http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904334,00.html?iid=digg_share

This is all very interesting to me because I ride an electric bike and it’s made in China.

Giant Lite with Extracycle extension

I originally built this bike as a camera car. I was shooting the Marathon de Medoc in Bordeaux and wanted to shoot the host of my show in amongst the marathon runners. This is strictly forbidden for motor vehicles but my production manager talked the race organizers into allowing a bicycle on the course. So I built this Giant electric with an Xtracycle back end. The bike carried a rider, myself and all of our camera and sound gear for the whole marathon, just under 400 pounds or 200kg. I was sold. When i returned home with the bike it pretty much replaced my car and keep in mind that I live in Los Angeles. My Giant with two batteries has a range of about 60miles and a top (assisted) speed of about 28mph. It can easily carry two people and a weeks worth of groceries. The bike all in cost me around 2,500 USD. Of course the bike uses a bit of generated energy but according to what I’ve read (sorry no footnotes) it works out to over 800 mpg. If you are really industrious you could invest another $600 in a rooftop solar kit and your bike would be completely off the grid.

I find it kind of astounding that the electric bike or electric scooters haven’t become popular in North America. I think it’s partially due to the fact that electric vehicles are not considered to be a practical form of transportation here. An affordable electric car is definitely a ways off (unless you have 90k burning a hole in your pocket to buy a Tesla Roadster…drool). But here’s the thing, electric bike technology is totally capable of providing us with low cost zero emission transport right now. Especially for those of us who live in warmer climates. The only thing that’s really holding back the manufactures of e-bikes are the laws governing the bikes themselves. Most countries require that the top speed of any assisted bicycle be around 17-19mph. I think that’s ridiculous considering the fact that anyone in reasonably good shape can pedal a normal road bike a lot faster than that. Now, I’m not suggesting that legislation should allow unlicensed e-bikes an unlimited top speed, but something closer to 30 mph would be more reasonable and way more practical. That’s about as fast as your average rider would want to go on a bike anyway and is a totally reasonable speed for urban transport. Fortunately there are ways around these limitations and that’s what this article is about. Hacking the electric bike!

Disclaimer:

O.K. This is the part where I need to cover my ass. During the course of this article I may be giving you advice that would allow you to make or build your e-bike in such a way that it may go faster than your local laws allow. If you do this and have some kind of horrifying accident where you are dismembered, maimed or in anyway injured. Don’t come crying to me. Also if you are not completely comfortable on a normal bicycle, I would not recommend going this route first. Buy a nice slow stock e bike and ride it until you’re really ready to speed things up a bit.

The important thing to understand is that any bike can be made electric and it’s not a difficult process if you are using a ready made kit. I would argue that an e-bike that you construct for yourself will not only be a far superior ride in terms of stability and speed, but way cooler. Off the rack e-bikes are dork-mobiles for the most part, and those that aren’t are far too expensive for the level of performance they deliver.

O.K. Step one HACKING THE GIANT LITE

The Giant Lite was by far the best e bike built in it’s time. It still stands up pretty well next to what’s out there right now. Granted the motor at 350 watts is a bit underpowered but on the whole it’s one of the lightest and most efficient off the rack bikes that has ever been made. You can still find new ones on line and they usually about USD $1000. Which is a STEAL compared to other off the rack e-bikes bike out their today.

If you’re going to try a mod like mine try to find a step through model. The step through makes more sense if your going to extend the back end and make it a two seater. Throwing your leg over the back of a bike that’s 7 feet long isn’t so easy. Also I think the step through model is easier to find.

If you are truly in need of step by step advice on how to covert a Giant Lite to a faster viable urban transporter then send me an email and I’ll send you detailed instructions. I’m not going to post them here. I’ve had great success with this bike but I think there are better and cheaper alternatives that have developed since I built it. There are some links to said alternatives at the end of this article.

Batteries:

The Giant uses NiMh batteries and like all rechargeables, they have a finite life-span. The good news is they are easy and inexpensive to refurbish. The even better news is that when you refurbish your batteries you can buy new ones that have a higher storage capacity and will give you more range. The process of upgrading your batteries is called re-celling them. You can buy the kits on-line. The original battery packs for the Giant are around $400. The re-cell kits are half that price.

For any other kit avoid old school led acid batteries. They are cheap, but can’t be recycled and have a very poor power to weight ratio. There is a good on-line distributor for battery tech:

http://www.batteryspace.com/?SSAID=297581

I’m currently investigating LifePO4 batteries as the power source for my next bike. Lithium seems to be the way to go now.

