Can you make it to the market on a bike?

Andrew Muzi wrote:

Ed, it hasn't killed me yet- even though most of my cohort is long gone
from other causes. Want an aderenalin buzz? Follow me between buses in
the morning, brushing elbows on both sides. Danger? Bah! Sitting home
bitching will kill you sooner.

Don't you find the commute much safer when UW is on break? The moronic
undergraduate pedestrians wandering out into the street and idiotic
motor scooter riders create considerable chaos.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

donquijote1954 who? wrote:
OK, with such a motivation (warning the novices against you), I ask
you (I hope there are many witnesses out there), WHAT THE HELL IS THE
SOLUTION, so we can go from 1% to, say, 30% ridership?...

On Aug 4, 2:15 pm, "Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman" wrote:
Google "Hubbert's Peak.

donquijote1954 who? wrote:
Oil production peak... It's gonna be fun to be alive and watch the
couch potatos finally pedalling when things finally start going down
hill (it'll be up hill for them though). I don't see much prevention
in practice, particularly when bicycles are mostly banned from the
dangerous roads --banned by fear, that is.

"Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman" wrote:
How about stopping all the fear-mongering about how dangerous cycling is
and the related promotion of h*lm*ts and segregated facilities? Chicken
Little was wrong about the sky falling, and you are wrong about the true
danger of cycling.

donquijote1954 who? wrote:
OK, let me put my week of watching predator behavior (Shark Week on
Discovery Channel) to the test... Some fearless people have learned to
hang from the pectoral fin of a shark and get a free ride! But one guy
was bitten in front of the camera and his calf was gone. And then we
have the majority of people who just fear the shark, period.

So how this majority of people want to approach the predator is up to
them, but I'd start by, a) TAMING THE BEAST (traffic calming
measures), and/or b) separating the predator from the prey (BIKE
LANES). And since some of you don't want to hear about the latter
(everyone has a phobia), then let's turn our attention to...
(all of these things are a package that comes with the revolution)
TRAFFIC CALMING
Traffic calming is a set of strategies used by urban planners and
traffic engineers which aim to slow down or reduce traffic, thereby
improving safety for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as improving
the environment for residents. Calming measures are common in Europe,
especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.

Traffic calming was traditionally justified on the grounds of
pedestrian safety and reduction of noise and local air pollution which
-snip-
Some additional traffic calming techniques that are often used are
speed humps, speed cushions, and speed tables. These devices vary in
size based on the desired speed. Humps, cushions and tables slow cars
to between 10 and 25 miles per hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

COMING SOON
http://atom.smasher.org/streetparty/...ution%21& l4=

Tom "Johnny Sunset" Sherman wrote:
All of that ignores the real problem that no one wants to deal with
because of the difficulties in implementing the solution.
The could be a decent life for everyone if the world's population was 2
to 2.5 Billion. At 6.5+ Billion or more, forget about it, and that
includes low enough traffic to make cycling reasonable almost everywhere.

A highly elitist analysis. (you volunteering to disappear??)

Let's go back to the real world and attainable solutions.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Andrew Muzi wrote:
donquijote1954 who? wrote:
OK, with such a motivation (warning the novices against you), I ask
you (I hope there are many witnesses out there), WHAT THE HELL IS
THE
SOLUTION, so we can go from 1% to, say, 30% ridership?...

On Aug 4, 2:15 pm, "Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman"
wrote:
Google "Hubbert's Peak.

donquijote1954 who? wrote:
Oil production peak... It's gonna be fun to be alive and watch the
couch potatos finally pedalling when things finally start going down
hill (it'll be up hill for them though). I don't see much prevention
in practice, particularly when bicycles are mostly banned from the
dangerous roads --banned by fear, that is.

"Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman" wrote:
How about stopping all the fear-mongering about how dangerous
cycling is
and the related promotion of h*lm*ts and segregated facilities? Chicken
Little was wrong about the sky falling, and you are wrong about the
true
danger of cycling.

donquijote1954 who? wrote:
OK, let me put my week of watching predator behavior (Shark Week on
Discovery Channel) to the test... Some fearless people have learned to
hang from the pectoral fin of a shark and get a free ride! But one guy
was bitten in front of the camera and his calf was gone. And then we
have the majority of people who just fear the shark, period.

