So, in other words the record profits by oil companies have nothing to do whatsoever with manipulations of the market and price gouging. While you're in fantasyland, I'd like a Knucklehead chopper.
I'm surprised there's no jokes from the tinfoil hat crowd about the authorities "planting" nuke factories in Iran, WMD in Iraq, etc. via models on Google Earth....
RE: If that is the case, then that is illegal. If there is evidence of it someone will probably sue them under anti-trust laws. Also, I would expect insurance start-ups to appear eventually.
So is the current price gouging by oil companies, but you won't see that, or Microsoft, prosecuted any time soon.
You'd get a visit from the other insurance companies.
Keep in mind they're colluding to raise prices wherever possible. See, many of them invested the money people paid to them in dot com stocks, expecting to quintuple their money overnight, get fantastically wealthy, etc.
When the dot bombs TANKED and people STILL put in requests for you know, like, payment - that's when they started denying claims and taking medications and that off what they'll cover and not cover. Hell, many of them deny payment the first two times you submit the claim so they can eke two months' interest out of the money you gave em. They took a bath and they'll be DAMNED if that money is coming out of their salaries or CEO enrichment schemes. It's Joe Consumer taking the hit.
RE: 750. It was the only model with the rice burner instrument cluster and shaft drive. The rest felt like wannabe Harleys.
Wannabe Indians, actually. The designers were tasked with trying to design what a bike would look like if Indian had stayed in business. Hence the Vulcan Drifter, which really tried to look like its styling, though all of them were designed with that in mind.
RE: If I put as many miles on as you do, I'd definately be looking at something bigger. Might have even considered a Harley softtail. (I don't need to beat up my kidneys on a hardtail to impress anyone)
I technically have a swingarm but it rides like a rigid;)
RE: I used to ride like you do about 20+ years ago. Rode my 78 KZ650 (4 cylinder) to graduation and the party afterward. Despite thundershowers and a tornado warning. I used to be invincible, back when I knew everything. Did the 70 below wind chill (standing still) too. Red lights were nice, get some heat from the engine, but then the visor would frost up.
Nothing about invincibility - when the weather gets bad I slow down and drive more carefully. If it gets truly evil I hitch a ride in the wife's car.
RE: I have a helmet with scratches from contacting a curb at 45 mph.
You shouldn't. Helmets, once they've hit the curb, should be replaced.
RE: I also had a 4" hole burnt through my jeans (and pocket) as well as a 2" hole in my leather jacket on top of my shoulder. All this as a result of an old lady in a cadillac who couldn't see me. My only injury, I hurt my back trying to lift my Kaw 650 because the front tire was on the curb.
Yup. Been there, done that. As I said, I do wear one, and it's helped me out. But do keep in mind there are also instances in which helmets have contributed to a broken neck and/or made injuries worse.
RE: I also had a neighbor that crashed while riding with her boyfriend. Her helmet was shattered, but her biggest complaint was she lost her two front teeth.
Better that than yr skull....
RE: I have no problem wearing a helmet. Even if they can be hot and sticky and mess up your hair. It beats not being able to tie your own shoes.
I'll do you one better. Jacket, gauntlets, chaps (all leather) half helmet and goggles. At all times. I cringe when I see some squidder on a Katinjabusa wearing a race-worthy Snell rated full face dayglo helmet, polo shirt, shorts and flip flops. Your chances of landing head first are minimal, but road rash is guaranteed.
Take a look at the disclaimer on helmets - they don't guarantee that your head will be protected even at low speed impact. That being said, any serious blow to your head will break your neck so the point is moot. I wear a half-helmet, when I was hit from the side by a teenybopper boppin to fitty sent or what have you, I saw stars when I hit the deck but my head was OK. But statistics provided by ABATE indicate that there's really no difference in helmet use and non helmet use.
A big part of it is the fact that test audiences are now used. Most of the comments here miss that. A movie should be made by a director on its own merits, as opposed to being slapped together by committee and then scissored up after a bunch of random yahoos comment on what they liked and didn't like. Keep in mind that the MPAA takes the film under the door and it comes back X and they edit it and submit it (they don't find out why) comes back - X, so on and so forth, if they simply said "listen we object to these frames" then they wouldn't have to do so much guesswork and perhaps edit out stuff they wouldn't have to otherwise, re-editing the story to make it work.
The article said that if Casablanca were to be made today Bogie would have got on the plane. The ending of the Fisher King was deliberately tongue in cheek super happy happy world because the test audience and producers objected to the bleak ending (Robin Williams getting capped).