Currently I think the best and also the easiest option is to go with a high output hub motor combined with some advanced battery technology. Just make sure you match the battery voltage to the motor your are powering. Most e-bike systems are either 24 or 36 volt technology. Hub motors can be configured to drive either the front or rear wheel and can be fitted to pretty much any standard bike.

http://www.falconev.com/E-Bikes.html

http://www.wildernessenergy.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1

For an in-depth DIY concept and overview

http://www.electricycle.com/ebike2.htm

My argument is that we, you, I have a choice. For some, that choice is much harder to make than for others but none the less it’s there. I’ve really enjoyed a few books by the late communications theorist Neil Postman. In one book he published what he described as an open source speech for any valedictorian to be who might be in need of one. It’s a very good piece and does a far better job of illustrating my point than I do. Please read on…

MY GRADUATION SPEECH
by Neil Postman

Having sat through two dozen or so graduation speeches, I have naturally wondered why they are so often so bad. One reason, of course, is that the speakers are chosen for their eminence in some field, and not because they are either competent speakers or gifted writers. Another reason is that the audience is eager to be done with all ceremony so that it can proceed to some serious reveling. Thus any speech longer than, say, fifteen minutes will seem tedious, if not entirely pointless. There are other reasons as well, including the difficulty of saying something inspirational without being banal. Here I try my hand at writing a graduation speech, and not merely to discover if I can conquer the form. This is precisely what I would like to say to young people if I had their attention for a few minutes.

If you think my graduation speech is good, I hereby grant you permission to use it, without further approval from or credit to me, should you be in an appropriate situation.

Members of the faculty, parents, guests, and graduates, have no fear. I am well aware that on a day of such high excitement, what you require, first and foremost, of any speaker is brevity. I shall not fail you in this respect. There are exactly eighty-five sentences in my speech, four of which you have just heard. It will take me about twelve minutes to speak all of them and I must tell you that such economy was not easy for me to arrange, because I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors. Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, but your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.

The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. But we do know a great deal about their accomplishments. They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first truly literate population on earth. They invented the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigor that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic theory of matter 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.

About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.

The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics.

Like the Athenians, the Visigoths also disappeared, but not before they had ushered in the period known as the Dark Ages. It took Europe almost a thousand years to recover from the Visigoths.

Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us-in this hall, in this community, in our city-there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.

To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.

To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind’s most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth’s language aspires to nothing higher than the cliché.

To be an Athenian is to understand that the thread which holds civilized society together is thin and vulnerable; therefore, Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order. The modern Visigoth cares very little about any of this. The Visigoths think of themselves as the center of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday’s newspaper.

To be an Athenian is to take an interest in public affairs and the improvement of public behavior. Indeed, the ancient Athenians had a word for people who did not. The word was idiotes, from which we get our word “idiot.” A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.

And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.

Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. And I must tell you that you do not become an Athenian merely by attending school or accumulating academic degrees. My father-in-law was one of the most committed Athenians I have ever known, and he spent his entire adult life working as a dress cutter on Seventh Avenue in New York City. On the other hand, I know physicians, lawyers, and engineers who are Visigoths of unmistakable persuasion. And I must also tell you, as much in sorrow as in shame, that at some of our great universities, perhaps even this one, there are professors of whom we may fairly say they are closet Visigoths. And yet, you must not doubt for a moment that a school, after all, is essentially an Athenian idea. There is a direct link between the cultural achievements of Athens and what the faculty at this university is all about. I have no difficulty imagining that Plato, Aristotle, or Democritus would be quite at home in our class rooms. A Visigoth would merely scrawl obscenities on the wall.

And so, whether you were aware of it or not, the purpose of your having been at this university was to give you a glimpse of the Athenian way, to interest you in the Athenian way. We cannot know on this day how many of you will choose that way and how many will not. You are young and it is not given to us to see your future. But I will tell you this, with which I will close: I can wish for you no higher compliment than that in the future it will be reported that among your graduating class the Athenians mightily outnumbered the Visigoths.

Thank you, and congratulations.

