Which brings to mind the philosophical complications of what such an activity does to one's psyche and how it affects the ego and going to a social level how the people around such a person are affected. Not to mention the whole psychology behind making the announcement of intent to ride a bike - how does that tie in with intent to other activities - where does it end?
Which brings to mind the philosophical complications of what such an activity does to one's psyche and how it affects the ego and going to a social level how the people around such a person are affected. Not to mention the whole psychology behind making the announcement of intent to ride a bike - how does that tie in with intent to other activities - where does it end?
[picky]
The plural of "BUS" is "BUSES"...NOT BUSSES!!!!!!
[/picky]
You ARE allowed to read on a bus, as long as you don't happen to be driving it at the time!
(and you don't have a 'quick one' while reading Playboy or Rustler or whatever!)
NOTE: Don't be a total lazy prat and leave your bloody newspaper on the bus when you have finished it!
With the new 5-star Euro rated engines, buses actually produce a LOT LESS nasty stuff than people imagine, and I get 12 mpg out of my Volvo...better consumption than an some cars!
I live miles out in the country with very limited service (4 or 5 buses a day between 8.00 am and 5.00 pm).. I would have to cycle/walk 5 miles just to get to civilization.
I am too old/decrepit to even think about cycling anywhere! (But I _DO_ get free bus travel anyway!!
The plural of "BUS" is "BUSES"...NOT BUSSES!!!!!!
[/picky]
You ARE allowed to read on a bus, as long as you don't happen to be driving it at the time!
(and you don't have a 'quick one' while reading Playboy or Rustler or whatever!)NOTE: Don't be a total lazy prat and leave your bloody newspaper on the bus when you have finished it!
With the new 5-star Euro rated engines, buses actually produce a LOT LESS nasty stuff than people imagine, and I get 12 mpg out of my Volvo...better consumption than an some cars!
I live miles out in the country with very limited service (4 or 5 buses a day between 8.00 am and 5.00 pm).. I would have to cycle/walk 5 miles just to get to civilization.
I am too old/decrepit to even think about cycling anywhere! (But I _DO_ get free bus travel anyway!!
Sorry Becky but with the current rage to be insainley green and carbon neutral it turns out that bicyles aren't any more carbon neutral than cars. As you need to eat more and live longer you create more carbon emissions.
Apparently the greenest thing you can do is kill yourself ........
Well, While I personally consider most of this carbon obsession to be so much doggie doo ( don's aspestos suit ) the greenies seem to think this is the new fundamental religion.
With luck the extremist's will follow their own advice.
Enjoy the bike riding, I managed without a car for several years in my younger days, It just isn't realistic with my current job as moving round computers by bike is fairly tricky. Still love my mountain biking tho.
"In a working paper entitled “The Environmental Paradox of Bicycling”, Karl Ulrich at the University of Pennslyvania reports that shifting people from their cars to bicycles offers almost no benefit to the environment.
Bicycles do have large first-order environmental benefits over cars as a means of transportation. Ulrich’s analysis considers the case in which a formerly sedentary person begins bicycling 10 km per day, 5 days per week. In this scenario, about one ton of CO2 is spared every year in the form of reduced fuel consumption.
This reduction in fuel use is partially offset by the increased food consumption of a cyclist. Although typically we think of food as carbon neutral — because the plants at the bottom of our food chain regrow after we harvest them — this view overlooks the fact that most of us don’t feed ourselves by hunting and gathering. The energy required to grow, harvest, process, package, and transport food to your nearest Whole Foods significantly outweighs the actual caloric content of your meal, by a factor of almost six. In other words, only about 15% of the energy we consume when we eat is actually in our food. The rest is contained in the fossil fuels used to bring our food to us.
But increased food consumption is a relatively minor effect when compared to the overall gas savings of cycling over driving. The real culprit in Ulrich’s analysis is the increased lifespan of people who ride bikes. Regular exercise helps you live longer, which points to an unsettling fact. One of the single best things you can do for the planet is to limit your time here."