I dunno, the world we're in is screwed up. People can't behave in theatres so nobody goes. Instead of substance and narrative, we want cheap tricks and ADHD induced editing. The audience gets to edit the story, and so does the government.
Every now and then a movie like Brokeback Mountain comes out, which is good because it refused to kowtow to Hollywood suckage. No, they didn't make Ennis a woman, the cheated on wives weren't happy with it and found richer husbands, and it didn't end with them getting married in San Francisco, running a successful catering business at peace with their former families, gathering in the yard for a family picnic.
In short, we make movies for the thugged out brain dead yoofs who go to the theatre to hear big explosions and see big special effects. Period. What's that but a giant video game, anyway?
Butanol, people. Burns in a gasoline engine just fine, you can make it from cellulose. Has the same BTU/gln almost as gasoline. Doesn't corrode the lines. We can keep the same cars we have now, and emissions drop significantly when we burn it.
I don't want a car that folds up and needs replacing after an impact. I want one that bounces off whatever it hits, and you might have to hammer out the fender. Like in the old days.
RE: Any argument is partially based on trust. You simply can't look up every statistic, challenge every statement because it's just impractical.
Of course you can. And trust me, if I was to point out that the dreaded spaghetti weevil has been eliminated from the Earth, about 0.00001sec later someone will point out that I just made that up.
RE: This is what the people who cry "ad hominem! ad hominem!" at every turn seem to miss. If the guy smells and dresses funny that really has no bearing on whether you trust his facts, or even willing to listen to him. If the person in question is dis-trustful or his motivations are in question, that's quite relevent.
I don't think you understand how ad hominem works. Hitler may have been an evil human being with many misguided ideas, but he did at one point say 2+2=4, and 2+2 do in fact equal four, the fact that he was a toothbrush moustached syphilitic tweaker with genocidal tendencies don't change that fact. If you wish to attack what the man said, attack what he said. All we are saying when we claim ad hominem is that in a discussion about what the man actually said, throwing in that the guy likes to club baby seals for fun or whatever IS IRRELEVANT.
Don't please bring up Godwin's Law. That is reserved for a deliberate appeal to the gallery relating something about the other person's argument to the Nazis.
Actually it is. Though you're thinking of an abusive ad hominem "he smells, and his mom dresses him funny" there is also circumstantial ad hominem: "Circumstantial: A Circumstantial Ad Hominem is one in which some irrelevant personal circumstance surrounding the opponent is offered as evidence against the opponent's position. This fallacy is often introduced by phrases such as: "Of course, that's what you'd expect him to say." The fallacy claims that the only reason why he argues as he does is because of personal circumstances, such as standing to gain from the argument's acceptance."
Here, once again, is what was said:
"Moore is a paid lobbyist who specializes is garnering favorable press for environmentally destructive mining and energy industries. He's not just ex-Greenpeace, he's an ex-environmentalist who parlayed his prior experience working for Greenpeace into working against it. If you are a major polluter, Moore is the go-to guy for whitewashing your corporate image."
The response didn't rebut the position in any way shape or form, it was EXACTLY what the Circumstantial Ad Hominem fallacy represents. It says nothing about what the man said or didn't say, it seeks to attack the man and/or his circumstances.
RE: Sure, and I'm all for it, except changing the fuel is not necessarily trivial. For example, converting from gasoline to ethanol or E85 requires changing compression and that's not nontrivial - generally speaking we accomplish this through a piston change.
Apparently, there's a new process to produce butanol from cellulose. A lot of that around. If we grow hemp, even more. Dude just drove an UNMODIFIED 1992 Buick from one end of the country to the other on the stuff, smoked all EPA standards in every state.... stuff has almost the same BTU count as gasoline. All you'd need to do is tickle the carbs, unless you have EFI in which case you do NOTHING.
This solution produces far less pollutants with no change to anything (except adjusting a carb) at all. As usual, there's always a sensible solution everyone ignores.
RE: Summary: We know that unchecked automotive emissions are harmful, apart from CO2 emissions.
You do realise that we could simply change the fuel and get the same result, right?
RE: Consequently, we are doing something about them. You suggest we do nothing until we know it's a necessity, by which time if human-influenced global warming is a reality, it will be too late.
That's a pretty big "if". "If" and "may" do not make for good public policy, I'm sorry. Putting entire businesses out of work based on a theory totally opposite to the theory that was prevalent thirty years ago is ludicrous. Try and see it from my perspective for a second. I'm not saying "we're ruining the planet, but I wanna do what I wanna do." I'm saying that what I'm hearing from the global warming folks, even the saner ones, is always "may", "if", etc. We may or may not know the Earth is getting warmer. Some are saying the planet stopped warming in 1998, some are pointing out the biggest rise in temps happened before industrialisation really took off, etc. I'm not arguing that is the case, or that it isn't.
