O'rourke: Bicycles are unamerican

There's a way out of this endless hyperpolarization.

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Jeremy McCreary said:
There's a way out of this endless hyperpolarization.
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In the 2020 election season, my neighbor's brother-in-law, so sickly that his 3-ton Escalade often wanders off the road, drove 700 miles to order me to stay home on election day. I guess she'd phoned him long distance to turn me in. I'd never told her what I thought of Biden because she'd never asked. Perhaps I hadn't agreed wholeheartedly when she told me the wonderful things Trump was doing for the country.

2016 was worse, when so many told me I was a Hilary fan. I was unable to say what I thought of her because nobody asked. If nobody was asking, it was better not to respond. In the words of G B Shaw, "Never wrestle with a pig."

In 1992 I had concluded that neither Hillary nor her husband would ever be fit for any public office. She'd agreed to an interview about her husband's gross adultery, and she used the platform to attack Tammy Wynette and all who listened to her. I'd never been interested in which songs Wynette sang, but this appalled me. I thought she'd apologize, which Wynette asked her to do. Hillary blew it off with a roll of her eyes and repeated her attack, day after day. As she was speaking as the wife of the candidate, he had an obligation to disavow her hate speech. He did not. What's more, I don't see how the attacks would have continued without encouragement from his campaign manager. How could voters overlook that and elect him? She was the only person in America who could lose to Donald Trump in 2016, and the Democrats nominated her.

If people assumed I was a Hillary fan, it must have been because they perceived me as being not their kind. When I thought about what all my accusers had in common, I realized they thought I wasn't their kind because they thought I was bright.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that stupidity is a moral, not an intellectual, failing. I wish Democrats would stop calling Republicans conservative. "Conservative" means averse to change, and conservatives want big changes. I wish the Republicans would stop calling the Democrats liberal. Liberal means willing to respect or accept opinions and behavior different from ones own. If Democrats were liberal, Hillary would have been banished in 1992.
 
mschwett said:
isn’t it interesting that there are exceptions to emissions standards (which have saved tens of thousands of lives over the years, not to mention clearing the skies over california’s coastal cities) for classic vehicles just because, well, they look cool? i get gradually phasing in restrictions to avoid everyone having to abruptly upgrade vehicles, which is not a good idea, but 70 year old machines that emit orders of magnitude more pollution.. 😕

amazingly, a small percentage (<15) of the cars emit the majority of air pollution! we could probably do more than switching to EVs by just buying all those people a new civic or corolla each.
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I can see you don't understand why people love and keep their old cars and don't understand why they are exempted. The old saying "You can never go home again." is absolutely true. Time is merciless and none of us can turn it back. However, about 30 years ago (maybe more) I read an article that took it a step further and added: "but you can go back to the garage." And that is absolutely true. That is the reason people love and keep their old cars. Whether the car was originally purchased by their parents, or perhaps an older brother who did not return from Vietnam, or it is just like their first car, or it is a car they always wanted when they were younger but could never afford while getting through school and then raising a family, old cars today are a tangible way to travel back to a time when things were simpler. While not nearly as efficient as modern cars, old cars are not driven much, with most coming out only on special occasions and getting only a few hundred miles a year. The reality is old cars are not responsible for air pollution.
 
Watch this at 1.5 speed. A bit of planning has huge payoffs.
Towns and city's can improve. Doing better is all American.
 
Stefan Mikes said:
Formerly known as a petrol station, the facility is now known as a "service station" in the UK :)
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In America they were gas stations in 1903, when the first motor vehicle crossed North America. It was a gas-powered bike equivalent to a 500 or 750 watt ebike, as I recall. I think at the time, the market for gasoline was farmers with tractors. A store with a pump out front was a gas station.

I credit Henry Ford for the evolution to service stations. I think the Model T first became popular while the price was high because it was designed for a general mechanic to repair, instead of shipping it possibly hundreds of miles to a qualified dealer. Other manufacturers followed, and I think that gave rise to the service station, where a mechanic who could service most makes sold gas to keep in contact with a customer base.

