They learned that Americans are actually stupider than even their most wildly optimistic stretch of imagination projected. They kept prices low to keep selling the guzzlers, and ta-da, look at the highways. Watch how this affects (not) our choice of vehicle purchase.
Thank you for that information. Wow. Sounds like all of my highschool buddies died of cancer, I must surely have died by now also; I don't know how your science has failed me. Wow.
I've read about the old days when folks bought cocaine hydrochloride from the local apothecary, and some of them could not handle it, causing concern and prohibition. Personally, I only saw it a bit in the 70s & 80s but it did have a profound and detrimental effect on a few of the people that I knew, and brought out the stupid in an awful lot of people; Much like amphetamines. IMO, tobacco should only be used respectfully in ceremonies invoking the four winds. As Tommy Dunbar said, beer and weed is all you need.
A lot of folks didn't complain because coke fiends suck. (I'm libertarian when it comes to drugs, but society really must keep some people off the streets.)
I haven't done double-blind testing, and should state that my experience does compare nasty tasteless supermarket produce to home-grown, organic (actual, not certified), ripe, and fresh-picked vegetables. Not a fair comparison, by any measure. Supermarket "organic" doesn't fare much better in this camp. My sister has a flock of chickens free-ranging about the farm, and their eggs taste like a different species than the ones that one buys, there again- not comparable; Forget blind testing. (Blindfolds would also be required as the yolks are a completely different color. Triple-blind?)
In the olden days, when I was a kid, I did a lot of road biking and was very strong. Now, I go slow; The single-speed thing is for simplicity. In Antioch, I get heckled by tweakers who think pink indicates deviance. Everywhere else I get hooted at by cute young women. woot!
For some reason nobody else seems to be pointing out the fact that organic vegetables taste better. This alone compensates for any price differential, if you like to enjoy eating.
I alternate two pair of shoes so they can air out between wearings. It seems to decrease wear so I believe two pair lasts roughly three times as long as one pair of shoes. Going without socks I think I'd try a five-to-seven day shoe cycle. I like socks, and often go through two pair a day in summer.
I managed to survive quite a few miles on the Ridge Runner without front brakes, before I finished assembling it. If I did any sort of stunt riding, I'm certain I'd have been punished for that; I actually have evidence of that http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/6912751/ online. Ironically, the Ridge Runner never made it to any place more treacherous than Glen Park Canyon in San Francisco whilst its slick-tired sister ship the Prairie Scooter has summited Mount Ashland.
Wearing a helmet does not encourage any sort of jackassery on my part, indeed, I ride my bicycle as nearly akin to a 90-year-old-grandmother as is possible. I learned many painful lessons in the 70s, and use them to inform my actions today. I ride in town primarily on side walks, this may partially explain why my helmet has probably not had to save me from any fatal injury. When I encounter a pedestrian, I stop the bike and walk. I am not an ordinary asshole biker. Allow me to re-reiterate that my helmets have repeatedly saved me from painful head-slams and skin injury, not necessarily fatalities. I find this fact indisputable, and if you knew me at all, you would concur. Pain avoidance is a valid motivation, IMHO, and I use it to justify my helmet use. I ride off- road a lot. That is another way of avoiding car-human-interface and possible fatality. Unlike in my foolish youth, I do not ride in a reckless or particularly fast style. In fact, I am always the slowest person in sight at any place I have ridden for at least ten years. I generally push my bike on foot up steep ascents, and very frequently get off and walk on steep descents. Mostly I ride on graded fire roads, but I do like a good singletrack. (we called them cow/elk trails in my day.) Tolman Creek Road up to Mount Ashland is my current favorite ride. I use my skill at somersaulting over the bars as a technique to avoid painful injury. I consider it a routine response to certain situations, and I suppose the alternative for the rest of you is flat crashing, with the attendant contusions and fractures. Painful and avoidable, I will continue to eschew that. I perfected the somersault method long ago, before bicycle helmets were useful, available, or effective. (I did use a motorcycle helmet for BMX and stunts back in the 70s.) A helmet allows me more freedom of motion/trajectory when I do a somersault because I don't have to work so hard at protecting the noggin. Basically the helmet is effective and useful for saving damage to all the rest of the body. All you folks who think a wrist/knee/elbow injury is the worst one should expect are [expletive omitted] doing it wrong. Tumbling is preferable to a flat landing, in fact the last time I remember pain from a crash was when a poorly built front rim collapsed under hard braking and slapped me face-first into the pavement. (Major hand sting, shin dentage.)