Let me show you my side of the coin. We like analogies in this thread. "Your Honor, the accused may or may not have had the weapon in question. We know that weapons similar to these could perhaps kill people. We're not sure if he's the one who killed someone or if someone else did it, or even if the deceased is actually dead cause there's some question as to whether or not the diagnostic instruments work. But death is a really serious thing, so let's kill the accused now."
David Suzuki, who I'm surprised is still called a scientist given that he refers to the Earth crying out to him and talks of the Earth as "sacred" - once made the statement that temperatures in Windsor, Ontario are FAR warmer than when he was a boy. Someone looked it up and called him on it, cause he was wrong. Result? Unless you're a government approved (e.g. alarmist) scientist, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO VIEW THE CLIMATE DATA.
I hear of evidence being suppressed, scientists muzzled and having to go to the petrochemical folks to do their job. I hear of computer models that still need to be tweaked, predictions that haven't come true. Sure some glaciers are receding, but some are growing. We've got RECORD COLD temperatures going on.
The Global Warming folks simply move the goalposts. Well, we were wrong about Ice Age 1984, sure, and yeah, maybe Earth Inferno 2010 isn't on track, but now we're concerned about CLIMATE CHANGE, in other words whether the Earth is warming or cooling or even keeping still, by GOD we have a solution in search of a problem.....
This isn't to say that there isn't a problem. But then again, there might really be a Hell too. But I'm not going to Church this Sunday because I don't believe in Pascal's Wager any more than I do its modern version.
RE: but neither one will help you in the middle of bumfuck unless you have the right tools and the spare parts.
I replaced all four of mine at a point in time where I had no mechanical knowledge or skill. As for dealing with overhead cams, that's another issue. In fact, I was able to adjust the pushrods within a few minutes.
RE: Obviously you don't know shit about fuel injection or computer-controlled carburetion, because if you did you'd know that the systems will run without a working O2 sensor. O2 sensors do one of two things when they are broken -
I'll defer to you on this one - but the point is if your EFI goes south, you're stranded until someone can come in and replace the entire unit, that's the point I'm making. Sure they're more reliable and almost never break down, but that's cold comfort when you're on a lonely road with a dead vehicle.
RE: whereas on a normal vehicle you have one coil which you depend on for all your spark, and that rube goldberg distributor crap.
I'll defer to you there, too. I know very little about cars.
RE: Actually, a company called eCycle built a prototype diesel-electric hybrid which goes 80mph (still too slow, granted) that can be run on biodiesel of course, or for that matter vegetable oil, and which got something like 120mpg on petrodiesel (biodiesel will produce a result so close as to be indistinguishable, except with less emissions.) The final version was supposed to make 150mpg but they seem to have stopped all work or something.
Shame. I'd have been interested in that. 80mph is fine by me.
RE: What IS an issue with having a catalytic converter is that it complicates the exhaust piping no matter where you put it, which leads to additional restriction, which reduces horsepower. Of course, it does improve torque, so you can gear a little taller (since you have the torque) and make that less of an issue. I suppose you could also just put the cat under the bike where your beloved hardly-movinsome's child sportbike company Buell put a shock absorber, in a move that makes no sense to anyone who is paying attention.
I'm no major fan of the Motor Company. Some of their design decisions astound the hell out of me. Point is with a cat converter, there's heat issues and exhaust hassles, otherwise companies would simply do it.
RE: I wholeheartedly agree that they should be getting rid of two-stroke lawnmowers. I recall reading some statistic that says that a lawnmower produces more pollution in an hour than a modern fuel-injected car (not just a motorcycle) produces in 2,000 hours of runtime. I'm kind of skeptical about that statistic, since it could only be true for 2,000 hours of up-to-temperature runtime where the vehicle is at its most efficient, but even if it's ten or twenty hours (which is entirely feasible) it's still particularly telling.
But my point is, they aren't. And when you start doing things like saying bikes must lose 60% of their pollutants or else, (even though we're not quite sure what the effect of all this carbon stuff is) but for some reason you can run a leafblower and/or lawnmower til it breaks is beyond me. Same with Kyoto. The US produced CO2 is evil and is ruining the planet and killing the little polar bears, but any coming from China is politically correct and therefore perfectly OK to do.
