Looks like the Australian Paul Larsen broke the 50-knots-per-hour speed sailing record, and then he broke his boat. So far only a couple of kite surfers broke 50 knots. Larsen claims that in his latest attempt at setting a new speed record his sailboat reached a peak speed of 52.22 knots (60.09 MpH – 96.71KMpH) … before it flipped! He was OK – and now he and his team are busy putting the boat back together.

Sailrocket design

The Vestas Sailrocket is a fascinating design. The 9 meter long main hull connects to a 7.5-meter crossbeam that carries the main rig at it’s end – leeward of the main hull. At low speeds the crossbeam is stabilized by a small float at the end, below the rig. At cruising speed, that float leaves the water and flies above the water. “The flying height of the float is stabilized passively by the aerodynamic ‘ground effect’ which acts like weak spring connecting the beam to the water surface.”

The effect of this design is “that there is virtually no overturning moment and no net vertical lift. When used correctly this concept results in a boat which no longer has obvious stability limits and in which the only significant response to gusts is a change in speed!”

Check out the video of the run and the crash – it’s quite spectacular:

Good luck to Paul and his team! This is a very cool and exciting accomplishment!

Miriam Makeba at the Cape Town Jazz Festival in 2006

One of Africa’s great voices was lost last night. Miriam Makeba died in Italy, shortly after a concert. Makeba gave a powerful voice to her people during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The South African government revoked her citizenship in 1963, but in the following years she was given honorary citizenship by 10 countries.

More about her live:

Wikipedia page
AlJazeera has a nice video tribute
Official website for Miriam Makeba

There is a direct trajectory from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speach 45 years ago to President (elect) Barack Obama’s victory speech in Chicago. Maybe this is Dr. King’s dream realized?

Obama’s campaign has already transformed this country. I have noticed how frequently the white middle class Obama supporters expressed their surprise at how much racism they confront when they discuss their support for Barack Obama. It’s a real eye opener for white Americans to face this reality. And this will have a lasting effect on society. Politically, the style and strategy of Obama’s campaign have been vindicated, and probably will be analyzed and discussed for many years.

Personally, my recent post about the Deployment of a US Army brigade in the US pretty much sums up where I was a few weeks ago. Hopeful, but waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now, I am HOPEFUL. The paranoid voice is still there – I still wonder what the Bushistas can/want to pull. I am certain that they are busy right now shoveling the bailout money into offshore accounts and removing all “O” keys from the keyboards in the Whitehouse.

The other dream President Obama carries on his shoulder is that very contemporary dream of a fundamental change in Washington politics. I don’t think it’ll happen in any major way in his first term. Right now Obama is busy assembling many experienced insiders for his administration. Not really “Team Change” as much as “Team Cleanup.” He will be the most powerful President in American history – thanks to the work of the Bushistas – plus he’ll have a Congress controlled by Democrats and a serious mandate. But cleaning up the mess left by Bush/Cheney will take a term – at least.

Perhaps most importantly, though, was what did not win on Nov. 4: fear.  Fear did not win. Hope was Obama’s message. Not miracles, just the opposite of fear. The McCain camp had become the party of fear and distrust. As the economy turned into a lump of coal, Americans, to their credit, turned to the guy who offered hope, not to the fearmongers. Obama appealed to the resillience of America and his appeal resounded among the voters. THAT gave me hope.

This map shows the US states sized proportional to their populations. Blue states voted for Obama, red states for McCain.

In some of the blue states Obama only got a few thousand votes more than McCain (like in NC) but all the electoral votes of those states go towards the candidate who carries the state.

UPDATE 11/10: If you like the new color scheme for the USA, check out this map by the NY Times. (Flash)

Obama edged out McCain in North Carolina

This is sweet! Today I am especially proud to be a Tar Heel! North Carolina turned blue for Obama. It looks like the Democrat won by a few thousand votes in NC. This is the first time since President Carter that a Democrat won this state. The map above shows results county by county and you can see that most rural counties went to McCain, except for the two clusters in the East, where the rural population is more heavily African American (30% – 70%). All the major population centers went for Obama: Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, and Winston-Salem. The Dem strongholds in NC (>70 percent for Obama) are Durham – which is 40 percent African American, 12 percent Hispanic and fairly urban – and Chapel Hill, where North Carolina’s largest University is located. The only other >70-percent-pro-Obama county is tiny (pop 23,500) Hertford county, at the VA border, which is over 60 percent African American. The three lone Obama counties in the mountains of Western NC are the two population centers, Boone and the famously liberal Asheville, plus Cullowhee, where Western Carolina University is located. (See U.S. Census.)

