It's something of a myth that cycling makes you fit. I used to cycle a few miles to work, and it didn't do anything for my fitness or weight. It's not very effective exercise. Yes and no. Biking is by far the most efficient form of transportation. It's about 800 times more efficient than driving a small car, and at least 3 times as efficient as walking (unloaded; far more so when you throw 10kg of groceries into the mix). You can certainly get where you're going on a bike without getting much of a workout. Especially if it's only a few miles away.
That said, you can get as intense a workout as you like (heart, lungs, and legs, at least). Often I'll take it easy on the ride in to work (when I can restrain myself; feeling the bike explode forward under my own power is kind of addictive), and then push myself much harder during the ride to the grocery store, errands, and the long, scenic route home.
Unreliable? Spend as much money maintaining your bike as you do just changing the oil of your car, and it's pretty dang reliable. I haven't had a flat in 3 years, maybe because I spurn ultralight racing tires in favour of slightly heavier and more robust commuting tires. Yes, bikes require maintenance, but commuting bikes (not ultralight racers) break down extremely rarely. Cars require far more maintenance. So does your body. And your bike maintains you!
There are a number of garment bags made for bike racks. I've never used one (I have nothing but contempt for clothing that is designed to (a) look bad when wrinkled and (b) show wrinkles), but for example:
2wheel gear (JandD also makes one; who knows who else...).
If a change of clothes and a spot of deodorant won't keep you from stinking, give it a few weeks so your body can get used to the exercise. You'll be fine.
Does anyone else find it disgusting that humans living in such climates are expected not to be just a bit sweaty? Who the hell thought of that?
So ride in bike clothes (more comfortable and faster anyway) and change when you get to work. It's an extra, what, 3 minutes to completely change (I could even wipe down with a damp paper towel if I really wanted to). As for the smell, you could always try deodorant. It's remarkably effective.
Wrinkle-free clothes have been available for ages, but if you really can't figure out how to carry clothes on your bike, you could keep a clean, ironed shirt or three at work. Replenish your supply on days you drive.
If you have loud pipes, you should know that while it might be a fun sound for you, it's not fun for anyone else, anywhere. You are making a lot of enemies, and giving motorcycles a bad name. Even when I'm riding a nice, quiet BMW, reasonable people give me the finger because so many motorcyclists are loud, obnoxious assholes.
Heh. Same thing happens to me in my station wagon. There are some people who just need to pass you to show that their penises are bigger (hey, maybe they're jealous of the bike shorts;) It's enough to make me a supporter of the Black Box that will automatically send your speed to the cops so they can just email you a ticket every time you speed. But then, cycling does wonders for reminding people just how little time you can save by being an asshole...
When I'm king, people will be allowed to drive cars only if they can prove that they're putting 500 miles/year on their bikes. What an administrative nightmare. Ah, the travails of good rulership...
Seriously, bike-friendly culture starts somewhere. Many countries, and many US states and cities have it, and some don't. I ask myself what I can do to help, and I think it comes down to this: ride as much as possible! Be responsible, obey traffic laws scrupulously (except the one about coming to a full stop at a stop sign when there's a car right on my tail who isn't expecting that), assert my rights without being an asshole, and phone the cops with a license plate number every once in a while.
Ever hear of common resources? Look up the history of property law sometime. Should a human have to own something for that thing to have any protection? The fact that I need clean water in order to live means that I need to own a personal, independent supply of water over which I have complete control? Maybe you should read up on geology while you're at it.
You know, I would hope that an, ahem, *economic* system would put money (or, more accurately, wealth) ahead of whatever politically santizied soundbites catch people's ears nowadays. That's kind of the problem. Does the economy serve humans? Or do humans serve the economy? It would be nice if more people recognised that wealth is just one facilitator to quality of life, and that wealth is not particularly useful without clean air or open spaces. That's an artefact of what the system values: as long as there is no economic value placed on, say, clean water, and there is economic value placed on processes that happen to turn clean water into dirty water, then a system driven by that model begets the "crushing" of clean water because it will lead to greater "profit".