If I were to interpret this dream, something which I don’t spend a lot of time doing, I would say that I was projecting my ideal state of mind in the context of the situation. That is to say that if I were dying, it’s kind of the way I’d like to deal with it. The really interesting thing about the dream was that I simply wasn’t afraid. All I wanted to do was finish up what I was working on quietly before I died. Had I been sweeping the floor I would have wanted to simply empty the dust bin first.
This is Mecca for me. It’s what I strive for above all things in my life. To embrace death, rather than to avoid it. As I get older I find that I look at people and try to understand them by knowing what it is that they love, and fear. I generally end up being close to the ones who embrace both. Fear is the proverbial elephant in the room but its ubiquitous nature makes it semi transparent. Just the way most people like it. I think that’s too bad because it is the great leveler. Doesn’t matter how rich, smart, beautiful or strong you are. If I walk into the room holding the thing that you fear the most you will quickly revert to your base self and in most cases be rendered powerless. That’s why it’s the great tool of the oppressor.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you, yes YOU, that you are going to die. Nothing is going to stop it and science, although it may buy you a bit more time, is not going to save you. At least not in the near future. You might drop dead of an aneurysm or die slowly of a really horrible disease (which seems to be one of the major fears people hold) or you might die peacefully in your sleep. Whatever, it’s happening and I would say that there is a very good chance that NOTHING is waiting for you on the other side. Now, if you take this grim news and post it on your fridge, or get it tattooed on the inside of your eyelids where you cannot avoid it well, something interesting might happen. You might, just might slowly come to the realization that you really don’t have anything to lose (in the big picture sense).
That’s pretty liberating and it puts your fears in a different light.
When I was a kid I was scared shitless of amusement park rides. I got over it one day by getting on the Zipper (still a freaky ride) alone. It was one of the great defining moments of my life, lost I’m sure, on the carnie operating the ride. So now when i am cresting the first hill of some ginormous roller coaster (or about to face some big fear in my life) I don’t close my eyes even though I still feel fear. I put my arms up in the air and scream my guts out. I always find that on the other side of that rush of fear is a heightened sense of clarity and confidence.

Then one day, out of the blue, I received an email from someone claiming to be a real Processean from an existing chapter in the state of New York. That email was the only the start of a watershed of communication. I began to hear from several splinter groups of the original Process Church who, as it turns out, were both still active and keeping an eye on us. This was more than a surprise as I had, to this point, naively believed that the original Process Church was entirely defunct.
It was during this time that we lost Dwayne Goettle. One of the most beautiful creative souls I’ve been privileged to know. Also during this time Adam Rostoker was gunned down in his home. His murder is still a mystery to this day.

Anecdotes from this era:

I received a cease and desist email from the Portland airport regarding our use of the Process logo. I replied and let them know that the four P symbol was not only an ancient swastika probably of Buddhist origins, but that its trademark was owned by a psychotherapy cult know as “The Process, The Church Of The Final Judgment”. I believe I cited William Sims Bainbridge’s book “Satan’s Power” with the page number reference that contained a picture of the logo. I never heard back from their legal dept…..;-)
I once received an email from a gentlemen who claimed to be the first child born into the Process, as well as a Skinny Puppy fan. He warned me that associating with the Process moniker was tantamount to welcoming the FBI into your living room.
I received an email from a man in prison who claimed to be a cell mate of David Berkowitz. He told me that he had read a lot of Process literature and just wanted me to know that Mr. Berkowitz’s claims regarding the Process were indeed bunk.

Eventually after the list had waned and traffic had dropped away we gave process.org over to a chapter of Processean’s based in NY. The site was active for a year or so and then appeared to go dormant. Eventually having no contact from the chapter I took it over once more to use it for a Vancouver based art collective called “Process Media Lab”. Not to be confused with Adam Parfreys publishing label “Process Media”.
It was around this time that I was contacted by the Toronto chapter of The Process. I arranged to meet with the head of the chapter while visiting the city. We met on a corner of College street. He looked at me and said “you don’t look like a member of Skinny Puppy” Well, he didn’t show up wearing a black cape with the goat of mendes emblazoned on the front either! It was an excellent meeting and I think informative for both of us. I learned about the Process street missions. The members of the Toronto chapter had anonymously been running a resource management operation for the different charity organizations in the area but now felt it was time to resume direct action helping people on the streets.
Since that time the web site has been in limbo with a little sentence proclaiming “rebuilding…be back soon”. I like to think that the flow of time is simply how you perceive it. So for me it’s just been a blink of the eye ;-). This thing that started as a social art experiment turned into a journey that has now spanned over a decade. Since we evoked it, it has always shadowed us. It’s taught me a few things over the years. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that you have to take responsibility for the things that you create. Once they are born they will always have some sort of attachment to you no matter where they go and how they develop outside of you. Einstein’s theory of relativity may very well relate to ideas as well as objects. An idea that is put in motion tends to remain in motion, and if ideas are faster than light, they must collect mass on route. I also learned that the concept of “open source” doesn’t just apply to software. It applies to ideas and actions. Here’s an example of what one man is doing to help a lot of people with an open source concept…

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/54

So now we re-launch the web site. The aim of this blog is to create a virtual speak easy with a library of resources for learning. You’ll find most of our links on the side bar are geared towards getting the old neurons humming. If you look at the main link Darknet, you’ll find tools to protect your privacy. Believe me, if you don’t take steps to do it, no one will do it for you.
We are musicians, artists, programmers and media hackers waving a dark flag proudly displaying the four-P logo. It’s my hope that we can inspire each other not only to think and speak. But also to act.