RE: Your last meaningless statement in this paragraph has to deal with the "less than 1% of all pollution" thing. If I fart in the elevator, it's less than 1% of all pollution, but no one's going to appreciate it. Not a great analogy, but I just felt driven to say it.
Your analogy is flawed, cause everyone in the elevator is - and the bike is not the one who came back from the burrito buffet with the double onion bhaji chaser.
RE: and a handful of motorcycles and the motorcycles produce ten times more pollution per mile traveled per person, which is not entirely unfeasible on bikes with no emissions controls, then they ought to be cleaned up.
RE: Wrong, wrong, and wrong. There's an assload of aftermarket parts for the rice rockets, and what's more, they go beyond chrome skull headlights and vibrating pillion pads.
But be it as it may, all squid bikes for all intents and purposes look the same. Most guys who buy a Hayabusa think customisation is wearing matching neon leather.
RE: And, there is an american squid bike, it's called a Buell, and it's made by H-D. Amusingly, they seem to have followed perfectly in the footsteps of the parent company, because last I looked (like in 2001 or so) every single model of Buell released to that date had had a safety recall issued, and all of them were serious.
Two things: 1) I know what a Buell is, I was referring to American Chopper - as in, you'll never find a customizing company producing radical new squid bikes, simply because all squid bikes look the same. Take some fairings off, put more on, repaint em whatever. There is a seriously inventive culture out there around the American cruiser, so I'll ask you not to reduce it to bolt-on vibrating pillion pads.
RE: and remember, bike pollution is LESS THAN ONE PERCENT
RE: In the hope that people would think it was significant because you used more big letters? If slashdot were done on paper, you'd be working with jumbo crayons.
No, to bring attention to how NOT serious this is as an issue, yet it's being hit with a sledgehammer.
RE: Now maybe the guy who you're replying to was telling you what you want, but the government isn't. They're telling you what you're allowed to have, which is a lot different. They don't permit you to have weapons-grade nuclear materials, either. Granted, a few motorcycles spewing out unnecessary quantities of pollutants aren't as dangerous as all that,
I'm glad you can admit that, so you can lose the dramatic comparison between a Harley Davidson motorcycle and fissile material. My point is that you shouldn't tell me, like a wayward parent, that I am no longer allowed to enjoy a lifestyle because some made up study says that my motorcycle is personally going to melt the polar ice caps.
RE: so it is kind of a silly comparison, but I'm trying to make the point that you can't just have whatever you want. That's not how the world works. Why do you think that you should be any less responsible for your impact on others than anyone else, just because you're on two wheels and have an addiction to poorly designed motorcycles with lots of chrome?
Wow, you seem to have a lot of hatred on for Harley Davidson. Let it out. Not that I particularly care. It's just that I happen to believe in something called freedom, and unless you have a compelling reason to ask me to stop doing something, go stuff it. My impact on others is negligible. And I resent the implication that I'm some kind of irresponsible buffoon simply because I ride a two wheeled vehicle and not a four wheeled one - you've NO PROOF that any of the "Global Warming Chicken Little" squawking is any more than a con game to get more federal money. Until you show me that PROOF, not conjecture, not some small evidence, but proof, leave me to enjoy Western Civilisation. I have not yet run down anything of you or yours, so afford me the same respect.'
Remember that not even thirty years ago, scientists had proof beyond all doubt that we were headed for another ice age. Then it was panic, everyone! Stop driving cars cause of GLOBAL WARMING! Now that we're no longer warming, it's CLIMATE CHANGE! Everything from a lost sock in a load of laundry to hurricanes is now being attributed to what still amounts to THEORY, and a rather WEAK one at that. We've got more PRESSING issues to worry about, things we know we're screwing up. And until the jury ceases to be out on this one, the squawkings of scientists on the Global Warming Payroll notwithstanding - what you suggest (let's ban CO2!!!!) is the science equivalent of Pascal's Wager.
Thing is, Global Warming is not science, it's religion.
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So, in other words the record profits by oil companies have nothing to do whatsoever with manipulations of the market and price gouging. While you're in fantasyland, I'd like a Knucklehead chopper.
I'm surprised there's no jokes from the tinfoil hat crowd about the authorities "planting" nuke factories in Iran, WMD in Iraq, etc. via models on Google Earth....
RE: If that is the case, then that is illegal. If there is evidence of it someone will probably sue them under anti-trust laws. Also, I would expect insurance start-ups to appear eventually.
So is the current price gouging by oil companies, but you won't see that, or Microsoft, prosecuted any time soon.
You'd get a visit from the other insurance companies.
