I love it how the solution is not something simple. All we need is something that burns in a gasoline engine like gasoline.
Not to say "OK fellers, junk your cars, your trucks, your motorcycles, scooters, lawn mowers and of course the entire infrastructure of gas stations so we can have you use these battery powered papier mache sewing machines with a top speed of 50mph that cost $30,000."
Of course, the administration is even more brain-dead. "Junk that antique car you've put tens of thousands into restoring - we're going with hydrogen fuel cell technology - of course, that means you need to buy a new car, new bike, new this, new that... but the hydrogen comes from OIL anyway HAR HAR HAR we still profit off you!"
Can someone please tell me why we can't just loose a bunch of really bright people on solving the RIGHT problem, which is a different gasoline, not something nobody wants to drive?
Listen, children don't start out life American. They've got to be socialised into being aggressive and desensitised.
As for empathetic detachment, that's also required.
Some people believe it should be nihilistic music, video games in which women are chattel to be abused, and rampant pornography. These people are called Democrats.
Some believe that children should go to military school, attend frightening services at fundamentalist churches (which think it totally acceptable to show "Passion of the Christ" to small children), learn how to handle a gun as soon as they can walk and execute the mentally retarded while bombing people of different colors. These people are called Republicans.
Everyone else is made to be desensitised behind the wheel of a car in just about every traffic spot in the rest of this country.
That is, if the lack of health care, spiralling cost of living and ever-increasing downsizing doesn't drive you spare.
I applaud the guy for being able to make a policeman move without applying 20,000,000 volts.
My wife's computer was stolen. We saw her ICQ account pop up online - the thief hadn't even bothered to wipe it. We tracked down the IP, but Patrolman DonutMuncher apparently wasn't interested in even calling the ISP to get an address. It wasn't the computer we cared about but family heirlooms which were stolen at the same time. Unfortunately, police work is sometimes work.
Where we live now, the cops couldn't bother to show up, to, say two thugs threatening to attack a pregnant woman (a racially motivated attack, too) even though they're LEANING AGAINST A SQUAD CAR HALF A BLOCK AWAY.
This guy wants us to believe that he was able to talk cops into going back and forth to arrest these guys? Please tell me where you live, man! I might respect cops again if I can find a jurisdiction in which they actually do work, rather than raping and torturing prostitutes and shooting their wives to avoid paying child support.
I'm not speaking of blacks. I'm speaking of people in a motorcycle club.
And as to why clubbers so often end up in prison, there are those who are there who've done wrongs, and there are those who are there because they got railroaded (the whole guilt by association thing).
RE: Yet another perfect example of why bikers are self-centered assholes!
That, coming from a cyclist, is rich.
RE: Once again, you miss it: "what about the pedestrians". When your fart-potato goes by, everybody has to stop talking, listening to the birds, radio, or whatever, while your previous goddamned fart machine goes by.
Only if they want to. They are welcome, if they want, to pause for the second it takes for me to drive by, or ignore me altogether. There aren't many birds on a highway, and as for radios, many people ride with em in their cars.
RE: How about you also add a 30-foot tower with a blazing laser light show,
Because it would affect the balance and handling of the bike. Besides, laser light shows and all that are the purview of the Discovery Channel OCC biker wannabee types.
RE: a 240dB subwoofer,
And how much juice do you think a motorcycle alternator puts out, anyway? Here's a news flash for you, Mitch. When I ride I'm listening to my bike. If I'm not paying attention to it, I could miss something important.
RE: and an entourage of a dozen caddies in front and behind you to announce your precious presence wherever you go?
No, the loud pipes will do just fine. Most people notice a Harley. When you got the right ride you don't need to chrome it up or try to draw attention.
RE: What you once again fail to realize is that you're a goddamned annoyance to hundreds of people, everywhere you go, every day.