So how this majority of people want to approach the predator is up to
them, but I'd start by, a) TAMING THE BEAST (traffic calming
measures), and/or b) separating the predator from the prey (BIKE
LANES). And since some of you don't want to hear about the latter
(everyone has a phobia), then let's turn our attention to...
(all of these things are a package that comes with the revolution)
TRAFFIC CALMING
Traffic calming is a set of strategies used by urban planners and
traffic engineers which aim to slow down or reduce traffic, thereby
improving safety for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as improving
the environment for residents. Calming measures are common in Europe,
especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.

Traffic calming was traditionally justified on the grounds of
pedestrian safety and reduction of noise and local air pollution which
-snip-
Some additional traffic calming techniques that are often used are
speed humps, speed cushions, and speed tables. These devices vary in
size based on the desired speed. Humps, cushions and tables slow cars
to between 10 and 25 miles per hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

COMING SOON
http://atom.smasher.org/streetparty/...ution%21& l4=


Tom "Johnny Sunset" Sherman wrote:
All of that ignores the real problem that no one wants to deal with
because of the difficulties in implementing the solution.
The could be a decent life for everyone if the world's population was
2 to 2.5 Billion. At 6.5+ Billion or more, forget about it, and that
includes low enough traffic to make cycling reasonable almost everywhere.

A highly elitist analysis. (you volunteering to disappear??)

I have no children and no plans to have any. Good enough?

Let's go back to the real world and attainable solutions.

The world will implement population control, and there will be nothing
the foolish hominids can do about it.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Andrew Muzi wrote:
Ed, it hasn't killed me yet- even though most of my cohort is long
gone from other causes. Want an aderenalin buzz? Follow me between
buses in the morning, brushing elbows on both sides. Danger? Bah!
Sitting home bitching will kill you sooner.

Tom "Johnny Sunset" Sherman wrote:
Don't you find the commute much safer when UW is on break? The moronic
undergraduate pedestrians wandering out into the street and idiotic
motor scooter riders create considerable chaos.

you're right. A drunk corn-fed 300lb Sophomore on a Spree is a daunting
sight careening through a red light.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Aug 5, 3:24 pm, A Muzi wrote:
donquijote1954 who? wrote:
On Aug 4, 2:15 pm, "Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman"
wrote:
donquijote1954 who? wrote:
OK, with such a motivation (warning the novices against you), I ask
you (I hope there are many witnesses out there), WHAT THE HELL IS THE
SOLUTION, so we can go from 1% to, say, 30% ridership?...
Google "Hubbert's Peak.
Oil production peak... It's gonna be fun to be alive and watch the
couch potatos finally pedalling when things finally start going down
hill (it'll be up hill for them though). I don't see much prevention
in practice, particularly when bicycles are mostly banned from the
dangerous roads --banned by fear, that is.
"Tom "Johnny Sunset" Sherman" wrote
How about stopping all the fear-mongering about how dangerous cycling is
and the related promotion of h*lm*ts and segregated facilities? Chicken
Little was wrong about the sky falling, and you are wrong about the true
danger of cycling.
Edward Dolan wrote:
Cycling on highways with lots of traffic and no shoulders is extremely
dangerous. Even an idiot knows that much.

Ed, it hasn't killed me yet- even though most of my cohort is long gone
from other causes. Want an aderenalin buzz? Follow me between buses in
the morning, brushing elbows on both sides. Danger? Bah! Sitting home
bitching will kill you sooner.
--
Andrew Muziwww.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971-

For some people the option is STATIONARY BIKES. (And they come with
handlebars for upper body workout,)

On Aug 5, 3:28 pm, "Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman"
wrote:
Andrew Muzi wrote:
Ed, it hasn't killed me yet- even though most of my cohort is long gone
from other causes. Want an aderenalin buzz? Follow me between buses in
the morning, brushing elbows on both sides. Danger? Bah! Sitting home
bitching will kill you sooner.

Don't you find the commute much safer when UW is on break? The moronic
undergraduate pedestrians wandering out into the street and idiotic
motor scooter riders create considerable chaos.

The scooters are not that idiotic. They fill a void particularly when
riding a bike in traffic puts you at odds with cars.

Mine is parked outside.

On Aug 5, 4:26 pm, (Bill Z.) wrote:
"Just zis Guy, you know?" writes:

On 04 Aug 2007 17:07:43 -0700, (Bill Z.)
said in :

so you were a young, inexerpienced cyclist at one point and had
problems that cleared up when you had more experience, but for some
reason you attributed your former problems to bike lanes rather than
to your lack of experience.