It indicates pebbles not embedded in my skull and scalp that's still attached and not leaking blood. I haven't ever fractured my skull or even gotten a concussion, but I prefer to avoid the pain of smashing my head into the ground unhelmeted, as I have on a few occasions. Why all this thickness? Is it September already?
When I was six or seven years old, I took a Judo class, and learnt to tumble forward and bounce up on my feet. By tucking and rolling I can avoid wrist damage, scrapes, and all that stuff. When I was a teenager, I was legendary for bouncing up and walking away unhurt from spectacular looking crashes. One time I went over the bars on a downslope, bounced to my feet then caught the bike over my shoulder as I ran down the hill. My friends all said it looked like Jerry Rice. Too bad we didn't have video in those days.
My only certain helmet-saved-my-life story happened the day I learned that a Yamaha RD-400 will flip forward if the brakes are applied too abruptly. My Snell '75 rated Shoei ZG helmet got a ~2cm flat spot and a ~20cm long crack through the plastic shell where I'd bounced on the crown of my head @80kph. I suppose I might possibly have lived, but I really don't think I'd have somersaulted three times then bounced to my feet uninjured and run to a stop if I had not been wearing that helmet. (Kinda cool- everything was in slow-motion as I ran down the highway and my bike floated overhead, then it hit the ground and started shedding parts as I tallied the damage.) Somersaulting over the handlebars was like, my signature move in the 70s. I avoided a lot of wrist and elbow damage that plagued others who did not have the Judo training I had. Once I had a good helmet (I destroyed three of the ablative type before I switched to the skater type) I was a able to land even more smoothly and safely because I wasn't shielding my head with my arms. One time my bicycle helmet was smashed into three pieces, and the center bit was compressed by ~1cm -that would have hurt. I read your friendly link, and it told me NOTHING THAT I DID NOT KNOW. I crashed many, many, many times before good helmets became available (curiously not once did I crash test my padded foam/leather skid-lid, fortunately as those were not regarded as very adequate.) I speak from experience, and I don't claim to have averted any necessarily fatal injuries with the other helmets I've destroyed, but they have positively saved me from much of the pain and blood loss of incidental injuries. It is surprising to me how people can disregard physical evidence and anecdotes so they can point to a webpage with vague statistics and random conclusions as real truth. Hippos kill more people so we should just laugh at folks afraid of lions, eh?
Basically, the thing you're measuring (damage to the safety device) has no correlation with the protective abilities of that device. Thus to argue the thing you've measured shows the latter lacks any rational basis.
Laughable, that is. I crash often enough I don't bother with bicycle helmets which are designed to disintegrate ablatively. I wear a skater's helmet, which I could bang with a hammer, &c., without damage. When it has gravel embedded into the hard plastic shell and major paint removal all over the surface after I've somersaulted the handlebers I don't feel the need for G-force sensor readings. I have many years of experience crashing bicycles and such, both with and without helmets. I'm pretty sure that the Shoei helmet I cracked flipping over the bars of my RD-400 and landing head-first @ 55mph was a life-saver, but you can continue in this chickenshit debate about data validity if you don't care for my anecdotal evidence. I am fairly sure that most of the damage I've done on bicycle mishaps wouldn't have been fatal, but I absolutely know that I'd have been badly hurt many times if I had not worn a helmet. One benefit in particular is the ability to protect other body parts when I'm tumbling and skidding because the helmet has the head covered, so it allows more options. I'm sorry if my anecdotal data is too imprecise for you to engage in rational thought.
If you get hit by a car, you're doing it wrong. Actually, I hit a car door once, my sternum hurt for about a year, but I'm pretty sure my helmet interfaced with the cement when I bounced off and hit the ground. Now I eschew the door zone. If you presume homicidal intent, it is fairly easy to avoid the cars.
Slashdot Mirror
They learned that Americans are actually stupider than even their most wildly optimistic stretch of imagination projected. They kept prices low to keep selling the guzzlers, and ta-da, look at the highways. Watch how this affects (not) our choice of vehicle purchase.
Well, some of us here use that air to breathe with... YMMV.
The Social System will collapse once the balloon that is the Economic System bursts. Neither is sustainable.
I heard all ketchup is green until dyed. They use unripe tomatoes and add corn syrup to sweeten it. Ripe tomatoes and sugar are obsolete.