I'm glad the hundreds of people have explicitly chosen you as their spokesperson. However, I personally couldn't care less what the hundreds of people particularly want. It's a free country, and until it ceases to be I'll ride what I want, thanks. Speaking of obnoxious self centered assholes, you might want to rethink your position considering that you seem to think the entire world should be engineered around what you want to do. I'm not parked right outside your window doing wheelie burnouts or like the crackheads I have to chase off my block, playing Biggie Jigg Snoopy Bling or whatever while parked trying to honk enough times for the person they want to talk to to walk out of their house. I just happen to be going somewhere, and I'll do it how I please.
RE: If you don't feel safe on a donorcycle, then fine, get the fuck off it and stop being an obnoxious asshole about it.
Maybe if you clueless sods would pay attention to your driving I would care less about what you think. I obviously am fine on a bike cause I ride the damn thing. But just as how your car has a horn, mine has pipes that can, if called upon to, wake the dead.
RE: I've ridden motorcycles too, and there's nothing special about them at all.
You probably rode a moped or a knockoff Asian cruiser. Get your legs around a real bike and we'll talk.
I had no idea sound waves were directional. Tell you what, the next pipes I get will point down at the ground, so nobody either side of me, in front of me or behind me will hear me. STEALTH!
Yeah, well the clubbers have that one licked. They wear three piece patches which announce "if you cause me problems me and my brothers will find you." People tend to give them wide berth.
RE: What about everybody else? What about the pedestrians?
So long as they stay out of the road, what's the problem?
RE: I do a lot of bicycling, and you'd better goddamned believe it that I know a lot more about oblivious drivers than you do.
Yeah, but the essential difference between you and me is this: I ride following the traffic laws, whereas morons like you hold up traffic pretending to be the Tour de France in the middle of a rush hour lane doing 10mph. With all the self-righteous attitude to match. Or you run red lights, run stop signs, go the wrong way up one way streets, ride on the sidewalks and are generally a complete nuisance.
RE: That's no excuse for blatttting around like a goddamned farting clown parade like you bikers do.
Sure there is. Because although you're going 9mph (wearing more Spandex than a German figure skating duo, with a Power Ranger helmet on and your little REI-bought titanium-molybdenum paper framed contraptions) I'm going anywhere from highway speed (65mph+) or at the very least 40mph, and let me tell you the kinetic energies involved are far far greater stakes.
You having to unclick from your custom-looped bicycle pedals because an SUV tried going around your slow self is one thing. Me trying to keep several hundred pounds of metal powered by 88 cubes upright on a wet road because someone decided that doing her eye makeup was more important than a lane change check has far greater risks. So if I can wake the silly cow up by roaring my upswepts at her, making her rapidly change her mind and stay in her own damn lane, paying attention to the road, I will.
Dude, bike riding is lame. Not only is it a sport where scrawny men who shave their legs and wear spandex mince around with their noses to the ground and their backsides in conjunction with Jupiter, it's dominated by people like the French and the Italians, in fact the French even have TWO words for it.
Whereas any biker worth his salt can not only keep a skidding bike upright at 65mph+, he can also come over to you and beat you three quarters to death for being a moron.
RE: And how about the people on your street when you fire up that pathetic fartbox every morning?
Considering that I have to listen to them cruise by playing J-Bigga Snoopy Snoop or whatever at 3 am with the bass cans shaking the tectonic plates, they can deal.
There's a reason why Harleys still use pushrod tech - because it produces a ride that sounds cool and feels cool to ride. You don't get that groin-tweaking torque out of a sewing machine buzzy Katana or whatever it is the stoppie-pulling squidders ride.
What we need is a gasoline substitutes not loser cars and papier mache motorcycles.
to come up with something even more effeminate and loserish, that makes even their pathetic little motor scooters look like Knucklehead choppers with full-bore drag pipes and apes by comparison.
"Memmy, Memmy, eym popping doon to the shops for some treacle to put on my tea."
Why didn't they just paint the damn thing pink, put their test rider in a dress and be done with it.
That crunching sound was my Shovelhead grinding it into powder. Loud pipes, fumes, and apehangers baby!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, the way cagers drive, anything that makes em wake up long enough to realize they aren't the only things on the road is a definite safety plus.
Loud pipes DO save lives.
