Bicycle Diaries: April 2007

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29.4.07

Carbon Emissions

bad news & good

Over at the website for The Inconvenient Truth they have a Carbon Calculator. It's a helpful way for figuring out how much carbon dioxide each of us produces every year. I calculated my personal emission and was rather surprise by the total: 1.65 tons ... TONS!?! Talk about bad news.


The good news is that this is well below the typical level of personal emissions. The biggest factor is that I'm carfree. Also, I haven't been flying as much as I used to. If you play around with the numbers you'll see how drastically your CO2 emission rises.

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Crisis in Turkey


In Istanbul, hundreds of thousands gathered earlier today calling for the preservation of Turkey's fragile democratic institutions. Turkey is secular and will remain secular, shouted demonstrators from all over the country as they waved flags and pictures of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.

The demonstration follows Friday's declaration by the Turkish military that it is prepared to defend Atatürk's legacy. In its statement, the general staff emphasized their role in the republic's democratic politics.
The Turkish Armed Forces maintain their sound determination to carry out their duties stemming from laws to protect the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey. Their loyalty to this determination is absolute.
This includes the strong possibility of a coup d'etat that could be the 5th time the military has ousted democratically elected governments since 1960. So demonstrators feel trapped between the military and the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party that has governed democratically since 2002. We want neither Sharia, nor a coup, but a fully democratic Turkey.

The crisis began when the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared that Abdullah Cumhur Gül, the current Foreign Minister, would be the Justice and Development Party candidate in the upcoming 2007 presidential election. The presidency is the most important post in Turkey's secular government. So the prospect that it could be occupied by a man whose background is in political Islam is seen as deeply threatening.

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28.4.07

Bike theft


Even your old, crappy beaterbike isn't safe. Experts claim that China's manufacturing boom has accelerated international demand for every type of metal, sending prices through the roof. Thieves are working overtime to meet demand.

From The Christian Science Monitor:
The spree is part of the widespread and rapidly growing crime of metal theft. Filchers are lifting everything from copper wiring to aluminum beer kegs to the brass flower holders at cemeteries. The more audacious are sawing down live electric poles and ripping siding off strangers' homes.

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27.4.07

Da' square & da' world

why I love this 'hood

I've been a global educator for over a decade. What that means is that I work with American education institutions, mostly colleges and universities, that want their students exposed to the world. And overseas, I work with NGOs (non-governmental organizations or non-profits) that are working to improve local education in the global context.

There are a lot of different ways to do global education. Much of my work concentrates on three areas:
1. Civic Education, encouraging young people to be more engaged politically
2. Leadership Development, preparing them to be the next generation of communiity leaders
3. Education Reform, training educators how to be better teachers inside and outside the classroom
I guess that's why I like biking around Chicago. Every time I get on my bike it's like a little foreign adventure in what is decidedly a global city. Each of its 80 or so neighborhoods has origins in an immigrant community. And over the years while the boundaries of these neighborhoods have remained the same, the faces have changed. For example, Lincoln Square where I live has always been known as the German neighborhood. But since the 1960s it's seen an influx of Greeks, Yugoslavs, Latinos, and Thais.

If you appreciate and enjoy this kind of diversity, you should definitely read Isaiah Berlin. His work provides the right tools for dealing with difference in our daily encounters with other peoples and communities. He wrote that each community naturally feels its particular values and ways of doing things are the best in the world. How then should each community deal with the fact that all others have their own idea of what is best?

The trick is for every community to accept the reality of fundamental differences while each remains loyal to its own ideals. To explain this, Berlin uses the metaphor of fans along a football pitch. Since they stand throughout the match they have to constantly shift their weight from foot to foot.

Basically tolerating diversity is a constant balancing act shifting between the weight of our own community loyalties and our acceptance of other fundamentally different communities. Without it, we would be brawling in the streets...

Off to
Critical Mass!

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26.4.07

Cinco de Mayo Alleycat

...in Raleigh, NC


We have pretty free-wheeling alleycats here in the City of Big Shoulders. Also, this graphic work is so fantastic I couldn't resist posting it. Thanks to Nichomachus who first posted it.

