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"All Greeks own many houses".
"All Greek fish sold are from Thailand"!
"All Greeks own yachts"?!
"You get thrown out of buses"?!?!
... and of course, all Greeks will steal from you, cheat on you, etc, etc
That's the most complete collection of negative comments I've ever read online, kudos to you for collecting them.
However, compiling a list of negative press releases (like the 3000 blind people, which was a great scandal here as well) and putting some anecdotal self experience, is far from describing the truth. Enough with the "greek sterotypes", even the German don't believe them
I'm not sure what kind of spoiled rich Greek friends you have, that can obviously spend enough to travel abroad and play basketball and whatever, but I assure you that the *vast* majority of people here are struggling with 30% true unemployment and 500 Euros wages. Old people are suffering with a 50%-70% cut in their pension. Disabled people where stripped off their benefits overnight. Gas and heating prices went up 50%. Electricity went up at least 20%. All these along with a 30%-50% increase in taxation *of the poor* (and 0% increase for the rich). This is the actual austerity, and not some bull*hit about people "forced to cut down on spending". Just take a look at the numbers of people immigrating, committing a suicide, dying of heart attacks etc over the last 4 years. Do you really think these where people frustrated for losing one of their yachts?

The true problem of austerity was not that people where "forced to cut down on spending". It's that the state was forced to cut down on spending and find revenue by means of heavy and irrational taxation (insane actually). This had the obvious impact of putting the economy in a deep depression, thus leading the state into having to borrow again, leading to more heavy austerity measures etc. So we've ended up now with an economy 30% smaller, unemployment went from 10% to 30%, people have lost their jobs, their houses, their hopes, their lives and what for? , only this time it's not the private sector that holds it (european banks), but they have traded this with European state loans (see: european people's money). The new government doesn't promise it will "continue the policy of spending". It has promised (and we'll see if it manages that) that it will revert insane austerity measures. For example, cutting the basic wage from 750 Euros to 580 Euros was a measure that not even the employers wanted: They knew that this would drive the economy even more deep into recession.

So, please, check your facts before posting condemns about a whole race, just because you got cheated and had a fight with a bus employee on a crowded island in a crowded season.
I could write much more, about how German businesses funded corruption in Greece, How Germany benefits from the Greek crisis, etc, but it's pointless; You people will always believe that it's "the Greeks' absent mindedness" that is to blame about the crisis, that they had it coming, and that it will never happen to your country. Good luck.
Ah, and by the way, during my trips worldwide I've met literally hundreds of people who h

No, it's not. For every year of life you save by avoiding bicycle crashes (by not bicycling), you lose 10 or more to diseases of the couch potato. Or, non-cyclists have a 39% higher mortality rate (both references appear above). Or, regular cyclists can expect to live 2-5 years longer. And Michael Bluejay's not entirely reliable; you need to check his numbers carefully (I've caught him making mistakes in the past; if he gets an answer he likes, he does not check his work thoroughly for errors -- though he does correct them, without attribution, if they are brought to his attention :-).

Cars win because of short-term concerns and high up-front costs. I can tell you that riding into Cambridge, MA at rush hour, a car is NOT faster, because I have raced my wife to the same location, and been indoors and sitting while she was still looking for parking. For the first cars, this was not true, but once everybody has a car, it is. (My father once had a 14-minute commute to work; he's long since retired, and the same trip now requires about an hour, even though the road has been doubled in width and several overpasses have been installed). But once you own the car, you've paid your ante, you'd feel pretty stupid just leaving it parked. Insurance is priced with a big constant and a tiny per-mile increment. Furthermore, all those cars on the road make it kinda unpleasant for cycling, and the traffic jams make mass transit even slower. Might as well drive.

The other interesting thing about a car (versus any sort of self-powered transport) is that it robs you of necessary exercise. How necessary? This study found that use of a bicycle to commute was associated 2-5 years of expected extra life. Those are not the limits; those are the averages, depending on gender and intensity of exercise, and as little as 3.5 hours/week of cycling. Do the math -- if your car is not a lot faster than your bicycle, it's possible for the extra time spent to ride a bike to work to pay off at a 4:1 ratio, even discounting time spent in the bathroom or asleep during those extra years.

