Was a bad week for those named Armstrong. The first human ever to step foot on extraterrestrial soil dies, and Texas Johnny gives up fight to retain claim to another unprecedented accomplishment, winning 7 Tour de Frances.
Americans paid respect to quintessential spaceman Neil Armstrong. During the Summer of Love, 1969, recall listening alone but attentively to staticky radio halfway through night shift as this historic event remarkably unfolded. Must have been among the few who didn't catch the television broadcast witnessed live by hundreds of millions. You lose so much of life at work; without you important stuff occurs, kids grow up, and what good world has to offer goes to someone else. Every once in a while, though, an indelible memory is made on the job. Neil's was special beyond measure, what reporters dubbed "the right stuff", where fabulous preparedness seizes golden opportunity. All work should be so rewarding, but most resembles mind numbing drudgery or soul strangling slavery. These days budget conscious congressmen question billions spent exploring space, without which there'd be no personal computers (shrunk to fit aboard spacecraft) or thousands of other innovations that needed an extraordinary problem to solve. Explorations provide answers but raise more questions. Once Americans had hubris and stamina to tackle extreme challenges, but lately seem incapable of sensible enthusiasm or simple logic. Due to effective propaganda everyone became your enemy except billionaire exploiters who really do suck life from rest of world.
What can you say about Lance Armstrong? Arrogant? Duplicitous? Incredible? Unlike trickle down conservatives who pretend, he singlehandedly created thousands of jobs among bicycle component manufacturers serving wannabe racers. By giving up his fight against USADA's witch hunt, he finally showed real class. These governing bodies who suddenly get scruples shouldn't be allowed to retrospectively enforce rules. Everyone competing years ago took something to get an edge. From alcohol to anabolic steroids, substance abuse has been rampant in cycling since its inception. So Lance is banned from racing forever. Why should he care? Now he's just like anyone who rides to ride. He can still wear yellow, just like Labann. Memories and scars mean more than medals and trophies to those who've been there and done that. Any notion you are better because you pedal faster than others can only be described as delusional and ridiculous. Just as car racers' best seems a snail's pace compared to orbiting space debris, bicyclists will always be outdone by own contempt for cooperation or someone else who's faster or jealous.
Labor and leisure are intertwined in cycling, as much a form of transportation as a holiday recreation. If motoring weakens resolve, maybe pedaling restores strength lost to luxury.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Bullish Campaign
Boxers on bicycles? No candidates slugging it out, as if jobless citizens overwhelmed by cash worries are supposed to care about deliberate ruses covered in broad strokes by dilettantes. Bullish confidence? Not quite: bull and con buoying up a bull market bound to crash as soon as votes are counted. Not only has Labann campaigned repeatedly door to door but carefully considered alternatives to this inefficient and inequitable process of so-called civic duty.
Anyone who says they want to serve public and sit through mind-numbing legislative sessions is either a liar or a madman. Candidates don't fork over millions of their own money for a fraction of that in salary and privilege of serving. Power is the planet's most expensive and potent aphrodisiac. Metrosexuals and narcissists gravitate to this exclusive club to serve self. Less than a million buys a prestigious college degree and string of appending abbreviations; only a few can afford President, Senator or Supreme Court Justice before their names. Not born into royalty? Even queens borrow from billionaires and live on allowances. No living ex-president pays taxes, just one of the many perks of having occupied space and pretended to wield power, and you almost never hear of Congressmen or their family members killed on front lines.
Most people don't want to be asked their opinions, would prefer that someone be assigned roles or fired when they fail, yet wind up standing in line at some dingy polling place for a chance to choose between stand-ins for morality or practicality. Nobody you elect will improve upon your situation, since those who run world permit only those to run or stay in office whose policies align with their schemes. Nixon wrongly assumed he was in charge. Anyone opposed becomes collateral damage in a bigger battle among bankers, insurance companies, multinational corporations, and oil sheiks, each of whom bends policies in their favor. Laws don't apply to them; responsibility for their crimes, injustices and taxes have been shifted onto everyone else including you.
What can you do? Boycotts don't work; half of eligible voters often don't show, which is the only way some candidates get elected. Resign yourself as a victim? You need not participate. You're only a threat when you want something: decent housing, elected office, fair pay for work, promises from candidates, or some say in how you're treated. Teen pranks and prayers, like Pussy Riot's protest against Putin delivered irreverently in Moscow's cathedral, might put you in prison, too, which is what happens when repression goes unchallenged. Actions create examples to follow and role models to emulate. Milk toast efforts are abided suspiciously but accomplish little. In London, the have The Kindness Offensive, Polyanna action to ease pain the ridiculously rich cause.
