End commercial
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
–Edward Gibbon
Inspired by Gursky
At this point, having biked an average of 2.5k miles per year for the last eight or nine years on city streets, I shouldn’t be surprised that a large fraction of drivers are willing to put my life, limb, health, and their treasure [1] in jeopardy just to get to a red light five seconds faster than they would if they stayed behind me. Just to sit at a red light, and watch me pull up beside them to give them the finger. 15 seconds? I can totally understand bunting me off into a curb and sending me into months of rehab if not a wooden box, in order to get to a red light 15 seconds earlier. Texting while driving is a big fine! Hitting a bicyclist probably has no consequences.
Oddly enough, moms with kids late for school are the worst. I guess they don’t think I’m some mother’s son. Their metaphoric flesh and blood is more important than my literal blood.
[1] I hereby state that my last will and testament, and final dying wish, should I die on my bike — as I fully expect to, for it is, by far, the most dangerous thing I have ever done — is for someone, anyone, to take the insurance and proceeds from my estate, and spend it suing whoever hits me for the rest of their natural born days [3]. Hopefully it’s a BMW X6 [2]. Take their car, take their house, take their money, take the 401k, take their kids college fund. Pursue criminal charges. Put them in FPMITA prison. Salt the earth. Check the video for evidence.
[2] All BMW drivers are assholes. This is not a statement of prejudice; it is a statement of empirical fact. If I see a BMW, I know, without fail, I’m about to be cut off. But with my luck, it’ll be a beat up old Nissan gardening truck. Who won’t stop.
[3] Or spend it on the dogs and booze. What do I care, I’m dead.
Oddly enough, people trying to kill me, even without malice, gets my blood all hetted up.
Tagged bikeThe generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
– Robert R. Coveyou
If you give a little once in a while, perhaps you won’t be asked to give all of it at once.
I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be
–Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation, 1818-9
I saw a coyote trotting up the sidewalk on Mar Vista about 6:30 pm today, walking the dogs. I don’t think they even saw him. Remarkable, as they are acutely aware of other dogs, cats, skunks, squirrels. Wildlife of all sorts. They didn’t even look up. He saw us though, and crossed the street, without altering his pace at all. Then he was gone into the night before I could get the iPhone out.
About two miles from downtown Pas, and four or five miles down from the north edge of the wilderness. Tough winter in the mountains, with the cold, and no rain? Not many mice, I suppose.
Look no further than this, which is not a headline from the Onion (ht: Atrios)
[edit] I said “newspapers”, but after listening to NPR this morning, I realized what meant was “old school media”. And yes, NPR is included in that – they have to suck up to their political, if not corporate, masters. Newspapers, radio, television, magazines (less so? – the New Yorker seems to write some hard looks at the establishment [1]); what others call the “mainstream media” (which I hesitate to use as it has become code for something else).
But the inability to ask the hard question, to make the liars uncomfortable, to jeopardize access, to educate themselves on difficult subjects, mind-boggling innumeracy, the complete failure to ask the follow-up, the hard question, “views on the shape of the earth differ” so-called objective reporting – they have made themselves obsolete. The OSM still has the cash to send reporters and cameras to far away places, but that’s about all they’ve got left. And that increasingly less, and not for long.
Good riddance.
[1] A sixties word which I think is coming back into relevance. It isn’t the corporations, it isn’t the government, it isn’t the media. It’s all of them combined, the oligarchy, all owned and operated by the same few people. The Establishment.
It's Chinatown, Jake.
The Onion nails it again:
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