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25.4.07

Guernika



Tomorrow, on 26 April 1937, a small number of German aircraft from the notorious Condor Legion bombed the small Basque town. Almost overnight it became a symbol of military barbarism that still ranks alongside Dresden and Hiroshima in the catalog of modern war horrors.

The fate of Guernika, obliterated by firebombing in three hours, matters because it is the epitome of a ruthless total war which was widely expected shortly to be the fate of all Europe. Bombing above all - apocalyptic, unstoppable - heralded for many the downfall of a fragile, indulgent civilization.

In Spain no mourning was allowed. The town was slowly reconstructed in Franco's unattractive fascist modern style. Only after another 40 years could the truth even be spoken about in Spain. This, at least, sets Guernika apart from Dresden and Hiroshima, which became almost at once in the two Germanies and in Japan symbols of the crass victimization of modern war.

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24.4.07

Biciklizz minden hétköznap!

the Budapest Critical Mass


Thanks to cfsmtb in low earth orbit for the link!

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23.4.07

On Fred

...and a bike fetish

The Bicycle Source
and its Glossary
of Biking Terms
and Slang
define Fred as:

1) n. a person who spends a lot of money on his bike and clothing, but still can't ride. "What a fred -- too much Lycra and titanium and not enough skill." Synonym for poser. Occasionally called a "barney".


2) n. a person who has a mishmash of old gear, does't care at all about technology or fashion, didn't race or follow racing, etc. Often identified by chainring marks on white calf socks. Used by "serious" roadies to disparage utility cyclists and touring riders, especially after these totally unfashionable "freds" drop the "serious" roadies on hills because the "serious" guys were really posers. This term is from road touring and, according to popular myth, "Fred" was a well-known grumpy old touring rider, who really was named Fred.
Now read this!

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22.4.07

Earth Day

...and the accidental
environmentalist


Is she still alive?

That’s the first question I get when I tell friends and colleagues that I’m now leading the Roots & Shoots team here in the Great Lakes region. I reassure them that Dr. Jane is very much alive and tirelessly encouraging young people to improve our world through service learning projects for animals, the environment and human communities. Then they usually follow-up with, You’re an environmentalist? In Chicago?

It’s not that they don’t know I’ve been car-free for eight years or that my enthusiasm for restoring old bikes eventually steered me into the simple living movement—a lifestyle focused on decreasing consumption. Nor are they surprised I’m continuing my professional journey promoting youth leadership development. They know that I’ve spent the last decade working with young people in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. They know that my passion lies in helping diverse communities find local solutions to global challenges through education reform and a focus on civic education.

What they don’t realize—indeed what I didn’t realize myself until recently—is that becoming the Roots & Shoots Great Lakes Regional Director is the logical, if surprising, next stage in both my personal and professional evolution. When I first came to Chicago in 2000 I didn’t expect to be here for very long. After setting up the global programs for The Great Books Foundation, I planned to head back to Bosnia-Herzegovina and establish my own experimental high school. Instead, I fell in love with Chicago, its diverse neighborhoods and the local organizations serving young people. This shouldn’t have been so surprising since, except for a few years, I’ve never lived very far from the shores of the Great Lakes.

Chicago quickly became my community even as I spent time abroad working with local education institutions and youth leaders. While developing a university curriculum in Tajikistan for the Aga Khan Development Network, I soon learned, much like Dr. Jane did, that strengthening local communities and protecting their surrounding eco-systems are two sides of the same coin. After my arrival, an outbreak of typhus—a bacterial disease that can be contracted through contaminated water—temporarily closed the university. Reforming the curriculum wouldn’t do much good unless students and teachers had access to clean drinking water. And the lesson didn’t end there.