Keep in mind they're colluding to raise prices wherever possible. See, many of them invested the money people paid to them in dot com stocks, expecting to quintuple their money overnight, get fantastically wealthy, etc.
When the dot bombs TANKED and people STILL put in requests for you know, like, payment - that's when they started denying claims and taking medications and that off what they'll cover and not cover. Hell, many of them deny payment the first two times you submit the claim so they can eke two months' interest out of the money you gave em. They took a bath and they'll be DAMNED if that money is coming out of their salaries or CEO enrichment schemes. It's Joe Consumer taking the hit.
Keep in mind this is Carleton University, aka "Last Chance U". Buy one semester, get one free.
They bred super-cockroaches to test new poisons on em, and then dropped the tank in the greenhouse.
Not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.
RE:
;)
750. It was the only model with the rice burner instrument cluster and shaft drive. The rest felt like wannabe Harleys.
Wannabe Indians, actually. The designers were tasked with trying to design what a bike would look like if Indian had stayed in business. Hence the Vulcan Drifter, which really tried to look like its styling, though all of them were designed with that in mind.
RE: If I put as many miles on as you do, I'd definately be looking at something bigger. Might have even considered a Harley softtail. (I don't need to beat up my kidneys on a hardtail to impress anyone)
I technically have a swingarm but it rides like a rigid
RE: I used to ride like you do about 20+ years ago. Rode my 78 KZ650 (4 cylinder) to graduation and the party afterward. Despite thundershowers and a tornado warning. I used to be invincible, back when I knew everything. Did the 70 below wind chill (standing still) too. Red lights were nice, get some heat from the engine, but then the visor would frost up.
Nothing about invincibility - when the weather gets bad I slow down and drive more carefully. If it gets truly evil I hitch a ride in the wife's car.
Lest there be any confusion - I was referring to the road conditions mentioned by the poster, this was not directed at him.
I put 25,000 mi on my bike last year, through thundershowers, subzero weather, traffic and God knows what else.
It's just somethin' I gotta do. What cc's the Vulcan?
I am thinking of getting the T-shirt saying "It isn't road rage - I'm gonna f*ck you up because you're stupid."
RE: I have a helmet with scratches from contacting a curb at 45 mph.
You shouldn't. Helmets, once they've hit the curb, should be replaced.
RE: I also had a 4" hole burnt through my jeans (and pocket) as well as a 2" hole in my leather jacket on top of my shoulder. All this as a result of an old lady in a cadillac who couldn't see me. My only injury, I hurt my back trying to lift my Kaw 650 because the front tire was on the curb.
Yup. Been there, done that. As I said, I do wear one, and it's helped me out. But do keep in mind there are also instances in which helmets have contributed to a broken neck and/or made injuries worse.
RE: I also had a neighbor that crashed while riding with her boyfriend. Her helmet was shattered, but her biggest complaint was she lost her two front teeth.
Better that than yr skull....
RE: I have no problem wearing a helmet. Even if they can be hot and sticky and mess up your hair. It beats not being able to tie your own shoes.
I'll do you one better. Jacket, gauntlets, chaps (all leather) half helmet and goggles. At all times. I cringe when I see some squidder on a Katinjabusa wearing a race-worthy Snell rated full face dayglo helmet, polo shirt, shorts and flip flops. Your chances of landing head first are minimal, but road rash is guaranteed.
Take a look at the disclaimer on helmets - they don't guarantee that your head will be protected even at low speed impact. That being said, any serious blow to your head will break your neck so the point is moot. I wear a half-helmet, when I was hit from the side by a teenybopper boppin to fitty sent or what have you, I saw stars when I hit the deck but my head was OK. But statistics provided by ABATE indicate that there's really no difference in helmet use and non helmet use.
burden yourself with tons of student debt, when your job will be outsourced or you'll otherwise be out of that career within five yers?
Longshoremen in my area are heavily unionized, will never be laid off or outsourced, and make well into the six figures for 35-37h a week.
A big part of it is the fact that test audiences are now used. Most of the comments here miss that. A movie should be made by a director on its own merits, as opposed to being slapped together by committee and then scissored up after a bunch of random yahoos comment on what they liked and didn't like. Keep in mind that the MPAA takes the film under the door and it comes back X and they edit it and submit it (they don't find out why) comes back - X, so on and so forth, if they simply said "listen we object to these frames" then they wouldn't have to do so much guesswork and perhaps edit out stuff they wouldn't have to otherwise, re-editing the story to make it work.
The article said that if Casablanca were to be made today Bogie would have got on the plane. The ending of the Fisher King was deliberately tongue in cheek super happy happy world because the test audience and producers objected to the bleak ending (Robin Williams getting capped).
