There has been so much progress with electric motors and high capacity batteries finally reaching widespread use. There are kayaks with an electrict support (Torqeed here in Starnberg, that I wished to have one  yesterday at Ammersee). There are engines for ultralight planes like the Electraflyer while I just read at science.slashdot about an electric airplance.

The most fascinating piece, however, I have seen last Sunday at bike expo here in Munich is  a 1200 Watt kit that can be mounted on most frames of current MTBs. Tthat’s a lot of savings compared to buying a custom built e-bike like the KTM eGnition, Elmoto, eRockit, Grace or eSpire that all come at weights of 25-35 kg.

The kit will be sold by the next month by ego-kits.com while here are two pictures from the Munich fair.

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From Edge / NY Times

We often try to understand problems by taking apart and studying their constituent parts. But emergent problems can’t be understood this way. Emergent systems are ones in which many different elements interact. The pattern of interaction then produces a new element that is greater than the sum of the parts, which then exercises a top-down influence on the constituent elements. (Show me more…)

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I have seen recently a TV documentation about the Dabbawalas in Mumbai who deliver freshly cooked food to the workplaces and return the empty boxes back to the customer’s home. According to Wikiedia.

In 2002, Forbes Magazine found its reliability to be that of a six sigma standard. More than 175,000 or 200,000 lunch boxes get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality (Show me more…)