Everywhere I went, including Azerbaijan on the contaminated shores of the Caspian Sea, young leaders were fighting hard for democracy and the environment, being both creative entrepreneurs and ecological stewards, as well as promoting the rights of humans and animals alike. In northern Nigeria as well as the southern Philippines, Christian and Muslim youth were helping to resolve communal conflicts in order to encourage sustainable farming practices. And this lesson was not limited to these countries.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast here in the United States. Among the ecological refugees was my aunt, uncle and 10 cousins who were born and raised in New Orleans. None were injured but all lost their homes. Almost immediately I joined the national effort to clean up and rebuild the city. That experience was much more personal than any of my previous ones overseas. It convinced me of the absolute need to confront global warming and the incredible opportunity for engaging an emerging generation of young leaders in doing so.

And so, I find myself here in the Roots & Shoots Great Lakes Office—accidentally, happily, passionately an environmentalist.

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20.4.07

I love the world wide web...

In looking at the inbound links with the help of Statcounter, I found out that someone in Barcelona used Google Translation Tools to read my 11 April post, Going Downhill on a Bicycle, in Spanish. Here's what it looks like!

El ir abajo de la colina en una bicicleta

Canción de un muchacho
Henrio Charles Beeching
1859-1919
Con los pies levantados, manos aún,
Me contrapesan, y trago la colina
Dardo, con mente heedful;
El aire entra cerca en un viento.

Más rápido pero más rápido,
Hasta el corazón con una elevación poderosa
Hace que los pulmones ríen, el grito de la garganta: --
El 'pájaro de O, ve; ver, pájaro, yo vuelan.


¿'Es esto, es esta tu alegría?

Pájaro de O, entonces I, aunque muchacho
Para una parte de oro del momento
¡Tu vida plumosa en aire! '

La opinión, corazón, está allí aught como esto
¿En un mundo que es lleno de dicha?
'Tis más que patinando, límite
Acero-calzado a la tierra llana.

La velocidad ahora se afloja, yo flota
Un rato en mi barco airy;
Hasta, cuando el arrastre escaso de las ruedas,
Mis pies a la caída de los pedales.

Alas, eso la colina más larga
Debe terminar en un vale; pero aún,
Quién sube con el trabajo, wheresoe'er,
Encontrará las alas el esperar allí.

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19.4.07

Tax ammo


Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman climbs atop the observation deck at the University of Texas–Austin, killing 16 people and wounding 31 during a 96-minute rampage.

Jan. 17, 1969: Two students are shot and killed at the University of California–Los Angeles during a student meeting.

May 4, 1970: Four students are killed and nine wounded when National Guard soldiers attempt to control an antiwar demonstration at Ohio's Kent State University.

1974: A 17-year-old Regents scholar brings guns and homemade bombs to his college, then kills three adults and wounds 11 others from his sniper post on the top floor.

1978: A 15-year-old in Lansing, Mich., kills one bully and wounds a second.

Oct. 23, 1985: The dean of Bates College in Maine is shot in the back by a sniper while standing in his kitchen in a house just off campus. The dean survived the shooting, and the captain of the school's swim team was arrested in connection with the incident.

Nov. 26, 1985
: A high school student in Washington State dies after shooting herself the previous day. Police say the female student earlier shot and killed two 14-year-old boys, one of them her former boyfriend.

Aug. 12, 1986
: Five people are shot and one killed by a student at New York Technical College in Brooklyn.

Nov. 1, 1991: A physics graduate student kills five University of Iowa officials and wounds two others. The student then fatally shot himself.

March 23, 1994: A 16-year-old student in Seattle is killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting at the school.

Feb. 2, 1996: Two students and one teacher are killed and another is wounded when a 14-year-old student in Moses Lake, Wash., opens fire on his algebra class.

Aug. 15, 1996: A graduate student studying engineering at San Diego State University shoots and kills three professors while he defends his thesis.

Feb. 19, 1997
: A 16-year-old boy takes a shotgun and a bag of shells to school in Bethel, Alaska, and kills the principal and a student and injures two others.

Oct. 1, 1997
: A 16-year-old in Pearl, Miss., fatally shoots two students to death and wounds seven others after stabbing his mother to death.

Dec. 1, 1997
: Three students are killed and five wounded by a 14-year-old student at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky.

Dec. 15, 1997
: Two students in Stamps, Ark., are wounded by a 14 year-old boy who was hiding in the woods when he shot the students as they stood in the parking lot.