Thank you for that information. Wow.
Sounds like all of my highschool buddies died of cancer, I must surely have died by now also; I don't know how your science has failed me.
Wow.
Wow.
Just... Wow.
I've read about the old days when folks bought cocaine hydrochloride from the local apothecary, and some of them could not handle it, causing concern and prohibition. Personally, I only saw it a bit in the 70s & 80s but it did have a profound and detrimental effect on a few of the people that I knew, and brought out the stupid in an awful lot of people; Much like amphetamines.
IMO, tobacco should only be used respectfully in ceremonies invoking the four winds. As Tommy Dunbar said, beer and weed is all you need.
I get a lung infection every time I take a commercial flight. ~One week to full recovery. No bargain for me, YMMV.
I always thought of those countries as East Asian, then I read your link, and still think so.
Doctor Tod Mikurya recommended cannabis for a friend of mine to help with his alcohol and cocaine problem.
Please cite your alleged data so we can all point and laugh.
A lot of folks didn't complain because coke fiends suck. (I'm libertarian when it comes to drugs, but society really must keep some people off the streets.)
I haven't done double-blind testing, and should state that my experience does compare nasty tasteless supermarket produce to home-grown, organic (actual, not certified), ripe, and fresh-picked vegetables. Not a fair comparison, by any measure. Supermarket "organic" doesn't fare much better in this camp.
My sister has a flock of chickens free-ranging about the farm, and their eggs taste like a different species than the ones that one buys, there again- not comparable; Forget blind testing. (Blindfolds would also be required as the yolks are a completely different color. Triple-blind?)
In the olden days, when I was a kid, I did a lot of road biking and was very strong. Now, I go slow; The single-speed thing is for simplicity.
In Antioch, I get heckled by tweakers who think pink indicates deviance. Everywhere else I get hooted at by cute young women. woot!
For some reason nobody else seems to be pointing out the fact that organic vegetables taste better. This alone compensates for any price differential, if you like to enjoy eating.
I alternate two pair of shoes so they can air out between wearings. It seems to decrease wear so I believe two pair lasts roughly three times as long as one pair of shoes.
Going without socks I think I'd try a five-to-seven day shoe cycle. I like socks, and often go through two pair a day in summer.
I managed to survive quite a few miles on the Ridge Runner without front brakes, before I finished assembling it. If I did any sort of stunt riding, I'm certain I'd have been punished for that; I actually have evidence of that http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/6912751/ online. Ironically, the Ridge Runner never made it to any place more treacherous than Glen Park Canyon in San Francisco whilst its slick-tired sister ship the Prairie Scooter has summited Mount Ashland.
Put all together, we do not yet have enough information to prove fracking will trigger the big one.
The Kobolds don't dig it when we inject the toxic waste, so they start rioting.
Wearing a helmet does not encourage any sort of jackassery on my part, indeed, I ride my bicycle as nearly akin to a 90-year-old-grandmother as is possible. I learned many painful lessons in the 70s, and use them to inform my actions today. I ride in town primarily on side walks, this may partially explain why my helmet has probably not had to save me from any fatal injury.
When I encounter a pedestrian, I stop the bike and walk.
I am not an ordinary asshole biker.
Allow me to re-reiterate that my helmets have repeatedly saved me from painful head-slams and skin injury, not necessarily fatalities. I find this fact indisputable, and if you knew me at all, you would concur. Pain avoidance is a valid motivation, IMHO, and I use it to justify my helmet use.
I ride off- road a lot. That is another way of avoiding car-human-interface and possible fatality. Unlike in my foolish youth, I do not ride in a reckless or particularly fast style. In fact, I am always the slowest person in sight at any place I have ridden for at least ten years. I generally push my bike on foot up steep ascents, and very frequently get off and walk on steep descents. Mostly I ride on graded fire roads, but I do like a good singletrack. (we called them cow/elk trails in my day.) Tolman Creek Road up to Mount Ashland is my current favorite ride.
I use my skill at somersaulting over the bars as a technique to avoid painful injury. I consider it a routine response to certain situations, and I suppose the alternative for the rest of you is flat crashing, with the attendant contusions and fractures. Painful and avoidable, I will continue to eschew that.
I perfected the somersault method long ago, before bicycle helmets were useful, available, or effective. (I did use a motorcycle helmet for BMX and stunts back in the 70s.)