A motorcycle is supposed to make noise. However, I'd be down with all the cars going to this tech, leaving the gasoline for the bikes....
Yes, at that point you become the object of a fetish, so your various other problems (body odor, body weight, the fact you play D+D etc.) don't matter.
would be for people to put together websites talking in the abstract about what to avoid in various transactions such as:
For car dealerships: Be careful that the final contract ACTUALLY specifies the number figures and rates you spent half an hour negotiating. Usually they blanket it in so many reams of paper and restate it (APR, per year rather than per month etc) so that most of the time you don't catch it.
Moving companies: They're ALL thieves. They use too much packing material, give you a lowball "estimate" that's "guaranteed" right up to the moment you put your stuff on their truck at which point they jack it up, and hold yer stuff hostage (and this isn't flybynigotovitch, this is one of the most well known / respected companies in the biz)
rather than crap on a particular company in a specific instance.
Oh, and while on the subject, A company whose name sounds suspiciously like "Sally Total Hipness" who's been PIMPSLAPPED by the SEC for multiple violations of law (bait and switch etc) have this neat trick in which they portray a "membership" as a contract but in actual fact it's a loan, and as such you're on the hook to repay it completely and can never get out of it. Never even enter their foul smelling, poorly maintained dens of bait and switch and hucksterism. Their business model is "sign em up and kick em out - but they're still forced to keep paying us."
No, the best were the American tourists calling various phone numbers thinking "A louer" (to rent) was "A lover" and assuming it was part of the flesh trade.
It's always amusing if you speak both languages to hear people find a similar word in their second language to their first which unfortunately has a completely different meaning.
Having worked for a French company for years, I don't even think about it anymore - I just mentally translate the cognates back and forth.
Many people would rather have a high paying job in a corporation, with benefits and such (e.g an acolyte of the Cathedral) rather than scrounge around in a bazaar surrounded by hippies shysters and knockoff artists.
RE: If a business deal came by where I could make $10 million by duping an old lady out of her $100k house
Then you have NO place in the American business world.
Lay off the employees who sweated to put you where you are so you can cash out as your stupidity burns the house down around you.
Poison the air and water, and then sell air and water filters.
Kill people in a third world nation over oil and claim it's for human rights.
Empty entire towns and cities by closing down factories, so you can exploit third world countries and simultaneously bankrupt the people who you intend to buy your products.
Sell products that you KNOW kill people, that are defective, and baldfacedly lie in the face of staggering amounts of fact. Blame the tire company because you tell people to underinflate their tires to compensate for the fact that you cannot engineer a certain type of vehicle. State that the deaths from your rushed-to-market drug are obviously from something else.
Usurp the democracy and use it to line your pockets.
I'm no commie, but this is exactly like the jailing of Martha Stewart. Ken Lay, by the way, is still walking around scot free. Mind you, Ken Lay is the right color, the right gender, and well connected, and Stewart some upstart woman who dared make more money than the old boys club she hobnobbed with.
RE: The Indians are not stealing your jobs. US people in particular, and Western people in general, are pricing themselves too high given the expensive lifestyles they lead.
It's not my fault that housing, food and health insurance cost what they do. If I was out there splurging on truffles, SUVs or the like, I'd be inclined to agree with you. But just putting a roof over your head is about impossible at your so-called "modest" wage...
I'd be very happy to earn what an Indian earns. Just give me the same prices they pay for things. $40K buys you servants, etc. over there.
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So we come up with something that burns like gasoline in a gasoline engine. Simple.
While you solar energy spotted owl huggers need to complicate this stuff is beyond me.
If whatever you replace oil with can't be run in a 70s musclecar or a Harley forget it.
I love it how the solution is not something simple. All we need is something that burns in a gasoline engine like gasoline.
Not to say "OK fellers, junk your cars, your trucks, your motorcycles, scooters, lawn mowers and of course the entire infrastructure of gas stations so we can have you use these battery powered papier mache sewing machines with a top speed of 50mph that cost $30,000."
