that: it inspires you to think out of the box. Yesterday, I got my second reply from the embassy, since I had asked them to elaborate a little on their previous answer. And they did. And I am wiser now, but still the permission to work in the land where I will soon settle seems to be a pipe dream. But instead of throwing myself on the hard wooden floor, in a pile of salty tears, I started pondering – or rather day dreaming.

Day in and day out

I pictured myself somewhere in the US, without a work permit – and without the Mexican willingness to work without the necessary paperwork. I pictured myself through an ordinary day, from sunrise to sunset, doing the things I like to do, and – more importantly – the things I need to do. Eating and sleeping, that is. And that’s when I realized that I can sleep without a work permit, but that I cannot eat without a work permit. Well, that’s not entirely correct. I can eat, but I will have nothing to eat without a stack of notes, to pay for my daily intake of reindeer and potatoes in tomato sauce. Or maybe I can – if I catch the reindeer myself, and pluck the potatoes and tomatoes in my own extra large garden.

No gigolo, just a farmer

All I have to do, to survive in the land of opportunity, is to get some acreages of land, put on my rubber boots and checkered shirt, and I am good to go. As long as I am not selling what I harvest or what I kill, I am not really working, so no work permit should be needed. Right? Now, I just hope the paperless Mexicans do not read this, and steal my idea, so the land prices explode before I arrive. Also, I hope I can find a good pair of rubber boots and a gorgeous checkered shirt – and that I can afford it. If so, I guess everything should be alright.

Viva Massachusetts, here I come.