Remember, there is no lack of wealth, only unequal distribution. Your dolor remains a principal profit center to feed off and funnel funds from. Each billionaire means 1,000 fewer millionaires or more unfortunates below poverty line. Eventually money loses meaning and value. Big fish devour small fry; eventually all fish die. Sharing resources justly and wisely fosters relationships and founds organizations.
Bike&Chain has whole chapters directed at charities and politics, yet very little written will be read, never mind solve problems. Riding a bike opens eyes to individual torment and nature's despoilment unless you inject steroids and wear blinders.
Anyone who says they want to serve public and sit through mind-numbing legislative sessions is either a liar or a madman. Candidates don't fork over millions of their own money for a fraction of that in salary and privilege of serving. Power is the planet's most expensive and potent aphrodisiac. Metrosexuals and narcissists gravitate to this exclusive club to serve self. Less than a million buys a prestigious college degree and string of appending abbreviations; only a few can afford President, Senator or Supreme Court Justice before their names. Not born into royalty? Even queens borrow from billionaires and live on allowances. No living ex-president pays taxes, just one of the many perks of having occupied space and pretended to wield power, and you almost never hear of Congressmen or their family members killed on front lines.
Most people don't want to be asked their opinions, would prefer that someone be assigned roles or fired when they fail, yet wind up standing in line at some dingy polling place for a chance to choose between stand-ins for morality or practicality. Nobody you elect will improve upon your situation, since those who run world permit only those to run or stay in office whose policies align with their schemes. Nixon wrongly assumed he was in charge. Anyone opposed becomes collateral damage in a bigger battle among bankers, insurance companies, multinational corporations, and oil sheiks, each of whom bends policies in their favor. Laws don't apply to them; responsibility for their crimes, injustices and taxes have been shifted onto everyone else including you.
What can you do? Boycotts don't work; half of eligible voters often don't show, which is the only way some candidates get elected. Resign yourself as a victim? You need not participate. You're only a threat when you want something: decent housing, elected office, fair pay for work, promises from candidates, or some say in how you're treated. Teen pranks and prayers, like Pussy Riot's protest against Putin delivered irreverently in Moscow's cathedral, might put you in prison, too, which is what happens when repression goes unchallenged. Actions create examples to follow and role models to emulate. Milk toast efforts are abided suspiciously but accomplish little. In London, the have The Kindness Offensive, Polyanna action to ease pain the ridiculously rich cause.
Remember, there is no lack of wealth, only unequal distribution. Your dolor remains a principal profit center to feed off and funnel funds from. Each billionaire means 1,000 fewer millionaires or more unfortunates below poverty line. Eventually money loses meaning and value. Big fish devour small fry; eventually all fish die. Sharing resources justly and wisely fosters relationships and founds organizations.
Bike&Chain has whole chapters directed at charities and politics, yet very little written will be read, never mind solve problems. Riding a bike opens eyes to individual torment and nature's despoilment unless you inject steroids and wear blinders.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Lost Breath Chasing
Book's Appendix covers many cultural artifacts, but none so intently as popular music. Many recording artists are or were avid cyclists. Cream's highly regarded 1967 album Disraeli Gears even got it's name when band's equipment manager made title malapropism when talking about shift components of Eric Clapton's bicycle. In Björk's award winning performance in Dancer in the Dark, her character Selma rides a bike as Björk does in real life. Check out this Icelandic chanteuse singing about evolution from oceans at the 2004 Olympics, like Cream's "Aphrodite on a crimson shell", more a pearl, spreading her billowing skirt over entire infield where salty sweat sweetens striving for gold, reconsidered for 2012 London games, at which Dame Evelyn Glennie, former Björk collaborator, presided percussively. Sirens of legend were probably barking seals, but spend any time at all listening to Björk, and you get what breath "carving deep blue ripples in the tissue of your mind" means, and why Ulysses desperately wanted to take goddess back to "the hard land of the Winter". Back when she fronted Sugarcubes, Björk sang of riding a bike to witness a "Motorcrash". Threads are interwoven into reality's fabric; whether causally or coincidentally, current or mythic, does it matter?
