Share & Voice: Electric Motorcycle

Something I find very interesting is a new, all electric motorcycle. The article I read was about the Mission One EV electric sports bike. The article says that the bike would have a top speed of around 150mph and a distance of about 150miles. This is very similar to my 600cc sportbike. My motorcycle has a top speed around 160mph and goes about 170miles on a single tank. With such equal performance, I think an electric motorcycle would be very practical. One of the drawbacks though is the price tag. This bike costs nearly $70,000.

There are also people that convert their gas powered motorcycles into electric motorcycles at their own houses. I have even posted some videos of some of these homemade bikes. Another great thing about the homemade bikes is that they keep the original styling of the bike they started with.

Quitgas! Clean, Quiet, Fun, Electric Motorcycle
Electric Motorcycle Sighting

Mission One Electric Motorcycle

Advocacy Project: My Political Representatives

Barack Obama (D)
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

U.S. Senetors:
Amy Klobuchar (D)
Washington, DC
302 Hart Senate Office BuildingWashington, DC 20510
phone: 202-224-3244
fax: 202-228-2186

U.S. Representatives:
Michele Bachmann (R)
107 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-2331

Keith Ellison (D)
1122 Longworth Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-4755 Phone

John Kline(R)
1210 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-2271

Betty McCollum (D)
1714 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-2304
202-225-6631

Jim Oberstar (D)
D.C. Office
2365 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-6211

Collin Peterson (D),
2159 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-2165

Tim Walz (D)
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

Governer:
Tim Pawlenty
Office of the Governor
130 State Capitol
75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55155
Telephone: (651) 296-3391
E-mail: tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us

County Commissioner:
Wallace Strand
33361 710th Ave.
Kimball, MN 55353
320-398-6782

Mayor of Eden Valley:
Dan Thielen
453-5251

Reflection: Weeks 5& 6

Week 5
One thing we did this week was the CSPI eye opener. I toured the food supply for this eye opener. The website I visited had a lot of interesting and hard to think about facts. Another thing we did this week was watch the Documentary "Diet for a new America". After hearing all of the facts from the documentaries and activities, it's really making me think a lot more about what I eat. I have even been trying to eat a little healthier and eat fast food less.

Week 6
This week we watched the documentary "Future of Food". this video showed some of the effects that farming can have on the environment and our health. This video was especialy interesting to me because I come from a small farm town. It made me mad to see the people from Monsanto sueing farmers for having thier seeds in their fields when they couldn't do anything to stop it from happening. I was also very surprised to learn that there is no law requiring products to be labled that contain genetically modified crops. I really think that more people need to have their eyes opened to this information.

Eye Opener: Review of Reading 28 "A Forest Path out of Poverty"

Summary

The reading started out talking about a man named David Andi. He is a man from Equador who was having a hard time making a living. To make money, he could either log the rainforest or trade with Columbia. He knew that logging was bad for the rainforest, but if he traded with Columbia, it would spread the Columbian civil war into Equador.

The reading then talked about a project taking place to stop deforestation. The project is called the Callari Project. It was started by a woman named Judy Logback. While she was visiting Equador, she tried to persuade some of the communities to stop cutting down the rainforest. one of the local teachers told her, "If you want to save the rainforest, help us find a way to make a living without destroying it."

She saw some of the things that the villagers were making and started selling them to tourists. the villagers were used to getting only about $1 per item from intermediaries, were surprised when they received the full amount of what is was sold for from Logback. within two years there were products being shipped to 10 different countries.

The Callari Project has received many grants because of its reputation for doing the most with the least. It has the highest results per dollar spent.

Just How Much Is A Rainforest Worth?

Eye Opener: CSPI

For this post, we were supposed to pick an activity from the calander. I choose to tour the food supply. This website had a bunch of facts about food. I told where it came from, how it was made, and even had other health facts. It was actually very interesting.

After "Touring the Food Supply", I should probably be one of the least healthy people in the world. All of my meals consist mainly of meat because I really don't like vegtables. I have recently been trying to squeeze more vegtables into my diet, but I still don't enjoy them.



One thing that shocked me the most is the amount of animals being slaughtered. Where is all of this meat going? I'm preatty sure I don't eat half of an entire cow every year. Who is making up the differance?



One thing I not sure about is that vegitarians are less sick, and get sick less often. All I eat is meat, and I am almost never sick. I think what they were saying is that it's more long term types of illnesses. I can believe that with all of the fat in the meat and eating everything deepfried.



I have already been trying to eat healthier, but reading this makes me really want to cut back on the amount of meat that I eat. If I keep up the diet that I have now, I don't think it be too good for me.

Review: "An Inconvenient Truth"

For the 3 past class periods, we have been watching the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". I wasn't sure what I would think about this movie. I had heard that it was just Al Gore preaching about how we're killing the planet. After watching the movie, I was way wrong. One of the first things discussed in the movie was Roger Revelle. Revelle was the first person to propose measuring the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Starting in 1958, he found that as time went on the carbon dioxide levels would rise. One of the things I found most interesting was that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere depends on the season. This is because in the fall, the trees loose their leaves and absorb less of the carbon dioxide. In the spring, the trees start to get their leaves back and absorb more carbon dioxide.

Another thing Mr. Gore discussed was why the poles are being affected faster than other regions. He explained that the ice caps at the poles act as mirrors. The caps reflect most of the incoming solor radiation and keep the earth cool. As the ocean gets warmer, the caps get smaller and reflect less radiation. This speeds up the melting process. Something I found interesting was that a warmer ocean creates larger storms. I think that this is quite evident with storms like Hurricane Katrina.

The warming of the earth also create even more problems. One thing that has happened from this is structural damage. Some structures that had been constructed on the permafrost are now collapsing because of the melting permafrost. Global warming also causes drought in some areas. Another problem is that the precipitation that is no longer falling in some areas is being relocated to other areas. There was even a place in India that had 37 inches of rain in a 24hour period.



For the people who still don't believe in global warming, there was a study done in which a sample of 928 peer reviewed journals, and none of them disagree with the FACT that global warming does exsist. When they looked at the public press, they found that about 53% of the articles stated that global warming hasn't been proven.



In my opinion, I think that everyone should see this documentary. It has truley opened my eyes.

Reflection: Weeks 3& 4

The last two weeks have been getting better. I think I finally have a better handle on the blogging. We have done a few reviews, with some good discusions. The class is now a lot more fun and more interesting now that we're covering more of the book content and not just playing on the computers. I also really like the Eye Opener post that we did. It really put into perspective the amount of resources we all use. In weeks 3& 4, we watched the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". I thought this was a very good video. I think that the weeks to come will be even better.