Right of way? Have you heard of it? Ever read Driver Education Manual? One shouldn’t enter an intersection with no chance of clearing it. This blocks all vehicles and slows flow for you, too. Sometimes happens when a light ahead is red; offenders aren’t going anywhere, but insist on holding spot in queue by blocking cross streets or parking lot exits. Whenever arriving at any intersection with an intention of turning left, be prepared to come to a full stop. Aggravates others when you angle into oncoming traffic; all that does is increase your own wait. Anonymous inside cars, aggressive scofflaws forever trying to recover lost time due to poor planning incite road rage.
Motorists habitually hinder other motorists. Why hold exposed bicyclists to a higher standard? Toxic traffic codes in some states demand that bicyclists “never encumber cars” by going single file and sticking to right within a yard of road edge. Must mean when cyclists aren’t themselves impeded by parked cars and poorly kept shoulders. Furthermore, must call “road edge” the boundary of travel lane, since use of gore areas, gutters, and parking spaces is prohibited for all moving vehicles. Any attempt to regulate two-wheelers resembles pesticide use. As a motorist if you feel beset by bicyclists, blame poor infrastructure and state neglect of federal laws, why pedalers, acutely aware they’re vulnerable, might salmon and shoal despite incessant unnecessary warnings.
Licenses are issued to protect everyone from the brutal horsepower and crushing weight of vehicles. Did you ever drive distracted or tipsy? Find yourself in blind or slippery conditions? Bad things happen despite good intensions. Motorists may well be 100% at fault in any bike-car accident, but that doesn’t make them evildoers to be vilified and victimized by fines. Official causes for such collisions are disputed; hooking, overtaking and t-boning are how most occur, but always due to a lack of awareness. In 2 of 3 cases, poor visibility is directly responsible. Can’t establish laws on momentary lapses of reason.
The NHTSA monitors motoring and recommends policies. They claim traffic fatalities have declined, though drivers, legalized vehicles, and reasons for frustrations are up around 15%. “Since 1980, the greatest contributions to the improved conditions have come from law enforcement efforts, in particular, a focus on detecting and removing impaired drivers from the road and the development of general deterrence and effective public information and education (PI&E) programs.” As Labann always said, removing Neanderthals from mix reduces public’s costs and risks. Revoking or suspending licenses does help, but usually only happens after tragedies occur. Automatic 3-strikes-and-you’re-out suspension won’t be made law as long as Big Oil lobbies control Congress. They muscled aside safer alternatives in bikes, busses and trains, since cooperatively they could replace cars altogether.
From year 2000, number of accidents has increased and deaths leveled. Car accidents, 5 million annually, are almost always reported. About 1%, 50,000, result in fatalities. Statistics note 150,000 bike accidents, although twice that go unreported since they don’t result in injury or loss. Less than 0.5% are fatal. Because bikes roll, they absorb some impact in rear collisions, but not t-bones. Ten times as many pedestrians die where no crosswalks or sidewalks exist. Cross referencing official sources, you are from 10 to 25 times safer riding a bike than driving a car. Counterintuitive? Not really. Speed kills. Crumple zones, roll cages, and seat belts are mitigations, not preventions; along with insurance, they encourage risk taking and extenuate transgressions. Decriminalizing bicycling would remove cars, save lives, and silence rants as this. Fear mongering and purposeless regulation poisons potential.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 5, 2014
Look! Deplane.
Why do distractions tempt so reliably? You’ll watch anything on television, even a rerun with a midget on a bicycle pointing excitedly at visitors arriving by plane to his isolated South Seas Island resort. Or was it a golf cart? Sports appease the masses, divert resentment, and encourage belonging. Travel constitutes one distraction after another, pure immersion in misunderstood unfamiliarity, thus it’s just about the most attractive activity ever. One despises own surroundings, as palatial as they may be, due to desperate sameness, yet laments having left once drudgery inevitably commences. Conniving tacticians take advantage of both bored and homesick alike. But when legendary domestique George Hincapie points out 20 great places to spin, who wouldn’t look?
Drivers, so exasperated by their commutes in snarled traffic, endanger lives for extemporaneous email. Labeled DORCs (Distracted Operators Risk Casualties), a like named nonprofit asks for donations to gripe about texting, apparently unaware of DORCs (Disgruntled Off Road Cyclists), who regularly mountain bike away from such irresponsible motorists. Personally prefer pavement. No point whining when drivers scream past; they fret over text at next red light and trigger sequence, so cyclists can cruise right through. Anyway, as an transportation enabler, bikes are more like computers, smartphones or tablets than automobiles, jets, or trucks; bikes steadily flow information and surround riders with sensations, while motors blindly drag around passengers and stuff under a sheltering shell. Cyclists can leave road altogether for lawn or sidewalk, leisurely stop, and take a call or text without blocking traffic.