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/everything-good
Apparently the greenest thing you can do is kill yourself ........
Well, While I personally consider most of this carbon obsession to be so much doggie doo ( don's aspestos suit ) the greenies seem to think this is the new fundamental religion.
With luck the extremist's will follow their own advice.
Enjoy the bike riding, I managed without a car for several years in my younger days, It just isn't realistic with my current job as moving round computers by bike is fairly tricky. Still love my mountain biking tho.
"In a working paper entitled “The Environmental Paradox of Bicycling”, Karl Ulrich at the University of Pennslyvania reports that shifting people from their cars to bicycles offers almost no benefit to the environment.
Bicycles do have large first-order environmental benefits over cars as a means of transportation. Ulrich’s analysis considers the case in which a formerly sedentary person begins bicycling 10 km per day, 5 days per week. In this scenario, about one ton of CO2 is spared every year in the form of reduced fuel consumption.
This reduction in fuel use is partially offset by the increased food consumption of a cyclist. Although typically we think of food as carbon neutral — because the plants at the bottom of our food chain regrow after we harvest them — this view overlooks the fact that most of us don’t feed ourselves by hunting and gathering. The energy required to grow, harvest, process, package, and transport food to your nearest Whole Foods significantly outweighs the actual caloric content of your meal, by a factor of almost six. In other words, only about 15% of the energy we consume when we eat is actually in our food. The rest is contained in the fossil fuels used to bring our food to us.
But increased food consumption is a relatively minor effect when compared to the overall gas savings of cycling over driving. The real culprit in Ulrich’s analysis is the increased lifespan of people who ride bikes. Regular exercise helps you live longer, which points to an unsettling fact. One of the single best things you can do for the planet is to limit your time here."
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/everything-good
As the Bloodhound Gang once sang, 'Life's short and hard like a bodybuilding elf, so save the planet and kill yourself' 
I might have called the thread "Going Green!" but the truth is I am doing this for me. I've saved a fortune in not having a car, MOT costs would have been around £600, tax £200, and insurance £300 - all due around this time of year. Remove my £75 a week on petrol and you can see now why I can afford a much bigger house and am moving in a few weeks.
However I have had my first set-back. In planning to buy my bicycle for my meating in the office on Monday it turns out that on rush hour only a folding bicycle will suffice on a train - as big ones are banned. The problem here is folding bicycles cost around £300-£700 and there isnt much in the way of quality on the second hand market.
My solution is to buy two bikes, a nice one for this end and a naff second hand bike for the work leg of my journey which will be left in the station overnight. I shall be looking at bikes, rucksacks (I take my laptop to work) and some kind of ski jacket or other to keep warm on the way, and I guess making an impromptu off-peak trip to drop off a bicycle at the far end.
This extra cost laid onto me, and the increased chance of theft from a bicycle locked up in an unnattended train station over night, is a direct result of train overcrowding - in other words, i'm having to fund the railway profits.
It is my sincerest hope that when I check out the bicycle facilities at each station I find a CCTV camera, a well lit sheltered area, and that they arent placed "out of sight and mind" somewhere away from the station.
We'll see.
However I have had my first set-back. In planning to buy my bicycle for my meating in the office on Monday it turns out that on rush hour only a folding bicycle will suffice on a train - as big ones are banned. The problem here is folding bicycles cost around £300-£700 and there isnt much in the way of quality on the second hand market.
My solution is to buy two bikes, a nice one for this end and a naff second hand bike for the work leg of my journey which will be left in the station overnight. I shall be looking at bikes, rucksacks (I take my laptop to work) and some kind of ski jacket or other to keep warm on the way, and I guess making an impromptu off-peak trip to drop off a bicycle at the far end.
This extra cost laid onto me, and the increased chance of theft from a bicycle locked up in an unnattended train station over night, is a direct result of train overcrowding - in other words, i'm having to fund the railway profits.