Of course, there are also sustainability arguments. An economic system that measures success on a timescale of a few years (or economic quarters!) will place no value on the more distant future. This is why we are running out of everything (air, water, topsoil, wood, oil, ozone, polar ice,...........): many decisions have been made that placed short-term gain above long-term gain, and the future is now. Once again, the behaviour of the system is a function of how it measures its success. The measure is "profit", and "crushing" isn't a part of that measure. As long as crushing something can lead to greater profit than not crushing something, crushing something is bound to occur. See also biology:)
Jesus man, what drugs are you on that you feel BETTER after a workout rather than before?
If you don't, you should seriously panic about your health. A bit of light exercise for an hour should absolutely not make you feel bad. If you are that desperately out of shape, take it easy, work up to it gradually, be gentle on yourself. Your body is fucked up, and it'll take a while to restore it to proper functioning condition.
We all have limits. If I tried to sprint for an hour I'd end up exhausted too. But picking a pace that you can sustain should be a pretty simple skill compared to those that most slashdotters have learned.
Maybe you have a different definition of safety to the rest of us.
Probably. Most of you seem to be using a definition based on ignorance and sensationalist media, combined with the worst possible route choice. I'm using (number of accidents / number of trips), or (number of accidents / number of miles), or (number of accidents / number of hours). Those numbers aren't too hard to find, but they do involve being a little scientific. Sorry to all you suits.
Yes, bike facilities suck. I never claimed otherwise. In fact, you are reinforcing my claim that cars are a huge part of the problem, and they're becoming more so. A solution involves pushing for good bicycle commuting facilities, and part of that is proving that there is a demand for them.
Or you can get in your car and become another piece of the problem. For the record, I do this as well when I can't reasonably bike. You needn't sell your car. But remember that sometimes there's a better way, and for once it doesn't involve killing anyone.
It seems that figuring out what gas prices ought to be involves figuring out how much it costs, ultimately, to give you that gas. That might include:
Extraction, transport, and refining costs. However, note that the current production system is borrowing heavily against the future. For example, ultimately, extraction that does not take into account replenishment of the supply is tantamount to living off the savings in your bank account, rather than living off the interest. And no, so far biofuels are turning into a worse disaster than oil.
Furthermore, who should bear the cost of cleaning up the mess made by extraction, transportation, and burning? Who pays for the cleanup of oil spills? Who pays to repair the damage done by global warming? Who pays the healthcare costs incurred by those who are injured or killed by breathing my toxic exhaust? There is no question that while catalytic converters help enormously with some pollutants, burning hydrocarbons releases toxins and carcinogens, and the cost of making sure that those have no ill effects is a very real part of the cost of the fuel.
On top of that, it does not seem unreasonable to include a "sin tax"---cars cause enormous harm even outside their role as fossil-fuel burners. They are large, and the eternal creation of parking spots (which often cost more than the cars they serve) leads to urban sprawl, among other things. They are fast-moving and heavy, leading to many hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. They are loud---when was the last time you heard silence? A "sin tax" is not part of the true cost of fuel, but a disincentive to car use would not be unreasonable.
Of course, if you include cleanup costs in the price of gasoline, a sin tax would probably be unnecessary.
Wait... you're refusing to ride a bike because you're worried that it will make you not look pretty enough??
Of course, it'll heat up a lot more over the next few years, thanks largely to cars and air conditioners.
You show up sweaty, go take a shower and get changed into your work clothes, and you look good. Relaxed and confident, in fact, the way you feel after a good workout. Body language says much more than clothes, especially to airhead businessmen.
Biking in the heat isn't bad. Wind chill ("augmented evaporative cooling") is rather nice, actually. Clever how we sweat when appropriate, isn't it?
As for the danger of cycling, I'd expect people who watch the mainstream media to make that claim, but on slashdot I'd expect better. Look up how dangerous cycling is vs. driving. No contest--especially when you consider the accident rate amongst reasonably experienced, sober adults. It's virtually nonexistent.
Does your blood pressure rise when you see someone on a bike? Gee. Mine rises when I see someone in a car acting as if he's going to be late to his red light. Cyclists consume almost no resources. Cars are very slightly faster (go look up how much, in day-to-day use), and at what cost? Cyclists are doing the right thing. Why doesn't your blood boil when yet another person gets into a car? Drivers cause rush hour and traffic jams and accidents, and every one of you is equally to blame, for choosing to use your car, and for not demanding traffic-jam-proof transportation solutions.