Of course, the administration is even more brain-dead. "Junk that antique car you've put tens of thousands into restoring - we're going with hydrogen fuel cell technology - of course, that means you need to buy a new car, new bike, new this, new that... but the hydrogen comes from OIL anyway HAR HAR HAR we still profit off you!"
Can someone please tell me why we can't just loose a bunch of really bright people on solving the RIGHT problem, which is a different gasoline, not something nobody wants to drive?
For those of y'all who have difficulty with the concept it's called sarcasm.
Judge ye not lest ye be judged guys. It ain't that difficult.
Listen, children don't start out life American. They've got to be socialised into being aggressive and desensitised.
As for empathetic detachment, that's also required.
Some people believe it should be nihilistic music, video games in which women are chattel to be abused, and rampant pornography. These people are called Democrats.
Some believe that children should go to military school, attend frightening services at fundamentalist churches (which think it totally acceptable to show "Passion of the Christ" to small children), learn how to handle a gun as soon as they can walk and execute the mentally retarded while bombing people of different colors. These people are called Republicans.
Everyone else is made to be desensitised behind the wheel of a car in just about every traffic spot in the rest of this country.
That is, if the lack of health care, spiralling cost of living and ever-increasing downsizing doesn't drive you spare.
I applaud the guy for being able to make a policeman move without applying 20,000,000 volts.
.
My wife's computer was stolen. We saw her ICQ account pop up online - the thief hadn't even bothered to wipe it. We tracked down the IP, but Patrolman DonutMuncher apparently wasn't interested in even calling the ISP to get an address. It wasn't the computer we cared about but family heirlooms which were stolen at the same time. Unfortunately, police work is sometimes work.
Where we live now, the cops couldn't bother to show up, to, say two thugs threatening to attack a pregnant woman (a racially motivated attack, too) even though they're LEANING AGAINST A SQUAD CAR HALF A BLOCK AWAY.
This guy wants us to believe that he was able to talk cops into going back and forth to arrest these guys? Please tell me where you live, man! I might respect cops again if I can find a jurisdiction in which they actually do work, rather than raping and torturing prostitutes and shooting their wives to avoid paying child support
I'm not speaking of blacks. I'm speaking of people in a motorcycle club.
And as to why clubbers so often end up in prison, there are those who are there who've done wrongs, and there are those who are there because they got railroaded (the whole guilt by association thing).
RE: Yet another perfect example of why bikers are self-centered assholes!
That, coming from a cyclist, is rich.
RE: Once again, you miss it: "what about the pedestrians". When your fart-potato goes by, everybody has to stop talking, listening to the birds, radio, or whatever, while your previous goddamned fart machine goes by.
Only if they want to. They are welcome, if they want, to pause for the second it takes for me to drive by, or ignore me altogether. There aren't many birds on a highway, and as for radios, many people ride with em in their cars.
RE: How about you also add a 30-foot tower with a blazing laser light show,
Because it would affect the balance and handling of the bike. Besides, laser light shows and all that are the purview of the Discovery Channel OCC biker wannabee types.
RE: a 240dB subwoofer,
And how much juice do you think a motorcycle alternator puts out, anyway? Here's a news flash for you, Mitch. When I ride I'm listening to my bike. If I'm not paying attention to it, I could miss something important.
RE: and an entourage of a dozen caddies in front and behind you to announce your precious presence wherever you go?
No, the loud pipes will do just fine. Most people notice a Harley. When you got the right ride you don't need to chrome it up or try to draw attention.
RE: What you once again fail to realize is that you're a goddamned annoyance to hundreds of people, everywhere you go, every day.
I'm glad the hundreds of people have explicitly chosen you as their spokesperson. However, I personally couldn't care less what the hundreds of people particularly want. It's a free country, and until it ceases to be I'll ride what I want, thanks. Speaking of obnoxious self centered assholes, you might want to rethink your position considering that you seem to think the entire world should be engineered around what you want to do. I'm not parked right outside your window doing wheelie burnouts or like the crackheads I have to chase off my block, playing Biggie Jigg Snoopy Bling or whatever while parked trying to honk enough times for the person they want to talk to to walk out of their house. I just happen to be going somewhere, and I'll do it how I please.