It would help if you provided a link to your studies. A simple back-of-the-envelope check on how much is added to our lives (2-5 years) and how much of our CO2 footprint is from "personal vehicle use" (out of 5718 Tg total in 2010, 1128.4, = .65 times 1736, pages 4 and 8 (pdf)) suggests that the answer is not so clear-cut.

(Your remark/snark about bike helmets suggests you are just casually quoting something you heard, and have not really looked into the issue. Other people have. Helmets are not a large factor in cyclist life expectancy compared to the health benefits of cycling itself.)

The high-end expected extra life is 7% (if you are male, and ride vigorously, assume expected life span of 74.7 years), but with "average" exertion, only 5% (3 years). Cycling extends female expected lifespan by only 2.7% to 4.7%.

20% of our CO2 emissions come from personal vehicle use. If you ride a bike instead of driving, your yearly footprint will not be as large, and thus the total footprint will not be as large, either.

Suppose you use a bicycle to displace 50 miles of "personal vehicle use" per week. That's 2500/year. If you assume the maximum extra life from cycling, and would otherwise drive your car 7500/year, it's a wash (7500/2500=3; 20%/7%=3). If only average (and 50mi/week is not that big a deal), then 10000/year, and it's a wash. For women, displacing 2500 a year with a bike puts them ahead if they would otherwise drive less than 10,600 to 18,500 miles per year.

For the male half of the population, cycling is probably a net environmental loss, for the female half, it is probably a net win. This is obviously crude -- we don't drive our entire lives (so the percentage added is larger), but we don't drive as much when we are old, as we do when we have a commute and kids and etc (so extra years are not as costly). The car miles displaced by cycling also tend to be the least efficient (slow, stop-and-go, short trips), which slightly favors cycling.

Human-fuel also enters into it, but on most foods our full-cycle energy cost is pretty good (equivalent of 780mpg on potatoes; 145mpg on skim milk; 1500-3000mpg on oats). Beef is not a good plan, but a steady diet of beef-for-bike-fuel would probably negate the health benefits of cycling anyway (too much protein for too long, not good for your kidneys).

This claim also assumes that people won't pursue other steps to live longer lives. If there was a pill that would extend people's lives by five years, and had good-sized health studies as evidence, it's a safe assumption that people would take it (provided, of course, that the pill did not make them sweat or have wind-blown or helmet-hair). And if/when such a pill is found, the extra-years environmental "cost" of cycling disappears (unless the pill and exercise have non-overlapping physiological benefits).

Well, speaking as an MD/PhD, I can tell you that even though useless treatments DO exist (for example cough medication), there is a lot of controversy for several other issues. Even guideline groups cannot always agree on a specific attitude.

For example, beta blockers are clearly indicated for myocardial infarction with evidence grade IA (the highest possible!) in the guidelines of the european society of cardiology (freely available in http://www.escardio.org/guidelines-surveys/esc-guidelines/GuidelinesDocuments/guidelines-AMI-FT.pdf). Anyone with half a brain and ten years of training knows that beta blockers (especially IV) should not be given to someone who is hemodynamically unstable, which is the conclusion of the cited study above (published in Lancet 2005) and the aforementioned guidelines. Saying that beta blockers should not be given is completely wrong.

Things are much less clear for low back pain surgery, even though recent reports have shown it to be more effective.

In conclusion, the original article incorrectly criticizes and mixes good treatments that should be avoided in specific subgroups (beta blockers) with useless treatments (cough mediciation) with controversial treatments (low back surgery). Such oversimplification is dangerous, especially if strongly motivated by cost concerns.

P.

• abstract
• press release (3 page PDF)

Bollocks. Link should have been http://www.escardio.org/VPO/scheduleconference.htm