Really in this day in age, unless you have a dedicated bike lane...if you're on two wheels, it should be motorized for everyones safety.
Motors give people enough kinetic energy to do real damage. How many cars have killed someone in the past year? How many bikes? Now which is dangerous? How many Americans have late-onset diabetes, heart disease, and a plethora of other obesity-related illnesses just because motors let them avoid any and all exercise? How much cancer can be directly traced to the burning of hydrocarbons? How many Iraqi deaths are due to a certain invasion because Iraq had oil and the USA was too weak to find a way around its addiction to artificially cheap energy for its spectacularly inefficient transportation "infrastructure"? New Orleans was just flooded by a hurricane, water levels are going to rise a hell of a lot more, and climate is going to get a lot more unstable--it's burning of fossil fuels that is responsible for these things. I could go on. But think really hard before claiming that motors make us safer.
Actually, the accident rate for cyclists on roads is about 7 times lower than that on sidewalks. Interstates are of course pretty unpleasant for bikes, but I'm not sure they're really suitable for cars either during rush hour.
That's one of my points. If everyone bitching about rising gas prices instead actually started bitching about bike facilities (esp. lanes, parking, showers), then we might be able to start to move in the right direction.
And no, there is really no way a 10-mile commute on a bike can take 2 hours. Average lifetime speed of cars, city and highway, in the USA has been measured a few times, and usually found to be in the neighbourhood of 18mph. Average speed of a pathetically unhealthy lard-ass on a bike: ~10mph. My own average speed for commuting on my bike after a month: 15mph. Now (2 years later): 18mph. Yes, I tend to take more circuitous routes, and that costs me a little extra time, but not much, and it keeps me smiling.
And then there are the intangibles. Arriving by car I have just wasted the time spent sitting in the car (books on CD and whatnot can help somewhat). If I've arrived by bike, I feel refreshed, energised, relaxed, and vibrant. I've gotten in my recreation for the day, as well as my workout. I've caused little pollution, little congestion, few parking problems for anyone, almost no noise, and made transportation safer for everyone just by being seen (yes, the single biggest part of cycling safety is making motor addicts aware that there are bikes on the road).
There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, of course. With shitty bike facilities, few people will bike, and with few people biking, there will be no obvious demand for better bike facilities. Change could start from either end, and I know which end I am on. Are you going to be part of the solution, or part of the precipitate?
10 miles each way is nothing on a bike, and it's a pretty sad commentary on Americans that they are so quick to complain about such a trivial bit of physical work/play. 15 ain't bad, but it's starting to get into the terretory where members of the opposite sex will be tearing your pants to shreds pretty regularly just to get a better look at your quads. This can impede productivity.
Yes, bike facilities suck right now. But that's because the pansy-assed Americans are too busy whining about rising but still stupidly low gas prices to whine about something that could actually fix the problem.
There are two ways to be thin: you can starve yourself, or you can get occasional exercise. The latter is better for you. The former is better for The Environment (all else being equal).
The healthy kind of thin people often eat just as much as fat people. We just get more exercise. Or maybe we have tapeworms. But we're right there with the big guys, eating 4000 Calories a day to sustain our high metabolisms.
Of course, fat people (and the starving thin) are more likely to drive places (very bad for everyone), whereas healthy thin people are more likely to walk or bike. Oh, wait, this is the US, where thin people drive to the frackin' gym!!
Censorship isn't always such a bad thing. It's not clear, for example, that Germany's hate-speech laws do nothing but harm. Libel and copyright laws are probably a good thing (although both have been abused). Clearly you can't say whatever you want, and overall I'm not sad about it.
Of course, in the US of A, the Republicans have (as is their wont) privatised censorship. Now our corporations censor to appease stockholders and advertisers. They won't put you in jail (much), but they'll make it very difficult for you to operate in today's world. Of course, they're not nearly as strict nor as omnipresent as censors in China... yet. But let's not sneer at others too much until we're sure that we're making more progress in the right direction than they are.
So if your car manufacturer kept track of how many miles you'd driven, then limited either the speed or distance you can travel, would THAT be OK?