Crowds often fear, seldom embrace alternatives, wait for anyone else to make first move. Settlers followed explorers much later when safer. Therefore, ancient mundane sports persist as participatory recreation. So how did bicycling become the new golf? Ball mashers in droves are decamping courses, deplaning indefinitely, leaving carts, and opting for local jaunts that reveal resources and threats on their own fantasy island. Nationwide, during >500 million rounds 69 people died golfing in 2013, mostly when hit not by balls but lightning. By comparison, in 4.2 billion trips 726 cyclists died in 2012, a roughly equivalent fatality risk by time-consuming sessions. Costs are diverging; golfing fees have gotten too dear while bicycle prices decline. Watch for increasing knots of slow creepers and speedy pace-lines on back roads.
You don't need a group ride to go, but must lug own necessities, maintain bike, and prepare in advance. Going far and often enables riding solo all day. Without rainless warmth no wheedle works. Some cyclists say they won’t emerge until temperature in degrees exceeds their age in years, akin to golfers who aim to shoot their age in 18 holes, though more score their weight while they snack and wait on each tee. Sunday's 65° ride revealed too few to stir excitement or support their claim. Those obsessed say it never rains on courses or routes, but most agree it’s intolerable to pass through security at airports, so passenger departures have steadily declined since 2007, even if chance of dying consequently is 1:7,000,000.
Drivers, so exasperated by their commutes in snarled traffic, endanger lives for extemporaneous email. Labeled DORCs (Distracted Operators Risk Casualties), a like named nonprofit asks for donations to gripe about texting, apparently unaware of DORCs (Disgruntled Off Road Cyclists), who regularly mountain bike away from such irresponsible motorists. Personally prefer pavement. No point whining when drivers scream past; they fret over text at next red light and trigger sequence, so cyclists can cruise right through. Anyway, as an transportation enabler, bikes are more like computers, smartphones or tablets than automobiles, jets, or trucks; bikes steadily flow information and surround riders with sensations, while motors blindly drag around passengers and stuff under a sheltering shell. Cyclists can leave road altogether for lawn or sidewalk, leisurely stop, and take a call or text without blocking traffic.
Crowds often fear, seldom embrace alternatives, wait for anyone else to make first move. Settlers followed explorers much later when safer. Therefore, ancient mundane sports persist as participatory recreation. So how did bicycling become the new golf? Ball mashers in droves are decamping courses, deplaning indefinitely, leaving carts, and opting for local jaunts that reveal resources and threats on their own fantasy island. Nationwide, during >500 million rounds 69 people died golfing in 2013, mostly when hit not by balls but lightning. By comparison, in 4.2 billion trips 726 cyclists died in 2012, a roughly equivalent fatality risk by time-consuming sessions. Costs are diverging; golfing fees have gotten too dear while bicycle prices decline. Watch for increasing knots of slow creepers and speedy pace-lines on back roads.
You don't need a group ride to go, but must lug own necessities, maintain bike, and prepare in advance. Going far and often enables riding solo all day. Without rainless warmth no wheedle works. Some cyclists say they won’t emerge until temperature in degrees exceeds their age in years, akin to golfers who aim to shoot their age in 18 holes, though more score their weight while they snack and wait on each tee. Sunday's 65° ride revealed too few to stir excitement or support their claim. Those obsessed say it never rains on courses or routes, but most agree it’s intolerable to pass through security at airports, so passenger departures have steadily declined since 2007, even if chance of dying consequently is 1:7,000,000.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Taxon Diaphane
Certain writings don’t fit well into blog format, i. e., full length books, intense essays, nonfiction narratives, some novellas. Blog readers tolerate 3 paragraphs. Anything longer needs a seamstress to ease stress in its seams, that is, requires edit encapsulation, or wears out its welcome right away. A plethora of words seems as worthless as leaves in a swale, spontaneously transitions from confidently natural to dangerously nugatory, and ushers sand down proverbial hourglass. The elegance of poetry partly derives from its occupying very little space and saying nothing essential to survival. So how do you distribute a dreadful expedition into bad taste? Helps to sort works among appropriate sites.