Kraftwerk's Ralf Hütter pinpoints cycling's compositional attraction: the rhythmic cadence of breathing, heart pounding, and pedaling. Kraftwerk based much of its musical electronica including "Aerodynamic", "Man Machine", and several Tour de France related tracks on them. After more than a century, cycling remains an important Olympic sport. Ancient Phrygian dancers during performances raised feet (arsis) and treaded emphatically (thesis), tapping out poetic meter, as previously mentioned, but pedaling's 6/2 time is an odd, unthreatening tempo rarely applied outside classical compositions, and then only for certain halting measures.
What then makes music itself so appealing? Ditties, familiar beats marching through moments, and memorable melodies celebrate life's passages or comfort amidst chaos. Songs, no matter how challenging, are usually forgettably trivial and mercifully short. They can be ignored, relegated to background, tolerated, or turned off. Sung words smooth hostile edges of screamed messages. Radio hosts on self serving missions have irritating voices. Singing doesn't serve their purpose, to divert attention from criminals, enrage strangers, rearrange perceptions, and satisfy commercial and privileged sponsors. Music provides balance and balm for responsible sores where no escape exists.
Serves conservatives right to be picked upon unmercifully, since that's just what they do themselves: objectify prejudiciously. Anybody who has an opinion other than theirs is a "liberal". Leaves little room for anything from centrist to extremist which includes such varied viewpoints as anarchist, communist, fundamentalist, independent, majority of voters, moonbat, pagan, spiritualist, teabagger, wingnut and zealot. Conservative thought boils down to, "Let me do whatever I want, but you do what I tell you to," and can be characterized as ignorantly childish or inhumanely patriarchal. Panting reactionaries can't keep pace with change, don't realize they need not. You can be anything and espouse it, or you can observe something to examine it; both are legitimate. Latter provides objectivity, other lives passionately. Yet there's nothing so contagious as enthusiasm. Analysis based on facts bores. There's no book so dusty and ignored than irrelevant nonfiction, unless it's old poetry.
When people say they express TRUTH, they lay some religious or speculative opinion on you, not verifiable facts. Yet facts can be equally foolish. Researchers constantly revise history and science by discovering evidence and exposing lies. Once you die, hopefully you'll find answers, maybe the law of gravity repealed; it never was much of a friend in life, making hills harder to climb and stuff fall into cracks where it can't be retrieved. With metaphysics you can't perform repeatable experiments or prove anything. Neither can you positively verify events or testimonies. Despite forensic labs, murders go unsolved daily. Rationalists erect theoretical houses of cards knocked down by breeze of anyone breathing heavily or pedaling by.
Kraftwerk's Ralf Hütter pinpoints cycling's compositional attraction: the rhythmic cadence of breathing, heart pounding, and pedaling. Kraftwerk based much of its musical electronica including "Aerodynamic", "Man Machine", and several Tour de France related tracks on them. After more than a century, cycling remains an important Olympic sport. Ancient Phrygian dancers during performances raised feet (arsis) and treaded emphatically (thesis), tapping out poetic meter, as previously mentioned, but pedaling's 6/2 time is an odd, unthreatening tempo rarely applied outside classical compositions, and then only for certain halting measures.
What then makes music itself so appealing? Ditties, familiar beats marching through moments, and memorable melodies celebrate life's passages or comfort amidst chaos. Songs, no matter how challenging, are usually forgettably trivial and mercifully short. They can be ignored, relegated to background, tolerated, or turned off. Sung words smooth hostile edges of screamed messages. Radio hosts on self serving missions have irritating voices. Singing doesn't serve their purpose, to divert attention from criminals, enrage strangers, rearrange perceptions, and satisfy commercial and privileged sponsors. Music provides balance and balm for responsible sores where no escape exists.
Serves conservatives right to be picked upon unmercifully, since that's just what they do themselves: objectify prejudiciously. Anybody who has an opinion other than theirs is a "liberal". Leaves little room for anything from centrist to extremist which includes such varied viewpoints as anarchist, communist, fundamentalist, independent, majority of voters, moonbat, pagan, spiritualist, teabagger, wingnut and zealot. Conservative thought boils down to, "Let me do whatever I want, but you do what I tell you to," and can be characterized as ignorantly childish or inhumanely patriarchal. Panting reactionaries can't keep pace with change, don't realize they need not. You can be anything and espouse it, or you can observe something to examine it; both are legitimate. Latter provides objectivity, other lives passionately. Yet there's nothing so contagious as enthusiasm. Analysis based on facts bores. There's no book so dusty and ignored than irrelevant nonfiction, unless it's old poetry.