RE: If you don't feel safe on a donorcycle, then fine, get the fuck off it and stop being an obnoxious asshole about it.
Maybe if you clueless sods would pay attention to your driving I would care less about what you think. I obviously am fine on a bike cause I ride the damn thing. But just as how your car has a horn, mine has pipes that can, if called upon to, wake the dead.
RE: I've ridden motorcycles too, and there's nothing special about them at all.
You probably rode a moped or a knockoff Asian cruiser. Get your legs around a real bike and we'll talk.
I had no idea sound waves were directional. Tell you what, the next pipes I get will point down at the ground, so nobody either side of me, in front of me or behind me will hear me. STEALTH!
You know what? Safety belts won't protect you 100% of the time, but they're still a good idea.
Sorry to hear you lost a limb. I know it can happen to me too, but it's something ya gotta do, y'know?
RE: Just the thing for picking up vegan babes at the PETA rally.
You'd somehow have to find lubricants and plastics that don't involve petrochemicals. True vegans would abhor the tires and the fairing.
But then again, I prefer a girl who shaves her legs, and bathes.
Yeah, well the clubbers have that one licked. They wear three piece patches which announce "if you cause me problems me and my brothers will find you." People tend to give them wide berth.
RE: What about everybody else? What about the pedestrians?
So long as they stay out of the road, what's the problem?
RE: I do a lot of bicycling, and you'd better goddamned believe it that I know a lot more about oblivious drivers than you do.
Yeah, but the essential difference between you and me is this: I ride following the traffic laws, whereas morons like you hold up traffic pretending to be the Tour de France in the middle of a rush hour lane doing 10mph. With all the self-righteous attitude to match. Or you run red lights, run stop signs, go the wrong way up one way streets, ride on the sidewalks and are generally a complete nuisance.
RE: That's no excuse for blatttting around like a goddamned farting clown parade like you bikers do.
Sure there is. Because although you're going 9mph (wearing more Spandex than a German figure skating duo, with a Power Ranger helmet on and your little REI-bought titanium-molybdenum paper framed contraptions) I'm going anywhere from highway speed (65mph+) or at the very least 40mph, and let me tell you the kinetic energies involved are far far greater stakes.
You having to unclick from your custom-looped bicycle pedals because an SUV tried going around your slow self is one thing. Me trying to keep several hundred pounds of metal powered by 88 cubes upright on a wet road because someone decided that doing her eye makeup was more important than a lane change check has far greater risks. So if I can wake the silly cow up by roaring my upswepts at her, making her rapidly change her mind and stay in her own damn lane, paying attention to the road, I will.
Dude, bike riding is lame. Not only is it a sport where scrawny men who shave their legs and wear spandex mince around with their noses to the ground and their backsides in conjunction with Jupiter, it's dominated by people like the French and the Italians, in fact the French even have TWO words for it.
Whereas any biker worth his salt can not only keep a skidding bike upright at 65mph+, he can also come over to you and beat you three quarters to death for being a moron.
RE: And how about the people on your street when you fire up that pathetic fartbox every morning?
Considering that I have to listen to them cruise by playing J-Bigga Snoopy Snoop or whatever at 3 am with the bass cans shaking the tectonic plates, they can deal.
It'll still be lame.
There's a reason why Harleys still use pushrod tech - because it produces a ride that sounds cool and feels cool to ride. You don't get that groin-tweaking torque out of a sewing machine buzzy Katana or whatever it is the stoppie-pulling squidders ride.
What we need is a gasoline substitutes not loser cars and papier mache motorcycles.
to come up with something even more effeminate and loserish, that makes even their pathetic little motor scooters look like Knucklehead choppers with full-bore drag pipes and apes by comparison.
"Memmy, Memmy, eym popping doon to the shops for some treacle to put on my tea."
Why didn't they just paint the damn thing pink, put their test rider in a dress and be done with it.