Labann opened an account on Wattpad Mobile and posted 2 fairly recent, wildly experimental pieces. One is an essay entered into an international competition that dared to question the validity of facts in an information age. Other is a nonfiction adventure from 50 years ago with a hard sell based on bugs, drugs, guns, roads, rock&roll, sex and sorrow. Both sound outrageous when so said. Won’t bemoan being able to read on a smartphone. Might consider posting chapters from book if readers give them a look.
World was once quite different. Trees lined narrow lanes before electrical lines mutilated them. Fruiting and ornamental varieties now lack former vigor. Honeysuckle and rambling roses no longer lovingly smother fences. On humid nights diaphanes flickered as they flew lazily around neighborhood shrubbery. Lampyrinae, the huge subfamily to which they belong, was historically used as a garbage taxon to collect any beetle that glows despite diverse morphology. None thrive where defoliation and pollution devastate. Cyclists notice but not motorists except to complain of protein splats on their windshields. Children jailed these so called fireflies in jars before drivers, pesticides and pets decimated. A bug you can see through shows ecological loss through its absence. Nature's May Day warnings tax memory and wax subtle.
Before technology those without sheer access would celebrate wonderful words artfully chosen, but only when confined where they could be conveniently controlled, such as closed forums, dusty libraries, or exclusive museums, likewise fearsome personalities and whatever they produced. All Archimedes asked for was a place to stand to leverage earth in space. Nowadays, media clog emanates from literary smog of wannabes agog. An idea you share might not be accepted and won’t pay for what you need today. Great authors can’t expect their effort to have any effect, even those that comfort. Unsupported, they too will disappear like diaphanes.
Labann opened an account on Wattpad Mobile and posted 2 fairly recent, wildly experimental pieces. One is an essay entered into an international competition that dared to question the validity of facts in an information age. Other is a nonfiction adventure from 50 years ago with a hard sell based on bugs, drugs, guns, roads, rock&roll, sex and sorrow. Both sound outrageous when so said. Won’t bemoan being able to read on a smartphone. Might consider posting chapters from book if readers give them a look.
World was once quite different. Trees lined narrow lanes before electrical lines mutilated them. Fruiting and ornamental varieties now lack former vigor. Honeysuckle and rambling roses no longer lovingly smother fences. On humid nights diaphanes flickered as they flew lazily around neighborhood shrubbery. Lampyrinae, the huge subfamily to which they belong, was historically used as a garbage taxon to collect any beetle that glows despite diverse morphology. None thrive where defoliation and pollution devastate. Cyclists notice but not motorists except to complain of protein splats on their windshields. Children jailed these so called fireflies in jars before drivers, pesticides and pets decimated. A bug you can see through shows ecological loss through its absence. Nature's May Day warnings tax memory and wax subtle.
Before technology those without sheer access would celebrate wonderful words artfully chosen, but only when confined where they could be conveniently controlled, such as closed forums, dusty libraries, or exclusive museums, likewise fearsome personalities and whatever they produced. All Archimedes asked for was a place to stand to leverage earth in space. Nowadays, media clog emanates from literary smog of wannabes agog. An idea you share might not be accepted and won’t pay for what you need today. Great authors can’t expect their effort to have any effect, even those that comfort. Unsupported, they too will disappear like diaphanes.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Schemes to Maintain
Leave it to The Atlantic to exaggerate the horror: Cyclists riding on sidewalks! Rather than being a problem, it attests to bad infrastructure and dereliction of duty by responsible DOT. Under certain conditions it’s perfectly legal. Ambiguity rules elsewhere, only prohibited in a few states. Federal policies already require equal infrastructure for biking, hiking and motoring. Highways cannot bar cyclists from crossing at reasonable intervals including bridges or riding parallel. Biking routes can’t stop any more than motoring thoroughfares. Boulevards must have shoulders into which drivers can pull over in an emergency, if only to take a cell call or text. Gore areas and shoulders are all cyclists need to coexist with motorists on busy roads, and you need nothing on side streets other than smooth, swept pavement. Formal bike lanes or paths are often unnecessary except where conditions force too much traffic into too little space, but painted stripes are cheap and easy.
Registered drivers complain that they pay for roads and so deserve to drive unencumbered. Nonsense. First, they don’t pay alone: Revenue gets collected from many sources including taxes on $6 billion in bicycle sales every year. Second, cyclists and walkers hardly ever slow motorists unless driving illegally in bike lanes, gutters, or on sidewalks. Third, other/unlicensed drivers threaten everyone, not unmotorized, vulnerable users. If frustrated they are in your way, blame your DOT for not accommodating them separately. Nobody is disrespected and inconvenienced more than cyclists. The Atlantic’s agenda doesn’t address worse hazards. Why don’t they report on bus, SUV or tractor trailer abuse? Commerce declines upon bad news. Schemers construe their own taboos.