When people say they express TRUTH, they lay some religious or speculative opinion on you, not verifiable facts. Yet facts can be equally foolish. Researchers constantly revise history and science by discovering evidence and exposing lies. Once you die, hopefully you'll find answers, maybe the law of gravity repealed; it never was much of a friend in life, making hills harder to climb and stuff fall into cracks where it can't be retrieved. With metaphysics you can't perform repeatable experiments or prove anything. Neither can you positively verify events or testimonies. Despite forensic labs, murders go unsolved daily. Rationalists erect theoretical houses of cards knocked down by breeze of anyone breathing heavily or pedaling by.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Bitten Tongue
Working in a vacuum is unhealthy. Errors creep in, go unnoticed, threaten truth. Challenged on a public forum, had to revise some figures cited, because billions spent over time unbelievably became trillions when you skip stating decade instead of year. Still, since 2000, USDOT did spend about $1 trillion dollars. If a dollar was a mile, that would be 10,000 astronomical units, 5,000 roundtrips to Sun, more than all miles of paved roads on Earth. You’d think a few hundred million meanwhile spent on bike paths and lane stripes would have cut costs and improved lives. How do you assess this impact? Did driven miles abate? Those “tons of accidents” never came to pass that naysayers predicted because more are bicycling. In fact, crash fatalities are falling. The more who use bikes instead of inherently dangerous cars, the fewer accidents occur, and less they must spend on potholes. Then again, economic recession would similarly impact cuts with fewer commuting to work, less elective trips, and so forth. Attempts to isolate causes and effects fail. Everything is inextricably intertwined, whence “The Butterfly Effect”, the postulate not video in which Ashton Kutcher dismounts off back of a fixie which continues like an arrow into a bike rack.
Have never heard of Poincaré Recurrence applied to vehicular traffic, but using chaos theory would be perfectly logical. Start point and what happens downstream affect conditions later. Traffic flow is randomly affected by building construction, commute times, recurring festivals, road resurfacing, transportation hubs, urban planning, and whatnot. If recession continues, as bridges collapse and highways close, traffic will retreat from multilane gridlock to something resembling local lanes of yesteryear. Engineers don’t study philosophical theories, even ones a century old. People retreat into silos of thinking, because knowing everything in even the narrowest of disciplines is practically impossible. Individual memories fade; progress tosses out historical reasons. Civilization depends upon countless collaborations continually operating upon consensus. Lawyers define a rule, practitioners comply, regulators monitor, supreme court calls it legal or strikes it down thereby completing circle and creating need for always reevaluating how and what you do.
Who can claim to know everything? Whatever you read is wrong. Knowing nothing is closer to reality. Facing unexpected challenges and surviving is the only talent that matters. Being an oracle only means realigning minds to truths before them. Each statement can be judged by its effect. When people instantly respond, it touches upon whatever they are already thinking, but who cares? Brilliant ideas or works sometimes take decades to radiate; by then, everyone accepts them as commonplace or commonsense. Giving up after impatiently waiting is way too easy. “Not doing that anymore,” is today’s epidemic, since everyone expects quality and no one want to provide anything resembling it. Excellent beats mediocre, but mediocre kicks incompetent’s ass.
Have never heard of Poincaré Recurrence applied to vehicular traffic, but using chaos theory would be perfectly logical. Start point and what happens downstream affect conditions later. Traffic flow is randomly affected by building construction, commute times, recurring festivals, road resurfacing, transportation hubs, urban planning, and whatnot. If recession continues, as bridges collapse and highways close, traffic will retreat from multilane gridlock to something resembling local lanes of yesteryear. Engineers don’t study philosophical theories, even ones a century old. People retreat into silos of thinking, because knowing everything in even the narrowest of disciplines is practically impossible. Individual memories fade; progress tosses out historical reasons. Civilization depends upon countless collaborations continually operating upon consensus. Lawyers define a rule, practitioners comply, regulators monitor, supreme court calls it legal or strikes it down thereby completing circle and creating need for always reevaluating how and what you do.
Who can claim to know everything? Whatever you read is wrong. Knowing nothing is closer to reality. Facing unexpected challenges and surviving is the only talent that matters. Being an oracle only means realigning minds to truths before them. Each statement can be judged by its effect. When people instantly respond, it touches upon whatever they are already thinking, but who cares? Brilliant ideas or works sometimes take decades to radiate; by then, everyone accepts them as commonplace or commonsense. Giving up after impatiently waiting is way too easy. “Not doing that anymore,” is today’s epidemic, since everyone expects quality and no one want to provide anything resembling it. Excellent beats mediocre, but mediocre kicks incompetent’s ass.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Books Bile Green
“It’s not that easy being green,” famously sang Kermit the Frog. Henson had childhood self acceptance in mind, but these days everyone demands that you be GREEN, by which they mean proving reverence for nature and sustainable practices. Webecoist gives a crash course, but seems to forget natives were excellent examples of ecological stewardship ignored by grasping settlers with their Puritanical contempt for chaos and downtime. Previously mentioned a series of stamps, each of which urge you to reduce your environmental footprint; new “pedal, pedal, pedal” stamps (below) show adult racer, MTBer, teen and toddler forever cycling. USPS’s own losses of late stem from public’s electronic efficiency eschewing delivery.
Meanwhile, worst offenders, banks and multinational corporations, block any policy that might dent unprecedented earnings. As a result you give up meager comforts and shrink into nothing but a source of profits so rich get richer quicker and justify own wanton waste. In lockstep, Edward Conard’s “nonfiction” bestseller Unintended Consequences contends that labor can be sourced at $1/hour somewhere so isn’t worth more here. He neglects to mention that CEOs are ridiculously compensated, thousands of times beyond their contributions. Bootlicking delusions aren’t worth the day’s labor this despotic philippic costs. Economies only thrive within distributive justice.
Rivendell Bicycle Works owner Grant Petersen just put out a cranky, lanky title, Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike (Workman, 2012, 256 pp.) chock full of bad advice in a misguided attempt to demystify such simple concepts as dressing comfortably in cycling apparel, extending distances through equipment choices, and having fun on what is, after all, a torture apparatus. Cycling curmudgeon Petersen doesn’t mention that other countries weren’t built around motoring as was USA. Americans had to adapt to hilly long commutes away from city centers. Unless prepared to continuously relocate within walking distances of every new trendy employer, you’d do well to try whatever makes cycling work for you, Petersen’s options included. Racing may be a trap not supported by Rivendell designs, but streamlining a 4 hour bike commute can unlock cage of automotive slavery.
Not to be outdone, New York “Bike Snob” blogger Eben Weiss has another compilation, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence (Chronicle Books, 2012, 240 pp.). Bilious books recounting bicyclist errors rankle. How about motorists? There just isn’t any comparison; nobody dies if run down by a rider.
One dimensional people gravitate to some topic and spend rest of their lives stuck on it as if psychic flypaper. Literature appears to have same root as litter, which is what most pages resemble. Motoring ought to be left to certified bus and truck drivers, who, it seems, are the most malevolent and negligent drivers, respectively, behind wheels of deadliest vehicles.
Rivendell Bicycle Works owner Grant Petersen just put out a cranky, lanky title, Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike (Workman, 2012, 256 pp.) chock full of bad advice in a misguided attempt to demystify such simple concepts as dressing comfortably in cycling apparel, extending distances through equipment choices, and having fun on what is, after all, a torture apparatus. Cycling curmudgeon Petersen doesn’t mention that other countries weren’t built around motoring as was USA. Americans had to adapt to hilly long commutes away from city centers. Unless prepared to continuously relocate within walking distances of every new trendy employer, you’d do well to try whatever makes cycling work for you, Petersen’s options included. Racing may be a trap not supported by Rivendell designs, but streamlining a 4 hour bike commute can unlock cage of automotive slavery.
Not to be outdone, New York “Bike Snob” blogger Eben Weiss has another compilation, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence (Chronicle Books, 2012, 240 pp.). Bilious books recounting bicyclist errors rankle. How about motorists? There just isn’t any comparison; nobody dies if run down by a rider.
One dimensional people gravitate to some topic and spend rest of their lives stuck on it as if psychic flypaper. Literature appears to have same root as litter, which is what most pages resemble. Motoring ought to be left to certified bus and truck drivers, who, it seems, are the most malevolent and negligent drivers, respectively, behind wheels of deadliest vehicles.
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