To see three former Confederate states – Florida, Virginia and North Carolina – help elect the first black President of the United States is simply amazing. Simply. Amazing.

NOTE – North Carolina officials are still counting provisional ballots, but those are mostly new voters, who broke overwhelmingly for Obama.

UPDATE – 11/6 – The AP has added North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes to Obama’s tally.

Kenwa Mabuni

Last May, Jacob and I started taking Karate lessons. Jacob met our sensei Kevin Gurganus during recess at Little River School, where Kevin teaches special ed classes. Due to his work in the public schools, sensei Kevin reaches many children who can really benefit from the Karate lessons. With his hard work and his talent for working with kids sensei Kevin has built an excellent reputation for his dojo in this area, and beyond.

He also teaches Kobudo (traditional Okinawan weapons) at a very high level, but here I want ot focus on Karate.

Jacob brought home a brochure, and so I took him for trial lessons, and ended up signing us both up. I figured that it’ll be a good father-son thing to do together, and in case he really gets good at it, it won’t be too easy for him to kick my butt in a few years.

Last week I got my first color belt (yellow – 10th kyu) which is the first step in the long process of mastering this fascinating art/sport. Over the weekend I did a bit of reading about the history of Karate, and my sensei’s Karate “lineage.”

Sensei Gurganus teaches Shito-ryu Karate-do, a style of Karate created by Kenwa Mabuni:

Kenwa Mabuni (1889-1953) had studied Shuri Te under [Anko] Itosu (1830-1915) who was at the time over seventy years old. Mabuni also studied White Crane Chaun Fa under a tea merchant from the Fukien province of China called Wu Xiangui, known by the Okinawan name of Gokenki (1886-1940), and Naha Te from Kanryo Higaonna, the teacher of Goju Ryu’s founder Chojun Miyagi.

In 1929 Kenwa Mabuni moved to Osaka in mainland Japan where he taught his system of Karate known as Shito Ryu which combines the characters from the names of his two teachers Kanryo Higashionna and Itosu. Thus combining the Shuri ti with the Naha ti systems.

The Japanese Tradition of Motobu Ha Shito Ryu combines the teachings of Kenwa Mabuni’s Shito Ryu Kempo with those of Choki Motobu’s Okinawan Kempo Tode Jutsu. Choki Motobu arrived in Osaka in 1921 and Kenwa Mabuni in 1929 both of who taught Kosei Kuniba, who was later to become the Japanese Motobu Ha Shito Ryu systems second generation headmaster and established the Seishan Kan Dojo in Osaka. The son of Yukimori son, Siyogo Kuniba became the third generation headmaster of the style which became known as Motobu Ha Shito Ryu Seishin Kan., Siyogo Kuniba also received training from Shojo Nagamine (b.1907).

History of Kempo China to Okinawa

Soke Siyogo Kuniba, 10th Dan, trained Soke Richard Baillargeon, 8th Dan, the founder and first Director of the National Karate and Jiu-Jitsu Union (NKJU), and his successor, Kyoshi Tola Lewis, 9th Dan, in the Motobu Ha Shito Ryu style of Karate, for which he was the soke – the head sensei.

Sensei Gurganus, 6th Dan, is a direct student of Kyoshi Lewis, and that means he is only two sensei removed from Master Kenwa Mabuni, one of the key figures in Karate history.

I really enjoy sensei Kevin’s lessons, and I really appreciate his attention to detail and profound knowledge of the art. And understanding the pedigree of his training has increased my respect and appreciation for his lessons even more.