I dunno, the world we're in is screwed up. People can't behave in theatres so nobody goes. Instead of substance and narrative, we want cheap tricks and ADHD induced editing. The audience gets to edit the story, and so does the government.
Every now and then a movie like Brokeback Mountain comes out, which is good because it refused to kowtow to Hollywood suckage. No, they didn't make Ennis a woman, the cheated on wives weren't happy with it and found richer husbands, and it didn't end with them getting married in San Francisco, running a successful catering business at peace with their former families, gathering in the yard for a family picnic.
In short, we make movies for the thugged out brain dead yoofs who go to the theatre to hear big explosions and see big special effects. Period. What's that but a giant video game, anyway?
RE: Yeah, yeah, you're being funny. But seriously, many of us think oil is underpriced.
Oh, hey, thanks for intruding on the discussion. Whereabouts in Iran are you from?
That's ONE way to redefine the expression "that's a sweet ride, dude."
Butanol, people. Burns in a gasoline engine just fine, you can make it from cellulose. Has the same BTU/gln almost as gasoline. Doesn't corrode the lines. We can keep the same cars we have now, and emissions drop significantly when we burn it.
Keep in mind the "job" provides certain things, like relatively affordable health care.
Try affording half decent coverage on your own.
I don't want a car that folds up and needs replacing after an impact. I want one that bounces off whatever it hits, and you might have to hammer out the fender. Like in the old days.
Speak for yourself. The only time my Shovelhead is parked is when there's ICE on the road.
RE: Any argument is partially based on trust. You simply can't look up every statistic, challenge every statement because it's just impractical.
Of course you can. And trust me, if I was to point out that the dreaded spaghetti weevil has been eliminated from the Earth, about 0.00001sec later someone will point out that I just made that up.
RE: This is what the people who cry "ad hominem! ad hominem!" at every turn seem to miss. If the guy smells and dresses funny that really has no bearing on whether you trust his facts, or even willing to listen to him. If the person in question is dis-trustful or his motivations are in question, that's quite relevent.
I don't think you understand how ad hominem works. Hitler may have been an evil human being with many misguided ideas, but he did at one point say 2+2=4, and 2+2 do in fact equal four, the fact that he was a toothbrush moustached syphilitic tweaker with genocidal tendencies don't change that fact. If you wish to attack what the man said, attack what he said. All we are saying when we claim ad hominem is that in a discussion about what the man actually said, throwing in that the guy likes to club baby seals for fun or whatever IS IRRELEVANT.
Don't please bring up Godwin's Law. That is reserved for a deliberate appeal to the gallery relating something about the other person's argument to the Nazis.
Actually it is. Though you're thinking of an abusive ad hominem "he smells, and his mom dresses him funny" there is also circumstantial ad hominem: "Circumstantial: A Circumstantial Ad Hominem is one in which some irrelevant personal circumstance surrounding the opponent is offered as evidence against the opponent's position. This fallacy is often introduced by phrases such as: "Of course, that's what you'd expect him to say." The fallacy claims that the only reason why he argues as he does is because of personal circumstances, such as standing to gain from the argument's acceptance."
Here, once again, is what was said:
"Moore is a paid lobbyist who specializes is garnering favorable press for environmentally destructive mining and energy industries. He's not just ex-Greenpeace, he's an ex-environmentalist who parlayed his prior experience working for Greenpeace into working against it. If you are a major polluter, Moore is the go-to guy for whitewashing your corporate image."
The response didn't rebut the position in any way shape or form, it was EXACTLY what the Circumstantial Ad Hominem fallacy represents. It says nothing about what the man said or didn't say, it seeks to attack the man and/or his circumstances.
RE: Sure, and I'm all for it, except changing the fuel is not necessarily trivial. For example, converting from gasoline to ethanol or E85 requires changing compression and that's not nontrivial - generally speaking we accomplish this through a piston change.
Apparently, there's a new process to produce butanol from cellulose. A lot of that around. If we grow hemp, even more. Dude just drove an UNMODIFIED 1992 Buick from one end of the country to the other on the stuff, smoked all EPA standards in every state.... stuff has almost the same BTU count as gasoline. All you'd need to do is tickle the carbs, unless you have EFI in which case you do NOTHING.
This solution produces far less pollutants with no change to anything (except adjusting a carb) at all. As usual, there's always a sensible solution everyone ignores.
1) It's not their job
2) They need to use those profits to find more sources of oil, and double quick.
