Electric Battery-Only Powered Aircraft Flies in France

This French kit-built plane goes a step beyond the self-launched electric powered glider from Slovenia. The French plane has made a 48 minute flight, and is preparing to fly the English Channel!

The 48-minute flight of the “Electra” covered more than 50 kilometers (31 miles)...The single-seater, based on a Sourciette kit aircraft, is the product of APAME (Association pour la Promotion des Aéronefs à Motorisation Électrique, Association to Promote Electrical Aircraft), with the support of a number of partners.

The wood and fabric Electra is 7m in length, with a wingspan of 9m. Weight of the aircraft without batteries is 134 kg. The battery pack weights 47 kg. Maximum takeoff weight is 265 kg. The aircraft has a cruise speed of 90 km/h.

APAME plans to cross the English Channel in July 2009 with the Electra...

Green Car Congress

Notice that the French Electra has very tight weight margins. Until electric storage batteries achieve a better energy density, Electra pilots must be petit.

Saving France

The recent French election suggests that the French themselves suspect that something has gone wrong in France. Sarkozy's "tough love" approach to saving France was not expected to win out--given the lack of "fighting spirit" that the French have displayed for so long. But can even tough-minded Sarkozy save France, with all her problems?

Agriculture, industrialized and now EU-sponsored, still plays a sizable role in the French economy, but farmers have virtually vanished as a class (constituting only 3 percent of the working population), and whole sections of the countryside have reverted to fallow land and untended forests. The industrial working class is shrinking as well: from 38.5 percent of all jobs in 1974 to about 20 percent in 2005. Workers are deserting both the unions and the left-wing political parties. Thanks to the depredations of urban-renewal projects, historic Paris has been emptied of its traditional working- and middle-class population and turned into a yuppie theme park: much of its unique vibrancy is gone, and other French cities have so far not been able to replace it or to compete with the so-called Eurocities of London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Milan, Barcelona.

The French middle class, Chauvel sums up, is haunted by “a sense of impending doom.” Salaries have not kept pace since the 1980’s; meritocracy no longer seems to work as a vehicle of social promotion; unemployment is climbing, devastating the lives of people already deprived of a functioning family; property has become unaffordable unless one inherits; prospects of a secure retirement grow dimmer every year. The parents of today’s middle class, Chauvel writes, “dramatically improved their own standards of living,” but the children “know they will not enjoy a similar fate. In fact they fear they will be downgraded to an impoverished condition.”

Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, there is crime. Until the 1960’s, France was largely a safe country: people like my parents would slip their keys under the doormat or just leave the door unlocked. It is now an extremely unsafe country, rife with violent assault, arson, armed robbery, and murder, often savage. According to the Institute of National Statistics, the overall crime rate—the ratio of reported criminal activity to population—grew from 12 percent in 1960, to over 60 percent in 1980, to about 70 percent in 2000. The rise may be related to all sorts of circumstances, including economic ones. But it is incontrovertibly related to immigration. According to police sources, over 60 percent of the criminals and over 90 percent of the crime bosses operating on French soil are either foreigners, immigrants, or the children of immigrants.

...Whereas most big French companies have been profitable for years, the French GDP has been growing very slowly or not at all. What this means is that French industry and services derive the bulk of their revenue from activities overseas rather than from the domestic economy. In fact, some companies have already drawn the logical conclusion and moved out: a flagship French company like Renault is now registered in the Netherlands.

As for those remaining at home, they are not able to provide enough jobs for the present working population of approximately 30 million. And so about 9 percent of French residents are unemployed—roughly twice the rate in Britain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, or the United States. Among able-bodied persons under the age of twenty-four, the unemployment rate jumps to 22 percent. To top it off, over 50 percent of today’s jobs are thought to be more “virtual” than “actual,” i.e., they fail the test of rational business management. According to an index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average number of hours “effectively” devoted to work is only 617 yearly for France, as against 801 in Britain and 865 in the United States.

How do the French cope with this? Simple: they rely on an ever-expanding welfare state that takes care of the unemployed, the poor who are beyond any prospect of a viable job, the uneconomical state-run companies, and the supernumerary petty civil servants or “public-convenience” workers. And this does not count the various handouts and incentives, usually in the form of tax rebates, bestowed by the government on companies that agree not to shut down and move elsewhere.