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Oh boy – there’s nothing like catching up on the news after a few days at the beach. As the credit crisis is in the process of turning the global economy into a lump of coal, the divisive language of the election here is stoking emotions in each political camp. This is a dangerous brew, and in the midst of this, Democracy Now has an update on the Army Brigade Combat Team assigned to NORTHCOM. Colonel Michael Boatner tries to reassure folks that this is just to protect them, say, a “WMD-like event.” Matt Rothschild raises some important concerns with deploying an active Army unit on U.S. soil, like the National Security Presidential Directive 51, in which the administration asserts broad powers to declare a catastrophic emergency and for the executive branch (= the President) to take over government.

Another issue is this question: why is this unit a combat unit? If “the primary purpose of this force is to provide help to people in need in the aftermath of a WMD-like event in the homeland” as Boatner states, why are they training Army grunts, fresh from Iraq, in the use of tasers and rubber bullets? Naomi Wolf argues that this is already a coup d’état – that the Bushistas are getting ready to take over.

So one might argue that ONE brigade is only about 3000 – 4000 soldiers – albeit heavily armed, combat experienced soldiers. But there are thousands of Blackwater mercenaries all over the country. They just need a few regular troops deployed to give them legal cover and they can operate with a LOT of – uh – discretion. The mercenaries are practically unaccountable, as the Iraqi’s have experienced. Combine that with the current financial crisis, the hastily passed “bailout” and the billions of discretionary dollars allocated to the President in that piece of legislation, and you are looking at a fairly typical blueprint for the closing of an open society – or a coup d’état: scare the legislature into giving the head of state more power, deploy an army in the country, declare martial law and voilà – George has his own little banana republic!

NOT IN AMERICA though – right?! Yeah, but Democracy has been under threat in this country before. And don’t get me wrong – I am not pretending that I think I know what’s happening. I just try not to pretend nothing is happening. And I suggest we all stay very, very vigilant.

Cape Lookout lighthouse

Right now I am in Atlantic Beach, on the North Carolina coast. I am sitting on the deck of a friend’s beach house with a drink, waiting for the last load of laundry and the dish washer to get done, so I can pack our stuff and head back to Durham. I can hear the waves and see the Atlantic between the ocean-front houses; it’s warm, a  bit humid, overcast and almost windstill.

My Dad and his wife spent a few days with us – first in Durham, then we headed out to the beach for a couple of days. The last two days the weather was gorgeous and so yesterday we took the 30 Minute boat ride from Harker’s Island to the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. The skipper took us right along Shackleford Bank, where we saw the famous wild Mustangs that have lived there for a couple of centuries.

Wild horses grazing in the sound

It was the calmest I have ever seen this area. Just a gentle easterly breeze put a slight ripple on the calm waters of the sound. A large school of Dolphins was feeding in the sound. The locals said that the Dolphins had just arrived a few days ago, and they often stay around for a long time in the fall.

This is a fairly quiet time at the beach. Few of the rental houses here are occupied. The summer-long constant rattle and humm of the air conditioners has subsided. Often it is replaced by a saw here and an nail gun there, as the houses are readied for the winter.

Everyone here is happy to see tourists this time of year, and especially as the economy has tanked so badly. They had a relatively slow summer – many Northerners have stayed North this year, as the gas prices are so high. The NC shore is usually very popular among folks from the North East of the US. But when travelling gets expensive, they tend to stay away. And there are just not that many North Carolinians to fill all the beach houses here. So folks are really happy to see tourists and to make them feel really welcome. Our skipper (Harker’s Island Fishing Center) was super-nice and very knowledgeable about the sound. He stopped the boat several times to give us a chance to take some photos and take in the sights and sounds of this extraordinary corner of the NC Shore.

Yesterday evening, on the way back to Atlantic Beach, there was problem with the draw bridge in Beaufort. So we just stopped at the waterfront and ended up having dinner at the Dockside Restaurant on the second-floor deck overlooking the harbor. While we had some shrimps and fried oysters and some beers, the boats started coming in for the night, and several beautiful sail yachts moored right in front of the restaurant. That got us day-dreaming about picking up sailing again …

Anyway – the laundry is done. Time to pack it in and head home.

My current batch of biodiesel is my greenest yet because I used homemade, bio-electricity to cook it (instead of Duke Power’s dirty coal-based electricity).

A couple of weeks ago I bought a little 5KW diesel generator at Costco, plus a 10-circuit power switch. Last weekend I wired the generator to the circuits. Now I have 5 single-pole circuits around the house wired for power outages, plus one single-pole and one 2-pole circuit wired in the basement for biodiesel production.