RE: Summary: We know that unchecked automotive emissions are harmful, apart from CO2 emissions.
You do realise that we could simply change the fuel and get the same result, right?
RE: Consequently, we are doing something about them. You suggest we do nothing until we know it's a necessity, by which time if human-influenced global warming is a reality, it will be too late.
That's a pretty big "if". "If" and "may" do not make for good public policy, I'm sorry. Putting entire businesses out of work based on a theory totally opposite to the theory that was prevalent thirty years ago is ludicrous. Try and see it from my perspective for a second. I'm not saying "we're ruining the planet, but I wanna do what I wanna do." I'm saying that what I'm hearing from the global warming folks, even the saner ones, is always "may", "if", etc. We may or may not know the Earth is getting warmer. Some are saying the planet stopped warming in 1998, some are pointing out the biggest rise in temps happened before industrialisation really took off, etc. I'm not arguing that is the case, or that it isn't.
Let me show you my side of the coin. We like analogies in this thread. "Your Honor, the accused may or may not have had the weapon in question. We know that weapons similar to these could perhaps kill people. We're not sure if he's the one who killed someone or if someone else did it, or even if the deceased is actually dead cause there's some question as to whether or not the diagnostic instruments work. But death is a really serious thing, so let's kill the accused now."
David Suzuki, who I'm surprised is still called a scientist given that he refers to the Earth crying out to him and talks of the Earth as "sacred" - once made the statement that temperatures in Windsor, Ontario are FAR warmer than when he was a boy. Someone looked it up and called him on it, cause he was wrong. Result? Unless you're a government approved (e.g. alarmist) scientist, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO VIEW THE CLIMATE DATA.
I hear of evidence being suppressed, scientists muzzled and having to go to the petrochemical folks to do their job. I hear of computer models that still need to be tweaked, predictions that haven't come true. Sure some glaciers are receding, but some are growing. We've got RECORD COLD temperatures going on.
The Global Warming folks simply move the goalposts. Well, we were wrong about Ice Age 1984, sure, and yeah, maybe Earth Inferno 2010 isn't on track, but now we're concerned about CLIMATE CHANGE, in other words whether the Earth is warming or cooling or even keeping still, by GOD we have a solution in search of a problem.....
This isn't to say that there isn't a problem. But then again, there might really be a Hell too. But I'm not going to Church this Sunday because I don't believe in Pascal's Wager any more than I do its modern version.
RE: but neither one will help you in the middle of bumfuck unless you have the right tools and the spare parts.
I replaced all four of mine at a point in time where I had no mechanical knowledge or skill. As for dealing with overhead cams, that's another issue. In fact, I was able to adjust the pushrods within a few minutes.
RE: Obviously you don't know shit about fuel injection or computer-controlled carburetion, because if you did you'd know that the systems will run without a working O2 sensor. O2 sensors do one of two things when they are broken -
I'll defer to you on this one - but the point is if your EFI goes south, you're stranded until someone can come in and replace the entire unit, that's the point I'm making. Sure they're more reliable and almost never break down, but that's cold comfort when you're on a lonely road with a dead vehicle.
RE: whereas on a normal vehicle you have one coil which you depend on for all your spark, and that rube goldberg distributor crap.
I'll defer to you there, too. I know very little about cars.
RE: Actually, a company called eCycle built a prototype diesel-electric hybrid which goes 80mph (still too slow, granted) that can be run on biodiesel of course, or for that matter vegetable oil, and which got something like 120mpg on petrodiesel (biodiesel will produce a result so close as to be indistinguishable, except with less emissions.) The final version was supposed to make 150mpg but they seem to have stopped all work or something.
Shame. I'd have been interested in that. 80mph is fine by me.
RE: What IS an issue with having a catalytic converter is that it complicates the exhaust piping no matter where you put it, which leads to additional restriction, which reduces horsepower. Of course, it does improve torque, so you can gear a little taller (since you have the torque) and make that less of an issue. I suppose you could also just put the cat under the bike where your beloved hardly-movinsome's child sportbike company Buell put a shock absorber, in a move that makes no sense to anyone who is paying attention.
I'm no major fan of the Motor Company. Some of their design decisions astound the hell out of me. Point is with a cat converter, there's heat issues and exhaust hassles, otherwise companies would simply do it.
RE: I wholeheartedly agree that they should be getting rid of two-stroke lawnmowers. I recall reading some statistic that says that a lawnmower produces more pollution in an hour than a modern fuel-injected car (not just a motorcycle) produces in 2,000 hours of runtime. I'm kind of skeptical about that statistic, since it could only be true for 2,000 hours of up-to-temperature runtime where the vehicle is at its most efficient, but even if it's ten or twenty hours (which is entirely feasible) it's still particularly telling.