Of course. Using a car destroys non-renewable resources, causes air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution at night, is a direct kinetic danger to cyclists, pedestrians, and even other car users (not to mention the harm it does the driver), is the direct cause of urban sprawl and the untenability of walking cities... But it seems that leaving a car manufacturer the responsibility of safeguarding common resources is unlikely to be successful.
"If we educate our people, they will leave. So there's no point in any investment in mobile assets."
There are plenty of nationalists/patriots/racists who will stay.
There are plenty of people, especially the well-educated, who have forsaken the petty ideology of competing countries and instead see a big picture encompassing the world. More educated people in the world is a Good Thing. Do I need to explain why?
If you educate n people, m n will leave. I wonder what this system will cost...
No, but ve hev agents. Yees, agents, with gunz. And politickal immunity. And power, yeees, more den a leetle beet uv power. We ken remove people from Munich to Gitmo. We can disappear them, yes, even from Munich. Germany is our bitch. Yes. Yeeeeeee-haw!
Speaking of which, is anyone up for some good old-fashioned Diebold-gaming this election? Of course, in the spirit of vi vs. emacs, kde vs. gnome, etc., there would doubtless be some dispute as to whether to get a worthwhile president by writing in Kucinich, or really push the point home by electing Sauron...
Walking is very, very slow (humans are particularly bad at it), especially when you're trying to carry lots of crap. A bike, maybe with a trailer, is a little more maintenance than walking, but it's by far the most efficient mode of travel in the world (3 or 4 times as efficient as walking, and maybe 100 times the efficiency of an FUV). With a little practice and a decent infrastructure they're nearly as fast as cars in typical US towns (highly developed, regulated, etc). There's a great charity somewhere around here that takes donations of secondhand bikes, fixes them up, and ships them off to the third world(tm). Maybe it'll help them avoid the mistakes the USA has made.
You'd think LA would be perfect for biking. It's flat and the weather is perfect for it so much of the year. They just need to make it illegal to drive there for one day a month, so people could see what it would do for them. Sadly, I don't think the aforementioned charity considers LA part of the third world...
Legally, the people with the guns dictate what rights the rest of us have (and they take a few extra rights for themselves). But this wasn't a question of what is legal, but a question of what is ethical and respectful. Don't confuse those.
No, I don't have much of an opinion on the OP's question. I'm not a very private person, but others are, and I would respect the wishes of the dead if I knew them.
However, I have a huge problem with people speaking for the dead, or others who can't speak for themselves. "He would have wanted..." is a lot like "Protect the children!" (or "The American People want...", I guess). There are a couple of people I'd trust to speak for me after my death, in that I'd expect them to get a few things wrong but I wouldn't mind too much. Of course, those people are the least likely to claim to be able to speak for me...
Doesn't all that flying around just increase the need to find them guilty so we can proceed to invade more "terrorist-ridden" (and coincidentally oil-rich) countries? That will put more pressure on the plaintiff to find terrorism everywhere, weakening the defendants' cases.
And isn't raising demand for greenhouse-gas--emitting technologies doing a lot more to kill everyone than even a moderately effective terrorist could?
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That said, you can get as intense a workout as you like (heart, lungs, and legs, at least). Often I'll take it easy on the ride in to work (when I can restrain myself; feeling the bike explode forward under my own power is kind of addictive), and then push myself much harder during the ride to the grocery store, errands, and the long, scenic route home.
Unreliable? Spend as much money maintaining your bike as you do just changing the oil of your car, and it's pretty dang reliable. I haven't had a flat in 3 years, maybe because I spurn ultralight racing tires in favour of slightly heavier and more robust commuting tires. Yes, bikes require maintenance, but commuting bikes (not ultralight racers) break down extremely rarely. Cars require far more maintenance. So does your body. And your bike maintains you!
There are a number of garment bags made for bike racks. I've never used one (I have nothing but contempt for clothing that is designed to (a) look bad when wrinkled and (b) show wrinkles), but for example: 2wheel gear (JandD also makes one; who knows who else...).
If a change of clothes and a spot of deodorant won't keep you from stinking, give it a few weeks so your body can get used to the exercise. You'll be fine.