Late in the century, there was less need for regular service and more problems that a general mechanic couldn't handle. Gas stations took over.
 
Jim in Central CA said:
…the reality is old cars are not responsible for air pollution.
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i think you’re correct in saying that “classic” cars are not responsible for much air pollution, if driven very sparingly. however, there is tons of data showing just what i noted above, that a small minority of cars are responsible for the majority of pollution.

nobody should have the right to pollute the air we share without regard for alternatives.

www.epa.gov

Accomplishments and Successes of Reducing Air Pollution from Transportation in the United States | US EPA

For a history of how air pollution from transportation in the US has been reduced.
www.epa.gov www.epa.gov

www.boston.com

Study: Most car-related air pollution comes from only 25% of cars

New cars don’t have to be electric or hybrid to pump out less air pollution.
www.boston.com

pre clean air cars emit over 1,000 times the particulates per mile. think about that - driving past someone’s window in that car has the same impact from particulate matter as 1,000 modern cars doing the same at the same time.

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i assume at least some of these old cars have more modern emissions systems installed?
 
My town is implementing many climate friendly initiatives but because it was featured in a nostalgic film over 50 years-ago, it gets overrun by the stinkiest cars every year. I think that the raw gas burners should not be allowed anywhere there are concentrations of pedestrians and bikes.

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Beautiful American classic cars.
Wish I have one.
Once a year your town is overrun with beautiful cars and people lasting perhaps a weekend?
Why complain, if that kind of gathering happens on the Island. I would be there in the crowd.
FYI I'm logged in to EBR due to bruised ribs, I fell off step ladder my elbow pushed into my ribs.
I'm just glad my head didn't hit the floor.
 
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spokewrench said:
At Amazon, Thermos looks like a bargain brand. For prestige, buy Zojirushi or Stanley!
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I found Stanley was durable but terrible at insulation for the two I have. I have a couple of really big, widemouth Zojirushi's and they are awesome. Nothing better and certainly nothing larger.

Oddly enough the Thermos brand in its basic steel Wal Mart version is I think top dog for value. For reals good for 24 hours for hot food. I have two of these in 40 oz size that I probably have had for 10 years.

And two more in the 24 oz size that I use on bike rides to hold my lunch. A can o' chili with a couple of Costco dogs cut up and mixed in fit perfectly. One is on the table in this shot, one of my regular lunch spots.
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Mix in a set of surplus Bundeswehr camp cutlery, which are as good as it gets, especially if you can find some of the really old ones from the early 1980's, and you are set.
 
Jeremy McCreary said:
Not bored or indifferent, just wishing not to mix partisan politics into every other aspect of my life. Not what I come here for and pretty sure I'm not alone in that.
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That train left the station April 14, and you hopped aboard.
@Mr. Coffee said PJ was often funny because he was convincingly wrong. I agree. A legitimate humorist doesn't expect to be believed literally. He leads you to a different conclusion and you laugh.

@Rás Cnoic then called PJ right wing, which seems like calling Mark Twain a racist. (That was cause to have Twain's books banned ever since the 19th Century. I guess the intolerant called themselves liberal, but it's not at all liberal to me.)

@Rás Cnoic added, "The MAGA thickos today would be left scratching their heads with him." That's what a foreign agent for Trump or Putin might say. Can Joe Biden have him extradited for interfering with US elections? Provocation like that seems to be the underlying motive of MAGA, going back at least as far as Hillary's gratuitous 1992 attacks on all who listened to Tammy Wynette.

Now that the political door was open, you came in with three posts that seemed to call for banning classic cars because you no longer like the smell. Calling for the banning of beloved older cars is certainly partisan politics, and doing it on account of your changing tastes is so intolerant that you may be what they call a liberal. In the traditional sense, I'm liberal enough to tolerate the old-fashioned smell and also liberal enough to consider a ban for public health.