Source

And eventually, everyone who works will work for the welfare state, and everyone who does not work will be paid by the welfare state and cared for by the welfare state. It makes for a nice tautological closed loop, nice and tidy. And if you believe that, may I offer some lovely lunar real estate at a bargain basement price?

The logic of socialism eventually leads to collapse, regardless of the lofty starting point of the wishful populace. France will be no different, and will perhaps crash more quickly due to its absolute need for more immigrants to support all the indigent indigenes on welfare.

Sarkozy cannot save France, because France lacks the will to be saved. If you are an investor, consider the reasons for Renault pulling out.

The Real Reason France Prohibits Women Cyclists from Le Tour

The French have always seen themselves as being somewhat "progressive" in comparison to most other people, particularly the British, the Germans, the Americans, . . . Feminists have long wondered why the French, as progressive as they clearly are, continue to deny women cyclists the opportunity to compete in Le Tour de France. Finally, science has learned the true reason for the prohibition.

Women who participated in prolonged, frequent bicycling had decreased genital sensation and were more likely to have a history of genital pain than women runners, researchers in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine and The Albert Einstein College of Medicine report in the current issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The researchers compared 48 women competitive cyclists to 22 women runners. They used non-invasive techniques to evaluate the possible effects of bicycling on genital sensation and sexual health. Participants in the study were women bicyclists who consistently rode an average of at least 10 miles per week, four weeks per month. Women who ran at least one mile daily or five miles weekly were chosen as a control group because they represent an active group of women who were not exposed to direct pressure in the perineal region.

....“This is the first study to evaluate the effects of prolonged or frequent bicycling on neurological and sexual function in women,” said Guess. “While seated on a bicycle, the external genital nerve and artery are directly compressed. It is possible that chronic compression of the female genital area may lead to compromised blood flow and nerve injury due to disruption of the blood-nerve barrier.”

Source.

Although the researchers deny that women cyclists suffer adverse effects to their sexual health or performance, one tends to question such glib reassurances. Particularly since male cyclists can suffer from genital numbness and erectile dysfunction.

Leave it to the French to be progressive even when it looks like they are being bigots and chauvinists.

Clash of Civilisations

Paris is burning, and typically most of the world's news media studiously ignores the implications of widespread muslim lawlessness in the middle of the City of Light. The City of Love, the gentle city of intimate passion, is being overrun by barbarians that spilled over from decaying Islamic civilisation. Night by night the riots extend further across France, and into neighboring nations. Germans are in denial about their own precarious position, very much like France's. All of Europe is under a de facto siege from the barbarous excess of a bankrupt culture.

This was predictable and widely predicted, if somewhat premature. A smarter group of barbarian invaders might have waited for more opportune circumstances. These invaders are anything but intelligent. Violence is their primary feature, what they consider their best feature. It must be prominently displayed or they fear they will be seen in less than their best light. They have no choice.

For a civilisation to propagate through the centuries, and millenia if fortunate, it must be able to defend itself while nurturing the best of its own. If the civilisation grows too weak to defend itself, or too decadent to nurture its best, it will collapse and be overrun.

In the tens of thousands of years between the origins of spoken human language, and the origins of written human language, what civilisations may have come and gone, lost to time? If we could only observe those far-flung human laboratories of genuine sociology. The rise and fall of religions, tribes, cults, ideologies. Limited in time and place due to limitations on indoctrination of followers to spoken word propagation. No less poignant for all that.

The insurrections of modern day France are preliminary skirmishes on the home front of western civilisation. Not since the gates of Vienna has Europe been threatened by outsiders. Will these clashes be the needed innoculation against decadence that the west has needed? Or will they be the signal of collapse of Europe?

Western civilisation must survive in some form, or the next few hundreds of years will be horrible for humanity. If the future of humanity rests in the hands of Iranian mullahs, Saudi Imams, or Chinese communists, the outlook will be bleak. Western civilisation is not perfect, but compared to every other it is incredibly enlightened.

Will the barbarians win by default? It is not an academic question.