Does anyone else find it disgusting that humans living in such climates are expected not to be just a bit sweaty? Who the hell thought of that?
So ride in bike clothes (more comfortable and faster anyway) and change when you get to work. It's an extra, what, 3 minutes to completely change (I could even wipe down with a damp paper towel if I really wanted to). As for the smell, you could always try deodorant. It's remarkably effective.
Wrinkle-free clothes have been available for ages, but if you really can't figure out how to carry clothes on your bike, you could keep a clean, ironed shirt or three at work. Replenish your supply on days you drive.
If you have loud pipes, you should know that while it might be a fun sound for you, it's not fun for anyone else, anywhere. You are making a lot of enemies, and giving motorcycles a bad name. Even when I'm riding a nice, quiet BMW, reasonable people give me the finger because so many motorcyclists are loud, obnoxious assholes.
Heh. Same thing happens to me in my station wagon. There are some people who just need to pass you to show that their penises are bigger (hey, maybe they're jealous of the bike shorts ;) It's enough to make me a supporter of the Black Box that will automatically send your speed to the cops so they can just email you a ticket every time you speed. But then, cycling does wonders for reminding people just how little time you can save by being an asshole...
When I'm king, people will be allowed to drive cars only if they can prove that they're putting 500 miles/year on their bikes. What an administrative nightmare. Ah, the travails of good rulership...
Seriously, bike-friendly culture starts somewhere. Many countries, and many US states and cities have it, and some don't. I ask myself what I can do to help, and I think it comes down to this: ride as much as possible! Be responsible, obey traffic laws scrupulously (except the one about coming to a full stop at a stop sign when there's a car right on my tail who isn't expecting that), assert my rights without being an asshole, and phone the cops with a license plate number every once in a while.
Nah, Boulder is pretty flat.
Yeah, but I really hate it when a moose gets stuck in my spokes...
Ever hear of common resources? Look up the history of property law sometime. Should a human have to own something for that thing to have any protection? The fact that I need clean water in order to live means that I need to own a personal, independent supply of water over which I have complete control? Maybe you should read up on geology while you're at it.
Of course, there are also sustainability arguments. An economic system that measures success on a timescale of a few years (or economic quarters!) will place no value on the more distant future. This is why we are running out of everything (air, water, topsoil, wood, oil, ozone, polar ice, ...........): many decisions have been made that placed short-term gain above long-term gain, and the future is now. Once again, the behaviour of the system is a function of how it measures its success. The measure is "profit", and "crushing" isn't a part of that measure. As long as crushing something can lead to greater profit than not crushing something, crushing something is bound to occur. See also biology :)
We all have limits. If I tried to sprint for an hour I'd end up exhausted too. But picking a pace that you can sustain should be a pretty simple skill compared to those that most slashdotters have learned.
Yes, bike facilities suck. I never claimed otherwise. In fact, you are reinforcing my claim that cars are a huge part of the problem, and they're becoming more so. A solution involves pushing for good bicycle commuting facilities, and part of that is proving that there is a demand for them.
Or you can get in your car and become another piece of the problem. For the record, I do this as well when I can't reasonably bike. You needn't sell your car. But remember that sometimes there's a better way, and for once it doesn't involve killing anyone.
Indeed? Based on what?
It seems that figuring out what gas prices ought to be involves figuring out how much it costs, ultimately, to give you that gas. That might include:
Extraction, transport, and refining costs. However, note that the current production system is borrowing heavily against the future. For example, ultimately, extraction that does not take into account replenishment of the supply is tantamount to living off the savings in your bank account, rather than living off the interest. And no, so far biofuels are turning into a worse disaster than oil.
Furthermore, who should bear the cost of cleaning up the mess made by extraction, transportation, and burning? Who pays for the cleanup of oil spills? Who pays to repair the damage done by global warming? Who pays the healthcare costs incurred by those who are injured or killed by breathing my toxic exhaust? There is no question that while catalytic converters help enormously with some pollutants, burning hydrocarbons releases toxins and carcinogens, and the cost of making sure that those have no ill effects is a very real part of the cost of the fuel.