March 24, 1998
: Two boys, 11 and 13, fire on their Jonesboro, Ark., middle school from nearby woods, killing four girls and a teacher and wounding 10 others.

April 24, 1998: A 15 year-old student opens fire at an eighth-grade dance in Edinboro, Pa., killing a science teacher.

May 19, 1998: Three days before his graduation, an 18-year-old honor student opens fire at a high school in Fayetteville, Tenn., killing a classmate who was dating his ex-girlfriend.

May 21, 1998: Two teenagers are killed and more than 20 people hurt when a teenage boy opens fire at a high school in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents.

June 15, 1998: One teacher and one guidance counselor are wounded by a 14-year-old boy in a Richmond, Va., school hallway.

Apr. 20, 1999
: Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 23 others before killing themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Nov. 19, 1999: A 13-year-old girl is shot in the head by a 12-year-old boy in school at Deming, N.M.

Feb. 29, 2000: A 6-year-old boy shoots and kills a 6-year-old classmate at Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Mich.

March 10, 2000
: Two students in Savannah, Ga., are killed by a 19-year-old student while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.

May 26, 2000: A 13-year-old student kills his English teacher on last day of classes in Lake Worth, Fla., after the teacher refused to let him talk with two girls in his classroom.

Aug. 28, 2000
: A graduate student at the University of Arkansas is found dead with his English professor in an apparent murder-suicide.

March 5, 2001: A 15-year-old student kills two fellow students and wounds 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., in San Diego County.

Jan. 16, 2002
: A graduate student at the Appalachian School of Law shoots and kills the dean, a professor, and a student and wounds three other students.

Oct. 28, 2002: A student at the University of Arizona Nursing College kills three of his instructors before killing himself.

Sept. 24, 2003: A 15-year-old student fatally shoots two fellow students at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn.

April 24, 2003: A 14-year-old student shoots and kills the principal of Red Lion Area Junior High School in south-central Pennsylvania, before killing himself.

March 21, 2005: A 16-year-old student shoots and kills five schoolmates, a teacher, and an unarmed guard at Red Lake High School on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota before taking his own life.

Nov. 8, 2005: A high school freshman is arrested in the fatal shooting of an assistant principal and wounding of two other school administrators at Campbell County High School in eastern Tennessee.

Sept. 27, 2006: A 53-year-old gunman takes six girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo. The gunman uses the girls as human shields for hours before fatally wounding a 16-year-old and then killing himself.

Sept. 29, 2006
: A 15-year-old student brings two guns to Weston Schools in rural Cazenovia, Wis., and fatally shoots his principal after the principal had given him a disciplinary warning for having tobacco on school grounds.

Oct. 2, 2006: A gunman kills at least four people, including himself, and wounds more at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pa.

Sept. 2, 2006: Douglas Pennington, 49, kills his two sons and himself while visiting Shepherd University in West Virginia.

April 2, 2007
: A program coordinator for the University of Washington's College of Architecture is shot and killed by a man in an apparent murder-suicide.

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18.4.07

bike of terror

meanwhile
in the rest of the world



Over at Velorution, they've posted about Rainer Ganahl. He's an Austrian artist currently living in NYC. His Use a Bicycle Exhibition which recently opened in Stuttgart includes the work above.

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17.4.07

Virginia Tech

...and the thinking reed

What little comfort I get at these times comes from a famous quote by Blaise Pascal, the 17th Century French philosopher.
347. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
Latest figures: 32 dead, 26 injured, 12 in hospital are stable. Here is a partial list of the dead.
Maxine Turner
Vienna, Va.
Senior, Chemical Engineering

Henry Lee
Roanoke, Va.
Freshman, Computer Engineering

Matt La Porte
Dumont, N.J.
Freshman, University Studies

Jamie Bishop
Instructor, Foreign Languages and Literatures (German)

G.V. Loganathan
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Juan Ortiz
Graduate Student, Civil Engineering

Jarrett Lane
Narrows, Va.
Senior, Civil Engineering

Ryan Clark
Columbia County, Ga.
Senior, Biology, English, Psychology

Leslie Sherman
Sophomore, History and International Studies

Caitlin Hammaren
Sophomore, International Studies and French

Liviu Librescu [update from NYTimes]
Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics

75, a senior researcher and lecturer in engineering, was a Holocaust survivor. He had immigrated to Israel from Romania with his wife Marlina, also a survivor, in 1978. He was an expert in aeronautics at Tel Aviv University and the Haifa Technion before moving to the United States in 1984.