What always amuses me about your posts, Bill, is that you make
comments like this without spotting the self-evident irony.

What's always amusing about you anti-bikelane fanatics is how you
act like a bull in a china shop whenever anyone doesn't disparage
bike lanes. :-)

See how Tome points out what happened as he became a more
experienced and skilful cyclist? He took to not using cycle
"facilities", just as many other experienced cyclists choose to
avoid them, and for the same reasons: they fix a problem which is
largely illusory (danger from same direction traffic) at the expense
of increasing a danger which absolutely is not (danger at junctions
and from opposing traffic).

Nope, he merely developed the skills needed to ride safely in traffic,
and then got some sort of anti-bike lane religion,

I don't think the believes held by the anti-lane crowd is a
religion... It's a more of a sect, luckily mostly confined to America,
and some copycats in the UK.

donquijote1954 wrote:
On Aug 5, 3:28 pm, "Tom \"Johnny Sunset\" Sherman"
wrote:
Andrew Muzi wrote:
Ed, it hasn't killed me yet- even though most of my cohort is long gone
from other causes. Want an aderenalin buzz? Follow me between buses in
the morning, brushing elbows on both sides. Danger? Bah! Sitting home
bitching will kill you sooner.
Don't you find the commute much safer when UW is on break? The moronic
undergraduate pedestrians wandering out into the street and idiotic
motor scooter riders create considerable chaos.

The scooters are not that idiotic. They fill a void particularly when
riding a bike in traffic puts you at odds with cars.

Mine is parked outside.

Note that the adjective "idiotic" modifies "riders", not "scooters".

Considering that motor scooters can travel the speed limit or more on
urban streets, and some can keep up with traffic on arterial roads, they
need to be operated the same way as motorcycles, not as bicycles.

However, in the area near Andrew's shop, it is not uncommon to find
students on scooters riding at considerable speed on the side walk,
across pedestrian only areas, running stop signs and stop lights, etc.

When climate allows, modern scooters (with low emission engines) are
more desirable than single occupant cars, since they use less fuel and
space.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

I guess the scooter ain't very safe either...

Zigzagging: Most Dangerous Driving

Don't ask me for a study that backs up such a statement, it's just
obvious. Every time you get on the road you see these wild vehicles
(usually SUVs and larger vehicles) zigzagging all around playing a
game of Russian Roulette --a game they always win since they are
bigger...

So there I was last night riding my scooter with my girlfriend
(sitting ducks, so to speak), taking the middle lane on a three lane
road, when a beat-up van with three terrorist rats* cut me off almost
to the point of making catastrophic contact (*forgive me my jungle
talk referring to the small time predators, unlike the big time
predators in SUVs).

WHY? Well, I know that if I had had a gun I would have emptied it in
his head and so feeding the ROAD RAGE ESCALATION, but I didn't and I
wouldn't have caught up with him anyway. So I was left to cope with my
rage and impotence, if only having the consolation to be alive. But
still that hasn't answered my question. WHY? I guess it may have do to
with the instinct in "Natural Born Killers,"** but there's some deeper
cause, one that points at the system that doesn't crack down on them,
and that simply fails to implement some basic RULES OF THE ROAD.

This dawned on me later: They were provoked into this reckless,
criminal driving (no excuses for that) by a road that was completely
blocked by a few cars, oblivious to that basic rule of "slow vehicles
keep to the right." And there's lies the problem: When there are no
rules of the road, then you get the Law of the Jungle...