Roads are empty most of the time. You can monitor this for yourself by sitting attentively and ticking off passing vehicles. Experts calculate the collective footprint of 214 million cars in America at 760 square miles, smaller than Rhode Island. Somewhat less than two hundred million registered motorists drive on average only 1.7 hours/day. Nation’s 4 million miles of roadways combined with parking spaces occupy an area estimated at 61,000 square miles, bigger than 30 of 50 states including Florida or Georgia, 3/4 the size of all farmed land, a wide swath that would wrap Earth’s equator 156 times. So, moving vehicles take up <1.1% of pavement, leaving 98.9% of roads empty 22.3 hours per day. Nation allots each driver 80 square miles of paved space. Nevertheless, idiots still collide >5 million times per year. Yet many drive their entire lives without the least mishap. Some of this can be explained by everyone wanting to commute through congested areas at the same time. But the more lonesome a road, the more ridiculous the chances drivers will take. Every long straightaway has a suicide curve at which scores have already died without any remediation or even signs. Perhaps they should make such situations safer by providing alternatives. Only <1% of budget goes to bicycling and >99% to motoring with a focus on flowing ever more cars through areas that exclude cycling. This is illegal and lacks any balance whatever. Cyclists consider such points every time they take to roads.
Facts made available on Internet is now so numerous you wonder if anyone can make sense of them. Depends greatly upon what question you want answered. If official sources can deceive and pervert with statistics, why can’t Labann entertain and expose follies with them? Situations that kill sustain certain industries, coffin makers, emergency rooms, funeral parlors, insurance companies. Commerce flows and death spirals on nation’s roadways, while cyclists spin and take it all in. Rants majority ignores echo hollowly.
Roads are empty most of the time. You can monitor this for yourself by sitting attentively and ticking off passing vehicles. Experts calculate the collective footprint of 214 million cars in America at 760 square miles, smaller than Rhode Island. Somewhat less than two hundred million registered motorists drive on average only 1.7 hours/day. Nation’s 4 million miles of roadways combined with parking spaces occupy an area estimated at 61,000 square miles, bigger than 30 of 50 states including Florida or Georgia, 3/4 the size of all farmed land, a wide swath that would wrap Earth’s equator 156 times. So, moving vehicles take up <1.1% of pavement, leaving 98.9% of roads empty 22.3 hours per day. Nation allots each driver 80 square miles of paved space. Nevertheless, idiots still collide >5 million times per year. Yet many drive their entire lives without the least mishap. Some of this can be explained by everyone wanting to commute through congested areas at the same time. But the more lonesome a road, the more ridiculous the chances drivers will take. Every long straightaway has a suicide curve at which scores have already died without any remediation or even signs. Perhaps they should make such situations safer by providing alternatives. Only <1% of budget goes to bicycling and >99% to motoring with a focus on flowing ever more cars through areas that exclude cycling. This is illegal and lacks any balance whatever. Cyclists consider such points every time they take to roads.
Facts made available on Internet is now so numerous you wonder if anyone can make sense of them. Depends greatly upon what question you want answered. If official sources can deceive and pervert with statistics, why can’t Labann entertain and expose follies with them? Situations that kill sustain certain industries, coffin makers, emergency rooms, funeral parlors, insurance companies. Commerce flows and death spirals on nation’s roadways, while cyclists spin and take it all in. Rants majority ignores echo hollowly.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Efflux Riparian
What attracts humans to water? Endless thirst? Despite floods, people pay a premium to live alongside bays, coves, estuaries, lakes, ponds, or rivers, sometimes want burial at sea. Frequent fog and rain cut any sense of posh riparian space. During storms a rising sea is an unseen menace. Droplets of water exhibit cohesion; they are chemically designed to chase and cling. Humans flock and gang together, or insist, even stalk, whenever ignored. Tears sting with salt. Also like seawater, blood dissolves, foams, pulses, perhaps stains, and rushes to intermingle. A body wants to be inside another body, back in a warm, wet sack. At 7 weeks embryos of fish and humans appear identical.
Aquatic craniates are man’s earliest ancestors, evolutionarily speaking, and everybody still has structures related to fins and gills. So, a woman does need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, after all, which is to say a partner for species propagation if not traditional monogamy.
In contemporary Russia, Pussy Riot rejects patriarchy and pretty much has had it with Putin’s repressive politics. Barely adults, they’ve already spent years incarcerated for their dissent, as portrayed in recently screened HBO documentary, A Punk Prayer, directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. Not confined to Eastern Europe, female issues peaked in 2013, a year of gender controversy. Conservative policies that exclusively cater to state religions endlessly result in tentacles of inequality. Yet without prayer and respect world would definitely be poorer, perhaps unlivable. Studies in America report that females get 75-93% as much as males for same jobs. Their view to the top is clear through a prohibitive glass ceiling. Why let an eroding undercurrent poison business, governance and interpersonal relations? Why ignore 50% of the population? Why not listen instead and proactively act? After effluxion over time, any social contract expires.
Routes cyclists take are not quite as fluid, more like taffy; you squish to hurry up, stretch to get in more miles. Firmament will always be fiction. Nothing lasts. Solid ground crumbles, sometimes turns into rushing mud. As a book, Bike&Chain likewise runs all over the place, torn in a thousand directions. Yet there’s an arc and center, even denouement, if no plot or purpose. Who isn’t pushed and tugged all over these days? Writers only mirror events, milieu, what’s happening. You weren’t born onto one side of issues promulgated only to exploit you. Matriarchy or patriarchy? Why not equality? Humanity moves forward united, will fall divided, wouldn’t survive without diversity. Growth and improvement can distance self from persistent deceptions and transitory illusions. To get there you must swim in facts within a school surrounded by sharks, not remain stuck on a shore of suppositions. This was B&C’s departure from fiction.
Agreed, novels have enormous influence, yet legitimize violence, whitewash root causes, and worsen insanity. Criminals and terrorists are inspired by novelists who write details that can be used to harm and maim. Fiction tends to fit into genres, tired plots with only names and places changed, and worship conflict. Instead, life itself resembles long stretches of boredom punctuated by rebellious bursts against inhuman oligarchs, not a scenario that fits neatly into a derivative genre. Devoid of any entertainment distractions, B&C tried to fathom the emotional bottom of interpersonal ethics. Is that even possible? Feel readers would rather be fishing for themselves than getting along by sharing.
In contemporary Russia, Pussy Riot rejects patriarchy and pretty much has had it with Putin’s repressive politics. Barely adults, they’ve already spent years incarcerated for their dissent, as portrayed in recently screened HBO documentary, A Punk Prayer, directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. Not confined to Eastern Europe, female issues peaked in 2013, a year of gender controversy. Conservative policies that exclusively cater to state religions endlessly result in tentacles of inequality. Yet without prayer and respect world would definitely be poorer, perhaps unlivable. Studies in America report that females get 75-93% as much as males for same jobs. Their view to the top is clear through a prohibitive glass ceiling. Why let an eroding undercurrent poison business, governance and interpersonal relations? Why ignore 50% of the population? Why not listen instead and proactively act? After effluxion over time, any social contract expires.
Routes cyclists take are not quite as fluid, more like taffy; you squish to hurry up, stretch to get in more miles. Firmament will always be fiction. Nothing lasts. Solid ground crumbles, sometimes turns into rushing mud. As a book, Bike&Chain likewise runs all over the place, torn in a thousand directions. Yet there’s an arc and center, even denouement, if no plot or purpose. Who isn’t pushed and tugged all over these days? Writers only mirror events, milieu, what’s happening. You weren’t born onto one side of issues promulgated only to exploit you. Matriarchy or patriarchy? Why not equality? Humanity moves forward united, will fall divided, wouldn’t survive without diversity. Growth and improvement can distance self from persistent deceptions and transitory illusions. To get there you must swim in facts within a school surrounded by sharks, not remain stuck on a shore of suppositions. This was B&C’s departure from fiction.
Agreed, novels have enormous influence, yet legitimize violence, whitewash root causes, and worsen insanity. Criminals and terrorists are inspired by novelists who write details that can be used to harm and maim. Fiction tends to fit into genres, tired plots with only names and places changed, and worship conflict. Instead, life itself resembles long stretches of boredom punctuated by rebellious bursts against inhuman oligarchs, not a scenario that fits neatly into a derivative genre. Devoid of any entertainment distractions, B&C tried to fathom the emotional bottom of interpersonal ethics. Is that even possible? Feel readers would rather be fishing for themselves than getting along by sharing.
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