3 On Bike Musical Instruments, Bicycle Design For The Military, Steam Bikes & More....!

Hope you all had a good weekend. Well, here's some pollinations for this week, straight from the C to the O to the Z to the Y!


1. SAUDI OIL ON 60 MINUTES (WARNING : P is for PLENTY!) : The first part of last week's CBS 60 minutes explored the Saudi Oil kingdom, and their push to produce more oil in the era of the Obama Presidency. It was a jaw breaking revelation of the Kingdom's oil resources and technology, like something out of a Star Wars movie. The low oil prices you're seeing now will climb back up since its not stable at this point. Realistically, this important commodity is very necessary for the development of the modern world, of countries, economies and their people. However, that should not deter anyone from exploring and developing alternative, cleaner sources of energy which I believe is one of the biggest engineering challenges of our times. Oil by itself has been and is doing plenty of damage to the world on its evil side.

Part 1 :


Watch CBS Videos Online


Part 2 :


Watch CBS Videos Online




2. COMPANIES GOING 'BUST' : According to the story on Finanical Times yesterday, 62000 companies will go out of business next year. This, when compared to last year's 28,000 and this year's 42,000 seems like a dangerous linear trend. It'll be interesting to see if bicycle businesses are truly recession proof or will they join the long list of the jobless. We already saw what happened to RevoPower, in a previous post on this blog.



3. FEM ON HEADTUBE :

This isn't modern art but a depiction of the loading on a bicycle headtube during front brake activation. It'd be nice if there was a legend and some more things to make it look sensible. Courtesy : Rational Engineering



4. SOUND FROM WIND FOR BIKE MUSIC :




Korean designer Joseph Kim, in a new concept, imagines two tube like channels on the handlebars that create music by controlling the amount of wind that blows through them. Interesting. Look here for more information.



5. BICYCLE PLANNING GUIDANCE FROM WISCONSIN : I was fortunate enough to fall on an lengthy bicycle planning guide from the transportation guys in Wisconsin, courtesy of National Transportation Library (NTL). It could make for interesting reading, especially for those of you interesting in some transportation engineering for our good old two wheelers. Click here to read.



The NTL also houses other free literature, like the latest 2008 reports on the National Survey of Bicyclist and Pedestrian Attitudes and Behavior. See a snipshot below, and to check out all the reports , click here.




6. SEN. JOHN KERRY TEACHES BICYCLE SAFETY :


Yup, that's definitely the way to go about it!




7. BICYCLE DESIGN FOR THE MILITARY :


How do you design bicycles and accessories for the men and women serving on the front lines, in the rough conditions that they encounter? Ease of maintenance, portability, and sturdiness could never bang on your doors here louder. Enter bikes for the Light Bicycle Infantry (LBI) that are rugged, all terrain, and electric and mountain bikes in nature.


Here's a video on bicycle tools accessories for the military :



Lots of colorful history and bicycle design inspirations for the military here.




8. STEAM BIKES!


The MAKE blog explored the history of steam powered bicycles. Check it out here.






In these bad times we're all going through, I just want to end with a good note :




And....for your next season....


You have to work hard like Boonen...



But just don't injest so much caffeine that you can't get a handle on yourself :




Calm down bro.

Chill. Ride.