A helmet allows me more freedom of motion/trajectory when I do a somersault because I don't have to work so hard at protecting the noggin.
Basically the helmet is effective and useful for saving damage to all the rest of the body. All you folks who think a wrist/knee/elbow injury is the worst one should expect are [expletive omitted] doing it wrong. Tumbling is preferable to a flat landing, in fact the last time I remember pain from a crash was when a poorly built front rim collapsed under hard braking and slapped me face-first into the pavement. (Major hand sting, shin dentage.)
Actually, I can admit to being more of a dick IRL. But I'm trying to behave better.
It indicates pebbles not embedded in my skull and scalp that's still attached and not leaking blood. I haven't ever fractured my skull or even gotten a concussion, but I prefer to avoid the pain of smashing my head into the ground unhelmeted, as I have on a few occasions.
Why all this thickness? Is it September already?
When I was six or seven years old, I took a Judo class, and learnt to tumble forward and bounce up on my feet. By tucking and rolling I can avoid wrist damage, scrapes, and all that stuff. When I was a teenager, I was legendary for bouncing up and walking away unhurt from spectacular looking crashes. One time I went over the bars on a downslope, bounced to my feet then caught the bike over my shoulder as I ran down the hill. My friends all said it looked like Jerry Rice.
Too bad we didn't have video in those days.
My only certain helmet-saved-my-life story happened the day I learned that a Yamaha RD-400 will flip forward if the brakes are applied too abruptly. My Snell '75 rated Shoei ZG helmet got a ~2cm flat spot and a ~20cm long crack through the plastic shell where I'd bounced on the crown of my head @80kph. I suppose I might possibly have lived, but I really don't think I'd have somersaulted three times then bounced to my feet uninjured and run to a stop if I had not been wearing that helmet. (Kinda cool- everything was in slow-motion as I ran down the highway and my bike floated overhead, then it hit the ground and started shedding parts as I tallied the damage.)
Somersaulting over the handlebars was like, my signature move in the 70s. I avoided a lot of wrist and elbow damage that plagued others who did not have the Judo training I had. Once I had a good helmet (I destroyed three of the ablative type before I switched to the skater type) I was a able to land even more smoothly and safely because I wasn't shielding my head with my arms. One time my bicycle helmet was smashed into three pieces, and the center bit was compressed by ~1cm -that would have hurt. I read your friendly link, and it told me NOTHING THAT I DID NOT KNOW. I crashed many, many, many times before good helmets became available (curiously not once did I crash test my padded foam/leather skid-lid, fortunately as those were not regarded as very adequate.) I speak from experience, and I don't claim to have averted any necessarily fatal injuries with the other helmets I've destroyed, but they have positively saved me from much of the pain and blood loss of incidental injuries.
It is surprising to me how people can disregard physical evidence and anecdotes so they can point to a webpage with vague statistics and random conclusions as real truth.
Hippos kill more people so we should just laugh at folks afraid of lions, eh?
Basically, the thing you're measuring (damage to the safety device) has no correlation with the protective abilities of that device. Thus to argue the thing you've measured shows the latter lacks any rational basis.
Laughable, that is.
I crash often enough I don't bother with bicycle helmets which are designed to disintegrate ablatively. I wear a skater's helmet, which I could bang with a hammer, &c., without damage. When it has gravel embedded into the hard plastic shell and major paint removal all over the surface after I've somersaulted the handlebers I don't feel the need for G-force sensor readings. I have many years of experience crashing bicycles and such, both with and without helmets. I'm pretty sure that the Shoei helmet I cracked flipping over the bars of my RD-400 and landing head-first @ 55mph was a life-saver, but you can continue in this chickenshit debate about data validity if you don't care for my anecdotal evidence. I am fairly sure that most of the damage I've done on bicycle mishaps wouldn't have been fatal, but I absolutely know that I'd have been badly hurt many times if I had not worn a helmet. One benefit in particular is the ability to protect other body parts when I'm tumbling and skidding because the helmet has the head covered, so it allows more options.
I'm sorry if my anecdotal data is too imprecise for you to engage in rational thought.
If you get hit by a car, you're doing it wrong. Actually, I hit a car door once, my sternum hurt for about a year, but I'm pretty sure my helmet interfaced with the cement when I bounced off and hit the ground. Now I eschew the door zone.
If you presume homicidal intent, it is fairly easy to avoid the cars.