The couple’s elder son, Arieh, lives in the town of Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv. Joe, the younger son, splits his time between the United States and Israel, where he was when news of his father’s death arrived.

According to media accounts quoting students, Mr. Librescu and the class heard shooting in a nearby room. The students said their professor blocked the door to prevent the gunman from entering while some students took cover underneath desks and others leaped out from windows.

Reached by telephone in Ra’anana today, Ayala Librescu, one of his daughters-in-law, said the family “had no time to deal with the loss” and turned down requests for interviews. She confirmed that family members were making plans to fly to America Tuesday night and that they would be bringing Mr. Librescu’s body back to Israel for burial.

Earlier today, Joe Librescu told Ynet, the website of the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot: “I understand from friends that my father was a hero. By blocking the door with his body he saved all the students who were in the classroom. Joe Librescu studied at Virginia Tech from 1989 to 1994, according to Israeli media reports.

Kevin Granata
Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics

Reema Samaha
Centreville, Va.
Freshman

Emily Hilscher
Woodville, Va.
Freshman, Animal and Poultry Sciences, Equine Science

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15.4.07

The reluctant controversialist

on the continuing relevance
of Isaiah Berlin

The Guardian, 7 April 07: Nicholas Lezard reviews Berlin's Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought.
Maurice Bowra, warden of Wadham College, Oxford, once quipped that Isaiah Berlin, like God, said much, but published little. True then, for Berlin's reputation was based on lectures that were largely uncollected in his lifetime; but not now, not since Henry Hardy started tirelessly, and with immense dedication and scruple, to edit his works. In this volume, we have one of the most central sources for much of Berlin's thought. If you've collected the lot so far, then you'll find much in here that is familiar; if you haven't, then this would be as good a place to start as any.

It is interesting, though, that Berlin, who was mild-mannered right down to his political and philosophical boots, should generate the degree of controversy that he does today. That he does so at all should, before anything else is said, kill any argument as to his "relevance". On the face of it, you might wonder what a man who, almost notoriously, avoided specific reference to the totalitarianism that was ravaging the world during every phase of his career could say to us now. That's on the face of it. Start reading him and it begins to look as though he wrote about almost nothing else. He just started earlier, as if in implicit endorsement of Zhou Enlai's (20th-century) remark on the impact of the French revolution: "It's too early to tell."

So here we have a ringing, yet also considered, denunciation of Rousseau as one of the minds responsible, albeit at a distance, for some of the modern age's most bloodthirsty atrocities - most particularly those committed in the name of liberty and equality. What makes Berlin such a compelling historian, and one of the very few of whom it will always be said that he is a pleasure to read, was the way that he got under the skin of people whose opinions he found, after considered thought, abhorrent. Here he is on Rousseau's idea of freedom: "To rob a man of freedom was to treat him as a chattel - as someone not capable of spontaneous activity - to deny that he was responsible for his acts, capable of good and evil, deserving of praise and blame, that he was the kind of being whose spiritual activity alone made whatever had been or could be done worth doing ... Justice, virtue, duty, truth, the morally good and bad, could not exist unless man was a free being capable of choosing freely between right and wrong, and therefore accountable for his acts." I've quoted at some length, and there's much more, and so stirringly expressed that by the end of it you're brushing a tear from your eye at the thought of Rousseau's nobility. That's before Berlin starts putting the skewers in and showing us that this is how it all goes wrong and leads to "enlightened despotism", which is, in Berlin's phrase, "one of the most powerful and dangerous arguments in the entire history of human thought".

Against the zeal of the reformer Berlin places his definition of - to use current jargon - best practice: "We cannot have everything, hence we strike a mean, and hope to get as much as can be preserved, as good a bargain as is feasible, given that things are what they are, human nature is what it is, events have occurred as they have occurred." You can see how this could be interpreted as complacency, particularly by those at the time on the impatient left; but as it turns out, and as more disasters roll across our field of view, it doesn't seem that bad a precept, and would certainly have spared millions of lives if properly lived by.

If any doubt remains as to the value of reading Berlin today, bear in mind that the recent TV series The Trap ended with an examination of Berlin's two ideas of liberty: the negative kind, which means being allowed to do what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else; and positive freedom, which can end up with wildly counterproductive reformation. There's a version of one of his most famous lectures on the subject, "Two Concepts of Freedom", in the book under review. His ideas are still worth debating today, and for the foreseeable future.

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14.4.07

So why use a bike in the big city?

Caspar Henderson
gives four reasons

From openDemocracy, 25 May 05: Casper is an award-winning writer and journalist on environmental affairs. He has also worked as a consultant on issues in energy, water, regulation, technology, human rights, economics and the environment. He was the Globalisation Editor from 2002 to mid-2005 and writes an occasional blog, JebIn08. Excerpts from his article, The Peach Wins! Why I Like My Bike:
Beauty: like the knife, the sailing boat and the wineglass, the bicycle is among the most efficient and elegant technologies ever devised or that ever could be devised. Propulsion with respect to effort is tremendous. Even in a congested British city such as London, riding a bike is often a pure pleasure – like sailing on a beam reach. Cycling in heavy traffic can be deeply unpleasant, but progressing through a cram of cars, their occupants trapped, fuming and being fumed, is deeply satisfying. It requires intense concentration and careful application of motor and awareness skills – rather like sailing into heavy weather against the wind and current. ‘8 1/2’ eat your heart out.

Thrills and other psycho-dramas: biking is dangerous. The great majority of car drivers are considerate and careful towards cyclists. But thousands are not. To survive, therefore (I’ve been a city cyclist for around twenty years without injury), requires caution as well as luck: one should be endlessly accommodating – the Mr-Nice-guy-who-finishes-last, especially when motorists treat you with total disregard or seem to wilfully endanger your life by poor driving.

But it also requires a certain recklessness and bloody-mindedness. Chasing through the metal and poison, one is both hunter and hunted. Pulling away from a light, human muscle can accelerate a bike faster than an internal combustion engine can move most cars… at least for the first ten feet. One can play at being beyond Thunderdome, the savage in the world of Henry Ford and soma.

Speed and convenience: in a congested British city, a bicycle is often the quickest way of getting around. One has a sense of freedom and of being in charge of one’s own journey – a strong contrast to the rat trap-like conditions of our unreliable and overpriced underground railway system. The jams that immobilise motor vehicles just don’t apply. On a bike, parking is not a problem. And the ability to stop wherever and whenever one wants makes a bicycle ideal for exploring the palimpsest, chimera, maze of London.

The environment: J.H. Crawford is obviously right – cars dehumanise a city. A bike rider is more aware than a car driver of surrounding sights, sounds and smells. As a general but not universal consequence, cyclists are more considerate of their fellow human beings. Thousands of children suffer severe respiratory ailments because of motor vehicle fumes. Bicycles are zero emission vehicles, powered by renewable energy (soup and sandwiches) that can be used as a token, bogus offset by those of us who take long haul flights and contribute to massive greenhouse gas pollution.

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13.4.07

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Here we are, trapped
in the amber of the moment.
There is no why.

When you're dead,
you're dead.
1922 - 2007

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12.4.07

Bike cartoon

from Christian Science Monitor
Op-Ed cartoonist, Clay Bennett


Derailed or just fixed?

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11.4.07

Going down hill on a bicycle

A Boy's Song
Henry Charles Beeching
1859-1919

With lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill

Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.


Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift

Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:--
'O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.


'Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy

For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!'


Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?

'Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;

Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.


Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale; but still,

Who climbs with toil, wheresoe'er,
Shall find wings waiting there.

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