Others posted that classic cars harm public health. To support a ban, but I'd need clearer information. For example, a neighbor loved to restore GM cars from the 1950s. He might register one and drive it 5 miles a year. Intolerance would have been the only reason to ban it. For transportation, he and his wife had an EFI F-150 and an EFI Durango. Switching to passenger cars, which meet CAFE standards, would have reduced their carbon footprint.

You then posted advocating that governments make cities walkable. I support that, but it's certainly political.

Then you posted a very large picture of your t-shirt advocating voting for a dog rather than a Democrat or a Republican. That reminded me of the time a Trump fan drove 700 miles to tell me not to vote. Nobody had asked about my political opinions because nobody cared. It was just that they believed no one should have the right to vote in America without swearing loyalty to Trump. I added that I didn't like the modern use of "Liberal" and "Conservative" because I found both labels false.

After 5 political post in a row in a topic that wasn't political, you say, "Not what I come here for and pretty sure I'm not alone in that." The word "hypocrite" comes to mind.
 
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Rome said:
Where's Taylor Swift, the blonde lady in white Thunderbird?
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spokewrench said:
make cities walkable
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First to Rome, Suzanne Somers.
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To @spokewrench: I am just saying that attitudes change overtime. In 1962 people would smoke cigars at Little League baseball games. Now that would cause an uproar. Banning all devices that cause inordinate toxic exposure to pedestrians but only in dense areas of humanity in the town core could be a good thing. I remember NYC in the leaded gas days, and LA's thick brown haze. A teacher's breakroom at that time used to be filled with smoke. Now people cannot smoke at a grade school or in a park. In 1962 some people couldn't live in parts of Los Angeles based on skin color. Attitudes change and leaders get out front.
 
spokewrench said:
Forget her! Get the blonde who wanted a ride on a gas-powered ebike!
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I know where that is. That spot is a Japanese restaurant now. I like their Bento Box lunch. It is weird what changes and what doesn't. I saw a cyber truck today. A kid in the 50's got killed in Chicago when going for a flyball, when playing stickball, and meeting the chromed rear left fin of a Cadillac. The cyber truck has about the same sharpness but a bit more like the DeLorean. The foot pedal accelerator gets stuck at full throttle. Qualifications for a Darwin Awards nomination are easy! Oh, but Swift's hair is golden, complex, and not bleached. It is alive, real, lovely. I was once accused of having an affair with a blond, and said, 'She wasn't a real blond'.

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mschwett said:
i think you’re correct in saying that “classic” cars are not responsible for much air pollution, if driven very sparingly. however, there is tons of data showing just what i noted above, that a small minority of cars are responsible for the majority of pollution.
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I find the 2015 Toronto study, claiming 25% of cars produce 93% of CO2, ridiculous. CO2 varies directly with fuel consumption. Their conclusion amounts to saying that if 100 cars used 100 gallons of gasoline, 25 of them averaged 3.72 gallons, and the other 75 averaged 0.093. In other words, if 25% averaged 10 mpg, the other 75% must have averaged 399 mpg.

Analyzing it further, they said the gas guzzlers were the ones more than 7 years old, so if you traded in your 2007 for a 2008, your mileage would jump from 10 to 399. How did they come up with their data? They said they set up sensors along a busy road. They said there were some heavy trucks, but they were mostly cars. In other words, they analyzed the air at intervals and didn't check individual vehicles. If they didn't keep count of trucks, they didn't keep count of cars.

I can imagine several factors that would affect readings: how many vehicles had passed in an interval, whether they had sat at a traffic light, whether they had accelerated when a light turned green, and above all, which way the air was drifting. If 25% of the time, readings were 40 times more polluted, the biggest factor was probably a shifting air drift. They seem to assume the cars were sorting themselves into batches according to age.

This seems to be a better source of data, based on miles driven and gallons used. It says that after 1991, gas mileage increased about 0.5% per year.

That's just about carbon footprint (CO2). A system that takes care of other pollution also matters to me.
 
Humpty Trumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Trumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Trumpty together again.
 
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