** NATURAL BORN KILLERS, the movie

REVIEW
Why not kill them at birth, or even before
By Jacques COULARDEAU

This is Apocalypto in the all-American modern version. Our society
produces, be they born or not born, a whole fringe of killers that
absolutely know what is wrong or right, good or bad, but who do not
care a fig about it, even if at times they do not find any pleasure in
murdering. The film explores the destiny of a couple of two young
people who meet by accident but find in themselves so many common
alienations and frustrations based on about the same social, cultural
and personal environment : sexual abuse and violence from parents,
rejection from society, total lack of care and help in education that
is inexistant or social counselling that is just impotent. They end up
taking what they want by force since it is not provided to them free.
But the film goes a lot further. It analyzes the role of the media
that systematically sell paper and prime time advertising with this
showing of violence and with fake or unfake interviews of murderers
and other criminals. The lower, the better. The nastier, the more
profitable. The bloodier, the tastier. Then the film also shows that
the prison system is a system of incarceration and containment, in no
way of reform, education and improvement. These prisoners are there to
survive because no one dares execute them all. They are the
sacrificial victims of society that needs them to regenerate its lost
virginity, purity and morality. They are the sacrificial victims of a
god that has nothing to envy the Maya gods. This god is the god of
selfish greedy consumerism. Till it explodes. And the official end of
the film shows that such criminals can disappear in society forever,
and they are then living among us unknown and unseen. The alternative
ending shows that you need the intervention of an angel to execute
these criminals. The film preaches and advocates that these criminals
are natural born killers, hence that they will never be anything else,
hence that they have to be purely and simply executed as soon as they
are noticed and as fast as possible to avoid as many victims as
possible, why not at birth ? This vision of crime in our society is
criminal in itself because it produces the criminals concerned by
considering there is no other way, it is their fate and ours.


WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

COMING OUT OF THE JUNGLE
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote1

It seems like everyone knows or has a sixth sense that something very bad
has happened or is happening to this country. It is comming out in
aggressive ways.


"donquijote1954" wrote in message
ups.com...
I guess the scooter ain't very safe either...

Zigzagging: Most Dangerous Driving

Don't ask me for a study that backs up such a statement, it's just
obvious. Every time you get on the road you see these wild vehicles
(usually SUVs and larger vehicles) zigzagging all around playing a
game of Russian Roulette --a game they always win since they are
bigger...

So there I was last night riding my scooter with my girlfriend
(sitting ducks, so to speak), taking the middle lane on a three lane
road, when a beat-up van with three terrorist rats* cut me off almost
to the point of making catastrophic contact (*forgive me my jungle
talk referring to the small time predators, unlike the big time
predators in SUVs).

WHY? Well, I know that if I had had a gun I would have emptied it in
his head and so feeding the ROAD RAGE ESCALATION, but I didn't and I
wouldn't have caught up with him anyway. So I was left to cope with my
rage and impotence, if only having the consolation to be alive. But
still that hasn't answered my question. WHY? I guess it may have do to
with the instinct in "Natural Born Killers,"** but there's some deeper
cause, one that points at the system that doesn't crack down on them,
and that simply fails to implement some basic RULES OF THE ROAD.

This dawned on me later: They were provoked into this reckless,
criminal driving (no excuses for that) by a road that was completely
blocked by a few cars, oblivious to that basic rule of "slow vehicles
keep to the right." And there's lies the problem: When there are no
rules of the road, then you get the Law of the Jungle...

** NATURAL BORN KILLERS, the movie

REVIEW
Why not kill them at birth, or even before
By Jacques COULARDEAU

This is Apocalypto in the all-American modern version. Our society
produces, be they born or not born, a whole fringe of killers that
absolutely know what is wrong or right, good or bad, but who do not
care a fig about it, even if at times they do not find any pleasure in
murdering. The film explores the destiny of a couple of two young
people who meet by accident but find in themselves so many common
alienations and frustrations based on about the same social, cultural
and personal environment : sexual abuse and violence from parents,
rejection from society, total lack of care and help in education that
is inexistant or social counselling that is just impotent. They end up
taking what they want by force since it is not provided to them free.
But the film goes a lot further. It analyzes the role of the media
that systematically sell paper and prime time advertising with this
showing of violence and with fake or unfake interviews of murderers
and other criminals. The lower, the better. The nastier, the more
profitable. The bloodier, the tastier. Then the film also shows that
the prison system is a system of incarceration and containment, in no
way of reform, education and improvement. These prisoners are there to
survive because no one dares execute them all. They are the
sacrificial victims of society that needs them to regenerate its lost
virginity, purity and morality. They are the sacrificial victims of a
god that has nothing to envy the Maya gods. This god is the god of
selfish greedy consumerism. Till it explodes. And the official end of
the film shows that such criminals can disappear in society forever,
and they are then living among us unknown and unseen. The alternative
ending shows that you need the intervention of an angel to execute
these criminals. The film preaches and advocates that these criminals
are natural born killers, hence that they will never be anything else,
hence that they have to be purely and simply executed as soon as they
are noticed and as fast as possible to avoid as many victims as
possible, why not at birth ? This vision of crime in our society is
criminal in itself because it produces the criminals concerned by
considering there is no other way, it is their fate and ours.


WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote

COMING OUT OF THE JUNGLE
http://webspawner.com/users/donquijote1