But my point is, they aren't. And when you start doing things like saying bikes must lose 60% of their pollutants or else, (even though we're not quite sure what the effect of all this carbon stuff is) but for some reason you can run a leafblower and/or lawnmower til it breaks is beyond me. Same with Kyoto. The US produced CO2 is evil and is ruining the planet and killing the little polar bears, but any coming from China is politically correct and therefore perfectly OK to do.
RE: Your last meaningless statement in this paragraph has to deal with the "less than 1% of all pollution" thing. If I fart in the elevator, it's less than 1% of all pollution, but no one's going to appreciate it. Not a great analogy, but I just felt driven to say it.
Your analogy is flawed, cause everyone in the elevator is - and the bike is not the one who came back from the burrito buffet with the double onion bhaji chaser.
RE: and a handful of motorcycles and the motorcycles produce ten times more pollution per mile traveled per person, which is not entirely unfeasible on bikes with no emissions controls, then they ought to be cleaned up.
I believe it was pollution p
RE: Wrong, wrong, and wrong. There's an assload of aftermarket parts for the rice rockets, and what's more, they go beyond chrome skull headlights and vibrating pillion pads.
But be it as it may, all squid bikes for all intents and purposes look the same. Most guys who buy a Hayabusa think customisation is wearing matching neon leather.
RE: And, there is an american squid bike, it's called a Buell, and it's made by H-D. Amusingly, they seem to have followed perfectly in the footsteps of the parent company, because last I looked (like in 2001 or so) every single model of Buell released to that date had had a safety recall issued, and all of them were serious.
Two things: 1) I know what a Buell is, I was referring to American Chopper - as in, you'll never find a customizing company producing radical new squid bikes, simply because all squid bikes look the same. Take some fairings off, put more on, repaint em whatever. There is a seriously inventive culture out there around the American cruiser, so I'll ask you not to reduce it to bolt-on vibrating pillion pads.
RE: and remember, bike pollution is LESS THAN ONE PERCENT
RE: In the hope that people would think it was significant because you used more big letters? If slashdot were done on paper, you'd be working with jumbo crayons.
No, to bring attention to how NOT serious this is as an issue, yet it's being hit with a sledgehammer.
RE: Now maybe the guy who you're replying to was telling you what you want, but the government isn't. They're telling you what you're allowed to have, which is a lot different. They don't permit you to have weapons-grade nuclear materials, either. Granted, a few motorcycles spewing out unnecessary quantities of pollutants aren't as dangerous as all that,
I'm glad you can admit that, so you can lose the dramatic comparison between a Harley Davidson motorcycle and fissile material. My point is that you shouldn't tell me, like a wayward parent, that I am no longer allowed to enjoy a lifestyle because some made up study says that my motorcycle is personally going to melt the polar ice caps.
RE: so it is kind of a silly comparison, but I'm trying to make the point that you can't just have whatever you want. That's not how the world works. Why do you think that you should be any less responsible for your impact on others than anyone else, just because you're on two wheels and have an addiction to poorly designed motorcycles with lots of chrome?
Wow, you seem to have a lot of hatred on for Harley Davidson. Let it out. Not that I particularly care. It's just that I happen to believe in something called freedom, and unless you have a compelling reason to ask me to stop doing something, go stuff it. My impact on others is negligible. And I resent the implication that I'm some kind of irresponsible buffoon simply because I ride a two wheeled vehicle and not a four wheeled one - you've NO PROOF that any of the "Global Warming Chicken Little" squawking is any more than a con game to get more federal money. Until you show me that PROOF, not conjecture, not some small evidence, but proof, leave me to enjoy Western Civilisation. I have not yet run down anything of you or yours, so afford me the same respect.'
Remember that not even thirty years ago, scientists had proof beyond all doubt that we were headed for another ice age. Then it was panic, everyone! Stop driving cars cause of GLOBAL WARMING! Now that we're no longer warming, it's CLIMATE CHANGE! Everything from a lost sock in a load of laundry to hurricanes is now being attributed to what still amounts to THEORY, and a rather WEAK one at that. We've got more PRESSING issues to worry about, things we know we're screwing up. And until the jury ceases to be out on this one, the squawkings of scientists on the Global Warming Payroll notwithstanding - what you suggest (let's ban CO2!!!!) is the science equivalent of Pascal's Wager.
Thing is, Global Warming is not science, it's religion.