That crunching sound was my Shovelhead grinding it into powder. Loud pipes, fumes, and apehangers baby!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, the way cagers drive, anything that makes em wake up long enough to realize they aren't the only things on the road is a definite safety plus.
Loud pipes DO save lives.
A motorcycle is supposed to make noise. However, I'd be down with all the cars going to this tech, leaving the gasoline for the bikes....
Yes, at that point you become the object of a fetish, so your various other problems (body odor, body weight, the fact you play D+D etc.) don't matter.
Oooh! You rolled a critical miss on your saving throw against staying a virgin into your eighties.
Why not return to Bigby's Bed of Eternal Solitude and cast grasping fist repeatedly and often!
Actually, they rip off people the same way over and over again. Just goes to show the SEC has no real teeth.
would be for people to put together websites talking in the abstract about what to avoid in various transactions such as:
For car dealerships: Be careful that the final contract ACTUALLY specifies the number figures and rates you spent half an hour negotiating. Usually they blanket it in so many reams of paper and restate it (APR, per year rather than per month etc) so that most of the time you don't catch it.
Moving companies: They're ALL thieves. They use too much packing material, give you a lowball "estimate" that's "guaranteed" right up to the moment you put your stuff on their truck at which point they jack it up, and hold yer stuff hostage (and this isn't flybynigotovitch, this is one of the most well known / respected companies in the biz)
rather than crap on a particular company in a specific instance.
Oh, and while on the subject, A company whose name sounds suspiciously like "Sally Total Hipness" who's been PIMPSLAPPED by the SEC for multiple violations of law (bait and switch etc) have this neat trick in which they portray a "membership" as a contract but in actual fact it's a loan, and as such you're on the hook to repay it completely and can never get out of it.
Never even enter their foul smelling, poorly maintained dens of bait and switch and hucksterism. Their business model is "sign em up and kick em out - but they're still forced to keep paying us."
No, the best were the American tourists calling various phone numbers thinking "A louer" (to rent) was "A lover" and assuming it was part of the flesh trade.
Fa' sheezy.
It's always amusing if you speak both languages to hear people find a similar word in their second language to their first which unfortunately has a completely different meaning.
Having worked for a French company for years, I don't even think about it anymore - I just mentally translate the cognates back and forth.
A cognate. "Condamné" means convicted/punished in French, it doesn't have the same connotation in English.
Many people would rather have a high paying job in a corporation, with benefits and such (e.g an acolyte of the Cathedral) rather than scrounge around in a bazaar surrounded by hippies shysters and knockoff artists.
RE: If a business deal came by where I could make $10 million by duping an old lady out of her $100k house
Then you have NO place in the American business world.
Lay off the employees who sweated to put you where you are so you can cash out as your stupidity burns the house down around you.
Poison the air and water, and then sell air and water filters.
Kill people in a third world nation over oil and claim it's for human rights.
Empty entire towns and cities by closing down factories, so you can exploit third world countries and simultaneously bankrupt the people who you intend to buy your products.
Sell products that you KNOW kill people, that are defective, and baldfacedly lie in the face of staggering amounts of fact. Blame the tire company because you tell people to underinflate their tires to compensate for the fact that you cannot engineer a certain type of vehicle. State that the deaths from your rushed-to-market drug are obviously from something else.
Usurp the democracy and use it to line your pockets.
I'm no commie, but this is exactly like the jailing of Martha Stewart. Ken Lay, by the way, is still walking around scot free. Mind you, Ken Lay is the right color, the right gender, and well connected, and Stewart some upstart woman who dared make more money than the old boys club she hobnobbed with.
RE: The Indians are not stealing your jobs. US people in particular, and Western people in general, are pricing themselves too high given the expensive lifestyles they lead.
It's not my fault that housing, food and health insurance cost what they do. If I was out there splurging on truffles, SUVs or the like, I'd be inclined to agree with you. But just putting a roof over your head is about impossible at your so-called "modest" wage...
I'd be very happy to earn what an Indian earns. Just give me the same prices they pay for things. $40K buys you servants, etc. over there.