Yesterday I fired up the generator and switched the 2 basement circuits to generator power. Then I filled the reactor with 200 L of oil and heated the oil, and ran the pump and a couple of lights, on biodiesel-produced electricity. That’s a total of well over 4KW continuous load. The generator handled this with no trouble at all.

This is great – it eliminates a pretty significant non-renewable, polluting input from my biodiesel: the electricity Duke Power produces at coal burning plants.

There are a variety of conspiracy theories circulating about how the Bushistas will try to create a situation to declare martial law and suspend the Nov. 4 election, if it looks like Obama is going to win it. I am skeptical about these theories, but this story did give me pause: The US Army has assigned the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team to the US Northern Command – for active duty in the United States. This is the first time an active unit has been assigned to NORTHCOM, and the keywords “civil unrest,” “crowd control” and “non-lethal capabilities” in this story from the Army Times are definitely going to raise some eyebrows:

(via Democracy Now)

[The 3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT] may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, Sep 8, 2008

With a different administration, I would be much less worried, especially considering that this is just one military unit. But with the Bushistas I have come to expect the worst, and then look below that expectation.

[Update 9/25: fixed the reference to the US Northern Command and added Wikipedia link.]

Update: The controversy in this story lies in the application of the Posse Comitatus Act, a law that was enacted by the US Congress after the end of the Reconstruction Era – the ten-year occupation of the former Confederate States by US Military to protect the newly freed slaves. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the US military for law enforcement in the United States. Without an act of Congress, the US President cannot use the troops assigned to NORTHCOM.

Today I finally bit the bullet and moved my blog to a new hosting service. Looks like everything works fine now. Since I did not change the domain name, moving the blog was just a question of installing the new blog, dropping all the tables, restoring the database to the new server, uploading some extra files – bang! Done!

something is wrong with the scripts for posting new entries. Hopefully I can figure this out soon …

For quite a while the biodieselers in our area have been wondering what will happen to our cosy little niche when diesel and biodiesel hit price parity at $3.50. Well, here we are – for well over a week now the price of diesel has been well over $3.50 per gallon and since last weekend over $4 per gallon at many gas stations – that’s $1 per litre for you metric people. Sure, that’s nowhere near the $2 per liter many Europeans are paying these days, but the percent increase last year in the US has been much higher than in Europe.

With biodiesel being the cheap fuel in town, the coop can not keep those tanks on the b100 trail full. At the same time feedstock prices have shot through the roof. So, despite the fact that they were determined to keep the biodiesel prices stable, they now face having to up the price to adjust to the higher feedstock prices.

Personally, I feel divided over this issue. On the one hand this should teach people not to freaking waste fuel any more by leaving their SUVs idling while gossiping in the Kroger parking lot. Yet I also know that this hit the people hardest who least can afford it. Our lives are so car-centric here – you just can hardly get anything done without a car, especially when you have children. I mean, I bike to work whenever I can, but when I have to run errands, I need a car. When I pick up the kids after school I need a car. When I have meetings on campus I need a car.

The impact of the 4-dollar diesel prices (and close to 4-dollar gasoline prices) on my life are actually minimal at this point. I have access to good quality used fryer oil and methanol prices are still below $4/gallon, so I can still brew a batch of nice biodiesel for well under a dollar a gallon. And by replacing 4-dollar diesel, I actually save well over $10 per work hour by brewing the juice myself.

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Like most sports, mountain biking has its risks. I’ve had a few accidents, falling off the bike, hitting low branches, etc, but so far (knock on wood) no serious injuries. I am pretty careful and I wear a very good helmet and eye protection. Last Sunday I was biking the single-track at Little River Park just North of Durham, when I came upon a branch of shrubs that had fallen into the path right at eye level. I was going at a pretty good clip, and I had my sunglasses on, so I just ducked a bit and crashed through it. As I moved through the tangle of twigs, I felt a twig poke me in my right ear and then a sharp pain. And I mean a SHARP F#%!N pain! So I stopped and checked to see if my brain was leaking out my ear. It was not. I just noticed a couple of drops of clear liquid. After a few Minutes the pain had mostly subsided, and I got back on  the bike and I continued my ride. There was really no obvious reason to stop, and I would have had to ride back anyway.

So after that incident, the hearing in my right ear was all screwed up, muffled, like a bad case of airplane ear. I began wondering if that damn twig had poked a hole in my ear drum. I figured a good test for that would be to see what happens if I pressurize my middle ear. Sure enough – I am able to blow air through my ear. It’s a pretty weird sensation, and it freaks people out to hear a whistling sound come from your ear! So I went to see my doctor on Tuesday. He took one look and said “Yep – you punctured your ear drum.” Then he sent me to a specialist across town. That’s where I went today. He also said “Oh yes – you punctured your ear drum.”

The doctor says that it’ll take about 6-8 weeks for the 2mm hole in my ear drum to heal up. From the location of the hole, near the malleus bone, I was lucky that I did not damage those little hearing bones in my ear. The doctor said that if you experience trauma  in your ear and then you get dizzy, that’s a sign that you damaged those bones. But he checked it out thoroughly, and there is no crap inside the middle ear, and so it should heal just fine. I hope so.  My hearing is all screwed up. And I can blow air through my f#%!n ear! What a stupid, weird thing to have happen.

German Vice-chancellor and foreign minister Steinmeier is in Togo for talks with Faure Gnassingbe. He appears to be following the new EU strategy of engagement with Gnassingbe, whereby they hope to win concessions on the development of a more functional democracy in Togo. Good luck with that.

Also, I cannot stand these idiotic descriptions of Togo that use the words “sliver” or “wedged” or “tiny.” Yeah – Togo is relatively small, but so are Bhutan, Dubai, Liechtenstein and many more perfectly respectable nations. The only “tiny” thing that is “wedged” is some reporter’s … uh … vocabulary.

Congratulations to the team from Egypt for defending the title in the Cup of African Nations against the team from Cameroon (1-0). The host Ghana came in third place on Saturday, defeating Ivory Coast 0-1.

The Beluga Skysails, a container ship powered in part by a 500sqm towing kite, has “set sail” from the German North Sea port Bremerhaven across the Atlantic. This is reportedly the first commercial trip of a Skysail powered ship. Spiegel Online has a video (in German).

As I have said previously, this is a brilliant reinvention of sailing technology that has potential to reduce CO2 emissions  by hundreds of thousands of tons yearly. And reduce operational cost of the ships that use it.

The Africa Cup of Nations began today with close 2-1 win for host Ghana over Guinea. Congratulations to the Black Stars!

This Africa Cup is considered a dress rehearsal for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where several African teams are hoping to showcase world class African Football. In any case, the Africa Cup is probably the largest, most intensely watched sports event in Africa. Hopes are high for all participating nations. But especially for for some nations, like Ivory Coast and Kenya, many hope that rooting for the same team may help heal painful divisions at home.

Germany’s contribution to the Africa Cup are three coaches (de): Reinhard Fabisch for Benin, Otto Pfister for Cameroon and, most notably, the 1974 world championship team member and former German national team coach Berti Vogts, coaching for Nigeria. The expectations for Vogts to take the Super Eagles to the title are very high, especially in Nigeria. The first match, on Monday against Ivory Coast, will likely be a serious test and an indication how well Nigeria’s expectations will be matched by results.

This is an amazing new sailing record:

At 23:35 GMT 51 year old sailor Francis Joyon sailed across the start finish line near Brest in France aboard his his 30 metre trimaran IDEC to set a new solo round the world of 57 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes and 6 seconds.

That takes 14 days, 44 minutes and 27 seconds from the preceding record, held since 2005 by the Britain’s Dame Ellen MacArthur.

Joyon sailed nearly 26,400 nautical miles (nearly 49,000 kilometres) at an amazing average on the water of 19,09 knots, 4 knots faster than MacArthur.

He sailed the 30 metre trimaran without conventional diesel/ electric charging, instead used a windmill and solar panels.

Its was tough last week for Joyon, with a mast stay threatening to fail, which would have caused the dismasting of IDEC, but the gritty Frenchman held his nerve, climbing the mast four times to make repairs.

Sail World, Jan19, 2008