On top of that, it does not seem unreasonable to include a "sin tax"---cars cause enormous harm even outside their role as fossil-fuel burners. They are large, and the eternal creation of parking spots (which often cost more than the cars they serve) leads to urban sprawl, among other things. They are fast-moving and heavy, leading to many hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. They are loud---when was the last time you heard silence? A "sin tax" is not part of the true cost of fuel, but a disincentive to car use would not be unreasonable.
Of course, if you include cleanup costs in the price of gasoline, a sin tax would probably be unnecessary.
Wait... you're refusing to ride a bike because you're worried that it will make you not look pretty enough??
Of course, it'll heat up a lot more over the next few years, thanks largely to cars and air conditioners.
You show up sweaty, go take a shower and get changed into your work clothes, and you look good. Relaxed and confident, in fact, the way you feel after a good workout. Body language says much more than clothes, especially to airhead businessmen.
Biking in the heat isn't bad. Wind chill ("augmented evaporative cooling") is rather nice, actually. Clever how we sweat when appropriate, isn't it?
As for the danger of cycling, I'd expect people who watch the mainstream media to make that claim, but on slashdot I'd expect better. Look up how dangerous cycling is vs. driving. No contest--especially when you consider the accident rate amongst reasonably experienced, sober adults. It's virtually nonexistent.
Does your blood pressure rise when you see someone on a bike? Gee. Mine rises when I see someone in a car acting as if he's going to be late to his red light. Cyclists consume almost no resources. Cars are very slightly faster (go look up how much, in day-to-day use), and at what cost? Cyclists are doing the right thing. Why doesn't your blood boil when yet another person gets into a car? Drivers cause rush hour and traffic jams and accidents, and every one of you is equally to blame, for choosing to use your car, and for not demanding traffic-jam-proof transportation solutions.
Motors give people enough kinetic energy to do real damage. How many cars have killed someone in the past year? How many bikes? Now which is dangerous? How many Americans have late-onset diabetes, heart disease, and a plethora of other obesity-related illnesses just because motors let them avoid any and all exercise? How much cancer can be directly traced to the burning of hydrocarbons? How many Iraqi deaths are due to a certain invasion because Iraq had oil and the USA was too weak to find a way around its addiction to artificially cheap energy for its spectacularly inefficient transportation "infrastructure"? New Orleans was just flooded by a hurricane, water levels are going to rise a hell of a lot more, and climate is going to get a lot more unstable--it's burning of fossil fuels that is responsible for these things. I could go on. But think really hard before claiming that motors make us safer.Actually, the accident rate for cyclists on roads is about 7 times lower than that on sidewalks. Interstates are of course pretty unpleasant for bikes, but I'm not sure they're really suitable for cars either during rush hour.
That's one of my points. If everyone bitching about rising gas prices instead actually started bitching about bike facilities (esp. lanes, parking, showers), then we might be able to start to move in the right direction.
And no, there is really no way a 10-mile commute on a bike can take 2 hours. Average lifetime speed of cars, city and highway, in the USA has been measured a few times, and usually found to be in the neighbourhood of 18mph. Average speed of a pathetically unhealthy lard-ass on a bike: ~10mph. My own average speed for commuting on my bike after a month: 15mph. Now (2 years later): 18mph. Yes, I tend to take more circuitous routes, and that costs me a little extra time, but not much, and it keeps me smiling.
And then there are the intangibles. Arriving by car I have just wasted the time spent sitting in the car (books on CD and whatnot can help somewhat). If I've arrived by bike, I feel refreshed, energised, relaxed, and vibrant. I've gotten in my recreation for the day, as well as my workout. I've caused little pollution, little congestion, few parking problems for anyone, almost no noise, and made transportation safer for everyone just by being seen (yes, the single biggest part of cycling safety is making motor addicts aware that there are bikes on the road).
There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, of course. With shitty bike facilities, few people will bike, and with few people biking, there will be no obvious demand for better bike facilities. Change could start from either end, and I know which end I am on. Are you going to be part of the solution, or part of the precipitate?
10 miles each way is nothing on a bike, and it's a pretty sad commentary on Americans that they are so quick to complain about such a trivial bit of physical work/play. 15 ain't bad, but it's starting to get into the terretory where members of the opposite sex will be tearing your pants to shreds pretty regularly just to get a better look at your quads. This can impede productivity.
Yes, bike facilities suck right now. But that's because the pansy-assed Americans are too busy whining about rising but still stupidly low gas prices to whine about something that could actually fix the problem.
ps. Gasoline makes you fat :)
There are two ways to be thin: you can starve yourself, or you can get occasional exercise. The latter is better for you. The former is better for The Environment (all else being equal).
The healthy kind of thin people often eat just as much as fat people. We just get more exercise. Or maybe we have tapeworms. But we're right there with the big guys, eating 4000 Calories a day to sustain our high metabolisms.
Of course, fat people (and the starving thin) are more likely to drive places (very bad for everyone), whereas healthy thin people are more likely to walk or bike. Oh, wait, this is the US, where thin people drive to the frackin' gym!!
Censorship isn't always such a bad thing. It's not clear, for example, that Germany's hate-speech laws do nothing but harm. Libel and copyright laws are probably a good thing (although both have been abused). Clearly you can't say whatever you want, and overall I'm not sad about it.
Of course, in the US of A, the Republicans have (as is their wont) privatised censorship. Now our corporations censor to appease stockholders and advertisers. They won't put you in jail (much), but they'll make it very difficult for you to operate in today's world. Of course, they're not nearly as strict nor as omnipresent as censors in China... yet. But let's not sneer at others too much until we're sure that we're making more progress in the right direction than they are.
- "If we educate our people, they will leave. So there's no point in any investment in mobile assets."
- There are plenty of nationalists/patriots/racists who will stay.
- There are plenty of people, especially the well-educated, who have forsaken the petty ideology of competing countries and instead see a big picture encompassing the world. More educated people in the world is a Good Thing. Do I need to explain why?
If you educate n people, m n will leave. I wonder what this system will cost...No, but ve hev agents. Yees, agents, with gunz. And politickal immunity. And power, yeees, more den a leetle beet uv power. We ken remove people from Munich to Gitmo. We can disappear them, yes, even from Munich. Germany is our bitch. Yes. Yeeeeeee-haw!
Speaking of which, is anyone up for some good old-fashioned Diebold-gaming this election? Of course, in the spirit of vi vs. emacs, kde vs. gnome, etc., there would doubtless be some dispute as to whether to get a worthwhile president by writing in Kucinich, or really push the point home by electing Sauron...
Walking is very, very slow (humans are particularly bad at it), especially when you're trying to carry lots of crap. A bike, maybe with a trailer, is a little more maintenance than walking, but it's by far the most efficient mode of travel in the world (3 or 4 times as efficient as walking, and maybe 100 times the efficiency of an FUV). With a little practice and a decent infrastructure they're nearly as fast as cars in typical US towns (highly developed, regulated, etc). There's a great charity somewhere around here that takes donations of secondhand bikes, fixes them up, and ships them off to the third world(tm). Maybe it'll help them avoid the mistakes the USA has made.
You'd think LA would be perfect for biking. It's flat and the weather is perfect for it so much of the year. They just need to make it illegal to drive there for one day a month, so people could see what it would do for them. Sadly, I don't think the aforementioned charity considers LA part of the third world...
Legally, the people with the guns dictate what rights the rest of us have (and they take a few extra rights for themselves). But this wasn't a question of what is legal, but a question of what is ethical and respectful. Don't confuse those.
..." is a lot like "Protect the children!" (or "The American People want...", I guess). There are a couple of people I'd trust to speak for me after my death, in that I'd expect them to get a few things wrong but I wouldn't mind too much. Of course, those people are the least likely to claim to be able to speak for me...
No, I don't have much of an opinion on the OP's question. I'm not a very private person, but others are, and I would respect the wishes of the dead if I knew them.
However, I have a huge problem with people speaking for the dead, or others who can't speak for themselves. "He would have wanted
Doesn't all that flying around just increase the need to find them guilty so we can proceed to invade more "terrorist-ridden" (and coincidentally oil-rich) countries? That will put more pressure on the plaintiff to find terrorism everywhere, weakening the defendants' cases.
And isn't raising demand for greenhouse-gas--emitting technologies doing a lot more to kill everyone than even a moderately effective terrorist could?