It is my sincerest hope that when I check out the bicycle facilities at each station I find a CCTV camera, a well lit sheltered area, and that they arent placed "out of sight and mind" somewhere away from the station.
We'll see.
What's funniest is that if you look at the brochures for National Rail they actually advertise a specific (and very expensive) folding bike brand on them: Brompton ("lifestyle" photographs included!). Two other brands that are worth looking into (and cost much less for similar quality), according to friends, are Dawes and Dahon.
You could also ask the same thing about people who own cars- originally marketed as machines that allowed a person more personal freedom and were/are completely tied up with a social style and set of values which celebrate independence and success. True entry into adulthood is still marked as the moment when a person is allowed to drive (and ironically, drink- doh!:doh
. For most of last century, cars, like clothes, a big house etc, were badges of success. Material success...Times change. Attitudes change. But people are still the same. These days I can feel good about eating organic food and not owning a car, as in a previous generation someone who smoked a lot of cigars and drank expensive whisky might have felt good about themselves, within the social context of the times. Similarly, an old style aristocrat- chasing refined sugars and white breads and looking down on the great unwashed who only had access to wholegrains (and were actually a lot healthier because of them, thankyou vitamin B) would have felt rather smug as well. So yeah, it's fashion. But its also a bit of science, accumulated knowledge and desire to live life responsibly, adaptively and creatively as well. Or something.
All my food is organic. But I think the stuff with 'Organic' labels is a marketting con, and results in tasteless food, so I refuse to buy it.
Agreed. They should use stickers that say "Orgasmic" instead.
False. The Earth is nowadays in the average temperature of that cycle.
As my "Environmental Engineering" teacher told me, yes, global warning exists, but we don´t have to believe in politicians or in the ecologist, because they both are extremes. Politicians lie and say that´s normal, ecologist overstate and they are obsessed.
So, IMO, just make normal life and be rational
All this nonsense about saving teh planet earth. Live short and sweet, tbh. Use the resources available instead of skimping. When it's time for the resources to run out, use different resources. I reckon it's far better to just use everything we got now, and then, if we haven't found a way to live on other planets by the 'end', call it quits on our terms instead of trying to survive to the last man in some god-forsaken post apocalyptic Waterworld.
I preferred Mad Max.
With the exception of a couple of scenes, all of them were mostly boring imo. That's not to say Waterworld doesn't beat them on that account
.Or just go the Delicatessen way and see who makes a better stew.
Haha it's even rated 8/10. Tempted to go buy it from somewhere now!
ok are we talking post apocalypse films or can TV series be included, because I love Dark Angel (post apocalypse 'pulse') and Buffy (armageddon being a regular plot line).
Well, let's throw books into the fray and give a nod to "Good Omens" too, shall we?
Awesome read!
I nominate 'The Dark Tower' as best book with a post-apocalyptic setting.
The SK one? Good series of books 
does it have sofas that are inexplicably stuck in staircases? no? thought so... cant be any good
It has a talking train and the bad guy's name is 'Walter'. That's got to be worth something.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer? I love that show!
Who didn't love Buffy? And Angel of course.
@Crashgate
But The Dark Tower isn't necessarily post-apocalyptic, since it's set in a couple of time periods Man that's a great series of books.
And since we're on the subject of reading and King and Gaiman, I highly recommend the Sandman graphic novels. I'm not even a comic fan and I thought they were fantastic. And Neverwhere is a brilliant novel - although it might mean more to me since I live in London.
@Crashgate
But The Dark Tower isn't necessarily post-apocalyptic, since it's set in a couple of time periods
Man that's a great series of books.And since we're on the subject of reading and King and Gaiman, I highly recommend the Sandman graphic novels. I'm not even a comic fan and I thought they were fantastic. And Neverwhere is a brilliant novel - although it might mean more to me since I live in London.
I just love shows where the girl kicks ass.
Going Green!
(120 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG