Entries from July 2008 ↓
July 31st, 2008 — thoughts
I’m talking mostly about the U.S. here. Our housing crisis seems to have been caused by both banks and consumers deluding themselves into believing in a completely unrealistic and unsustainable idea of mortgage borrowing. Now that the dookie is hitting the fan, our congress is authorizing an amount of money that rivals our hugely unpopular foreign war to bail out the largest lending institutions responsible for these practices as well as the lenders who bought homes they couldn’t afford.
Our infrastructure is crumbling. Roads, bridges, power lines, etc. are in need of repair, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Infrastructure repairs on highways are partially funded by money from fuel taxes. Now, however, due to our century-long dependence on the oil that has risen stratospherically in price, we’re driving less, paying fewer of those taxes, and yeah. Bad roads ahead. Also more toll highways and catastrophic bridge collapses.
Speaking of the fuel situation, our Big Three — mainstays for nearly a century — are going down like drunk prizefighters. This is generally considered to be bad for the economy.
The overall economic woes are causing Americans to pay off their credit cards and stop carrying balances (well, at least some of them). This is bad for the credit card business. So, companies like Bank of America (and others) are starting (even more) to penalize responsible cardholders, and reward the spendthrifts.
Other interesting tidbits: The U.S. Patent Office is reported to have said that almost all software patents may, technically, be illegal and unenforceable. If this is ever put into practice, there goes one of the more profitable sectors of the American economy (since we no longer build or make or produce anything tangible, apparently). Cell phone companies are shaking in their boots as a judges increasingly rule that some of their bread-and-butter tactics (which also happen to be deeply slimy) are illegal. Our Presidency (in close collusion with the rest of the government) has racked up a national debt of (estimated) over half a trillion dollars for future generations to pay off. The government has finally decided to honor a century of science and regulate tobacco as a drug. We’ve already seen some of the demise of that industry. Americans are (sort of) wising up to the health effects of fast food, and some expect those profits to fall drastically in the foreseeable future. Oregon has been the first state to estimate the economic impact of getting rid of migrant workers, resulting in a dismal outlook. Energy companies are beginning to respond to people conserving more electricity and even producing their own. The response is not pretty, and not good for consumers. It may also not be good for the energy infrastructure.
Here’s my take on all this:
- As some have already said, obviously, some of the most fundamental elements of our economy are shifting. I’m not the guy to predict what our economic reality will be in 50 years, but it will be different.
- This is our comeuppance, in a way. Or karma. Or the simple consequences of doing things we always knew were terrible ideas, but hoped would never come back to bite us. It will take a while to dig ourselves out of this.
- If some miracle happens and we are saved from the consequences of our actions, I’m not sure that will be a good thing for us as a nation, or as human beings. I think working through this (the economic side, at least) and fixing it, step by step, will be good for us. I hope we do it well.
- We’ve put our money on the wrong horses. Large segments of our economy — and even government funding — are based on sources of revenue that are nonsustainable, immoral, illegal, or that depend on large-scale consumer fiscal irresponsibility.
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July 26th, 2008 — webthings
If you don’t know about the Tunguska Event, you might not ever watch the X-Files. I heard about it from my dad when I was a little kid (at the dinner table, where he explained the finer points of fusion vs. fission, the existence of electric cars since the 1960s, and the subatomic process of stars collapsing into black holes).
Well, now there’s a SA-WEEET little video (way short) by Sandia National Laboratory, hosted at the National Geographic website, showing a computer model of the explosion of the comet in the atmosphere (which is the leading theory, right now).
Check it out! The colors are very pretty. Note that it probably looks nothing like the fireworks photo I posted here.
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July 25th, 2008 — thoughts
You heard me. We have estimates of the carbon footprint of eating a cheesburger, so let’s figure out how much the drug industry harms the environment. I’m sure someone’s done research on this (and if not, I’ll believe even more in the liberal bias in academia and research). Sure, it might be more urgent to figure out how much the drug industry harms human rights, or political progress, or government corruption, etc., but it would sure be interesting to know how much global warming is being influenced by the drug trade.
Does anyone know?
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July 23rd, 2008 — photos, thoughts, updates
unrelated Moses picture
So I was websurfing, looking for Pixies tabs, when I stumbled across the following, in a bass tab for “Isla de la Encanta”:
You really should be abel
to tell when to play what.
Is that not some awesome stuff? It’s unintentionally haiku-esque. It’s profound. It’s just plain good advice. I especially like the (probably also unintentional, but still cool) alternate spelling of “able.” The line break is even in the original!
In other news, Alex and I saw Hellboy 2 last night.
Review: meh. sokay. 2 1/2 stars (out of 4).
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July 22nd, 2008 — photos, thoughts
I’ve ranted about illegal immigration before, and how annoying it is when people go all warmongerin’ about it (sometimes more so after they go all presidentin’). Thinking more about it, the thing that bothers me the most about increasing punishments for immigration problems is this: the foul does not match the harm.
I’ve never disputed the idea that immigration laws should be enforced. The rule of law must be upheld even when we disagree with the finer points. And I know there are illegal immigrants who cause harm to the people or resources of the United States. But the trend toward upping the punishment ante is not reasonable. Put them all in jail? Charge them all with felonies? Give them all long prison terms? These punishments do not match the crime.
Now, I may not be a big-city lawyer, but it seems to me that the severity of criminal punishment in the U.S. is based on at least three things:
- The amount of harm done by the criminal act
- The intent of the person who committed the crime
- The moral “wrongness” of the act (or the extent to which it violates our cultural ideas of right/wrong)
Extreme punishments for illegal immigration fail on all three of those points. Lemme splain:
- Harm: As I’ve mentioned before, our best data suggest that the overall amount of harm done by illegal immigration is not nearly as high as the sky-is-falling doomsayers (*cough*Bill O’Reilly*cough*) would have us believe. Yes, there is harm from some illegal immigrants, but so far it looks like it’s less (on average) than the harm from good old God-fearing lifelong American citizens. That’s the criminal angle, anyway. Economically, it appears that illegal immigrants are a net benefit to the U.S. economy.
- Criminal Intent: I’m sure there are some illegal immigrants who come to the U.S. with the intention of doing something bad to Americans. But again, our best information suggests they are a small minority. The vast majority of illegal immigrants (especially Latin American) come here with motives like “earning a living,” or “escaping political repression back home,” or “eating three meals a day, for once.”
- Moral Wrongness: I don’t know about this one… how wrong is it to sneak into another country? Is it like trespassing? We have long traditions about the wrongness of murder, rape, theft, robbery, incest, arson, etc., but I don’t think most of us really have a common sense of just exactly how bad sneaking across a border is, in and of itself. In fact, there are plenty of Americans who think national borders should be open (including those American presidents who called for the Iron Curtain to be lifted). I suggest that it’s not very high on the wrongness scale to sneak across the border. It is wrong in the sense that it does violate law, but not much beyond that.
So, there’s some harm done (personally, but not economically), there are some people who have evil intentions, and it’s some kind of wrong, in itself, to come to the U.S. without permission. This is clearly, I think, not the national crisis it’s sometimes made out to be. Problems? Yes. Threat to All That Is American? Hardly. Now, I’d like to compare illegal immigration to another legal violation that frequently happens in the U.S.:
Speeding vs. Illegal Immigration
Speeding. You know, driving faster than the speed limit. This is estimated to have caused over 13,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2005. Also over 40 billion dollars in property damage, healthcare and other costs. The penalty for speeding is generally a fine. And points on your license. In extreme or repeated cases, a person may get jail time or a really large fine, or have their license revoked. Rarely is there an arrest. Almost never does speeding become a felony. Speeding generally stays at the same level of criminality as the traditional “status offense” of illegally entering the U.S., almost never rising to the level of felonies and demonization recommended by people on the Fox Network for illegal immigrants. For comparison…
- How many American citizens are killed or injured as a result of illegal immigration each year?
- How much money is lost by the U.S. economy as a result of illegal immigration? Note for this one that most experts (who aren’t being paid by conservative political groups) agree that there’s a net gain, especially since illegal immigrants’ wages get taxed.
I am open to being wrong, if there’s reliable data, but it seems to me unlikely that immigration is going to exact the toll in life, injury and property that we rack up by speeding. Even if we break it down on a per-person basis (should we? I don’t know), I doubt the situation will change.
So, if speeding costs more than illegal immigration, shouldn’t speeding be punished more severely, especially in cases where there is no reason to suspect criminal motives in the immigration? My sense of justice says “yes.”
So, what’s it going to be? Should illegal immigrants be punished less severely than speeders, or should speeders be punished more severely than they are now? Felonies for speeders? Automatic prison time for speeding? These would certainly make our highways safer.
What is (IMHO) Actually Happening
The reason certain people on TV (O’Reilly and his ilk) continue to exaggerate the numbers of illegal immigrants, and insist in the face of all reliable evidence that they cost this country huge amounts of money and human life, is because they know that their viewers do not like the idea of immigrants coming to our country, and these viewers don’t always know why they don’t like it. So, the doomsayers feed them a plausible reason: it must be that the immigrants are dangerous and expensive. They must be stealing from us. They must be hurting us. Now, people who don’t like the foreigners can indulge their instinct to punish and punish, telling themselves they’re protecting America.
I suspect the real reason for insisting on increasing punishments for illegal immigration is a basic discomfort with things (and people) who are strange to us. Otherwise, the suggested punishments would fit the crime.
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July 19th, 2008 — photos, updates
Fair Verona is Shakespeare as he never intended. Graham Jenner and Kerri Bojman have remixed and resampled Romeo and Juliet (with lines from other Shakespearean plays) to create the one-act tale of a community killing its most beautiful young people through an obsession with conformity and ritual. The text is pure Shakespeare, mashed up and rearranged. The themes of the play are not exactly foreign to the Bard’s work, but while they’re merely implicit in the original R&J, here they are explicit and a bit chilling.
The play is being put on at the McMaster University Summer Drama Festival (website here), a perennial celebration of theater completely by students. The budget is miniscule, the stage was built by volunteers, but the offerings at this festival are often amazing. McMaster has more than its share of talented actors, but it also produces skilled stage crew, directors, and (obviously) playwrights.
This festival is one of the best bangs for your theater buck anywhere. Talented young women and men come together every year to put it together from scratch, and their dedication always shows. The music was even composed by one of the actors, who is also an advanced music student.
Fair Verona starts this weekend, with three more performances next week. See the SDF website for more details. And here are some more shots from the rehearsals. Enjoy!
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July 16th, 2008 — photos, updates
Fair Verona is coming along nicely. It’s a thoughtful, lovely piece about a nice, cohesive community crushing young love like a ladybug. Last night was the first rehearsal at the outdoor stage in The Hollow. Mosquitoes, volume issues, etc… but it’s still a great play. I’m loving it. There was far too little light to take decent crisp snapshot-type photos last night, but there was enough for some long-exposure crazy shots, so here is one. I like to think that Shakespeare would have approved of the ghostly apparitions strutting on the stage.
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July 13th, 2008 — thoughts
The Times Online reported that Pres. Bush has given yet more good vibrations to the idea of air strikes on Iran, if Iran is seen as an imminent threat to Israel. The article included this little snippet:
Iran’s state-run media reported that one of them was a modified Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which has a claimed range of 1,250 miles and could theoretically deliver a one-ton nuclear warhead over Israeli cities.
If they had any nuclear warheads! Does anyone even remember the fact that they almost certainly do not?!? Certainly not the author of the Times Online article.
As a kid, I readily swallowed the Israel-must-be-protected-at-all-costs line my Republican culture fed me. But now… Here are some points that speak very loudly in my head:
- Iran, as far as everyfreakingbody knows (including the American intelligence community) … repeat after me … HAS NO NUKES! Also, it is believed that they stopped even trying to get them, a few years ago.
- ISRAEL HAS LOTS OF NUKES!
- Our last involvement in a preemptive war is now generally seen as a large mistake.
- This would be not even be a classic a preemptive war, but something one step worse: a preemptive war on behalf of somebody who is not us. Since when do we care about attacking countries suspected of posing a threat to someone else?
- Also not helpful, though not directly related: recent revelations that Israel has active spies in the U.S., sending state security secrets back to Mossad or whoever. What the Heck, So-Called Allies?
- Also also not helpful, and slightly more related: Israel uses some very questionable tactics in its dealings with suspected terrorists and other threats to its security. When North Korea does similar things, our President wastes no time calling them evil. There’s just a teensy bit of a double standard here.
I’m currently sensitive to the view that Israel has followed a somewhat bellicose foreign policy for many years, apparently confident that Big Brother America would bail it out of any serious problems it might get itself into. I think we need to temper our support. Israel can take care of itself, and even if it couldn’t — this is key — we have no responsibility to fight its battles. Like pretty much everybody else on the planet, Israel might even benefit from having some motivation to pursue diplomatic channels before resorting to saber-rattling and unilateral shows of force. But that’s another issue; it’s really Israel’s business.
Let me reiterate that phrase. It’s their business. Not ours. Keep us out of it. Yes, they’re an underdog in some ways, but it’s also true that they could obliterate Iran at the push of a button. We are an overextended empire, slogging through at least one too many foreign military commitments. We need to just chill out with the preemptive military strikes and related rhetoric. Especially on behalf of a whole other nation, whose intentions toward us are not so certain as we used to think.
Let Israel fix its own problems, at least until someone actually attacks them. We’ve got problems of our own, and they’re going to take a long time and a lot of money to fix.
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July 10th, 2008 — thoughts
I just read a thought-provoking opinion piece by Harold Myerson, about U.S. businesses systematically pulling their investments out of westernizing nations like China, and committing to countries like Vietnam, which still have communist economic systems, no unions, no labor laws, low wages, and economic predictability. Communism (in other countries) is good for (our) business. Mr. Myerson ends his piece by suggesting that the American soldiers killed in the Vietnam war “…whose names are on that wall on the Mall probably didn’t realize how compatible with global American enterprise Vietnamese communism would turn out to be or how the cause of democracy would turn out to have been of no real importance at all.”
This essay got me thinking, as I often do, about governments, economics, and religion. The connections here might not be totally apparent at first, but bear with me. Perhaps this will all hang together by the time I’m done.
We Mormons believe that the Founding Fathers of the USA were inspired to develop the system of self-government that was established in New England in the 1770s . We also have a book of scripture detailing struggles between self-government and totalitarian rule in two precolumbian civilizations. Some of us even remember that the ancient nation of Israel had a similar struggle, early on. Unfortunately, in the talk about the inspired nature of democracy, we seem to gloss over the issue of economics, lumping it in with the politics.
If you spend any time in LDS groups in the US, you will encounter many people who vigorously defend capitalism and the pursuit of individual wealth. It’s clear that modern revelation allows for this system (I don’t think there’s any special circle of hell reserved for capitalists or business owners), but the scriptures provide much more endorsement of noncapitalist economic systems as the ideal for the Lord’s people. Ancient Israel, the so-called “Primitive Church,” the Nephites (and Lamanites) at their most righteous — all had property systems distinctly different from our modern American/European capitalist system. Even in the mid-19th century, the Church briefly practiced a communal form of property ownership and redistribution with the express goal “…that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low” (D&C 104:16).
Don’t get me wrong; none of these systems was communism, or really even socialism. But they were also most certainly not capitalism, as we know it today
Back to the present: many Mormons, in my experience, seem to think that, just as liberal democracy is the government system established by God for our time, capitalism is His economic system. The first part (politics) is firmly established by revelation, but I’m not sure they have a leg to stand on, for the second part (economics). Although the Lord clearly tolerates our current American economic system, with its hugely uneven accumulation of individual wealth, I can’t think of a single instance where He recommends it. And I can think of at least a dozen where He either suggests or outright states that inequality in wealth is a Very Bad Thing, especially among the members of His Church.
Why, then, do we hang on to this feeling that our current economic system is inspired (or at least endorsed)? The traditions of our fathers, for one thing. No matter how powerful an ideology or doctrine is, culture often has an influence on people that is nearly impossible to supplant. As my friend Amanda and I were discussing the other day, the flavor of Catholicism is influenced by the cultures in which it has been implemented, and the same is true with Mormonism. The Gospel was re-introduced in the fledgling United States, to Americans, and it has had an American flavor ever since.
Culture can be a harsh mistress. We have mechanisms to pressure cultural deviants either back into the mainstream, or — failing that — completely out of our society as traitors. An unquestioning belief in the divinity of capitalism makes it easier to fit in with friends, co-workers, and fellow students in conservative circles in the US. It certainly makes it easier to feel good about North Americans being the richest people on earth. It makes it easier to buy things we don’t really need at Wal-Mart and Best Buy, while the cultural deviants are going on about consumerism and sweatshops in third-world countries. And it certainly reduces the mental effort required when considering U.S. actions with economic consequences abroad.
Acceptance of our culture reduces the need to think carefully about lots of things.
Of course, acceptance of an alternative culture has exactly the same problems as accepting a dominant culture. Belieeeeve me, I see many of the moral problems inherent in so-called “liberal culture” in the U.S. I can’t blame anyone who decides that these moral compromises are worse than those involved with “conservative culture,” and puts their eggs in the latter basket.
The world often poses us with untenable options, such as “liberal vs. conservative.” True religion often gives us (and requires of us) outside-the-box choices that don’t fall into any of the prefabricated alternatives presented by our culture. It is my belief that God has — if not a culture, per se – certain critical elements of culture that He wants implemented in the communities of people who follow His advice, and they don’t always line up nicely behind accepted political opinions. By the same token, there are many aspects of the cultures marinating us that are incompatible with His guidelines.
Although it’s hard for people (like me) who grew up in the Church to realize sometimes, the culture that the Lord would have us adopt may not always seem comfortable or familiar to us.
Human cultures are amazing, complex phenomena. They have emerged over thousands of years, through the fascinating, tawdry, glorious and mundane social processes that we humans wallow in. But to settle comfortably into one of these cultures, and uncritically insist that it is God’s will that we do so is a serious mistake.
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July 9th, 2008 — webthings
Last night I spent about half an hour clicking over and over again on the random proverb remixes at http://www.neonwinter.com/sayings/ … It was a lot of fun. Here are the best returns from this foray into capricious randomnocity (organized into categories for convenience):
Made Me Giggle:
You, no gain. (D’oh!)
His bark is worse than your face.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw a cat.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with some eggs. (pretty much anything with “some eggs” makes me laugh)
Ignorance is boys.
Where there’s smoke there’s you.
Your face will inherit the earth. (this sounds like a bit of a veiled threat)
Two in the bush is a friend indeed. (perhaps this one is about camping…?)
Neccessity is the mother of sorry. (it totally is!)
Every man has small packages. (Really, pretty obvious)
His tools gather no moss. (funnier with the “s” moved to the end of “gather”)
The grass is always greener on your face.
Makes Ya Think:
A cat may look at blood.
Kill two birds with what you eat.
No news is power.
Beauty is nine tenths of the law.
A rolling stone gathers a free lunch.
Reasonable Assertions:
Familiarity breeds knowledge. (Some of my students could stand to grok this)
Power makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. (well, maybe “wise”)
No man is a cat.
Some eggs are better than one.
Laughter is fun.
Hell hath no fury like boils. (I’ve never had one, but this sounds accurate)
Drink favours the bold.
A penny saved is a penny saved.
Classical Studies:
Rome never strikes twice in the same place. (I think this is my favorite!)
A journey of a thousand miles begins with beauty.
Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved rome.
Wise:
Virtue is the earth.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw honesty.
Try again begins with one step.
Pride is the root of all evil. (The late Ezra T. Benson would approve)
There’s no use crying over a woman.
Strangely Wise:
A silver lining spoils the broth.
Necessity is the mother of home.
There’s no such thing as beauty.
There’s no use crying over valour.
Laughter is next to godliness.
Children should be seen, not perfect.
The road to hell is paved with those who wait.
Ignorance travels fast.
Two is company; three is two wrongs. (so… one is no wrongs?)
The law breeds contempt.
Ignorance is valour.
There are two sides to bliss.
Clothes make the law. (especially powdered wigs or suits from expensive tailors)
Many hands make blood.
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July 8th, 2008 — updates, webthings
In some websurfing a week or two ago, I found this post, in which one Alan Wall, a blogger apparently living in Mexico (which sounds pretty cool, really), cited a Mexican official who said that the U.S. was deporting too many immigrants back to Mexico, 56% of whom were criminals convicted of crimes in the U.S. Okay, interesting stuff. But Mr. Wall begins his article,
“Open border promoters are fond of telling us that illegal aliens “aren’t criminals”. But just recently…”
That is, he established a position right away using this report as evidence that illegal aliens are criminals, in some generalized sense. This was annoying to me, and it’s untrue, as far as anyone currently knows. I couldn’t find a place to comment on Mr. Wall’s blog entry on Vdare.com, so I emailed him. My email said,
This article was pretty fascinating, in its core. However, in writing, you make two mistakes, one based on lack of knowledge of research, and one based on simple logic.
1. The reason people who study this issue (not all of them are “open
border promoters”) keep saying that [most] “illegal aliens ‘aren’t
criminals’” is simply because that is what the best research so
far tells us. It’s not mystery science; it’s the same kind of
research that tells us how many people we have in our country, and
what kind of crops are being grown in Kansas. By innuendo, you
place more faith in the expressed opinion of one Mexican official
than in dozens of scientific research projects, including the data
from tens of thousands of actual people. This decision on your
part seems to reveal your biases.
2. If this official’s numbers are correct (over 56% of re-deported
immigrants are convicted of crimes in the U.S.), this still does
not mean that a majority of those **entering** the U.S. in the
first place are criminals. In fact, the same research you seem
bent on ignoring shows that most Mexicans entering the U.S.
(legally or illegally) go to great pains not to break laws or
otherwise come to the attention of the authorities. All we can say
from Mr. Moreno’s data (assuming it’s accurate) is that a majority
of those the U.S. government catches and chooses to deport have
been convicted of a crime.
Another problem here is that I’m not sure (from your article) whether Mr. Moreno is talking about only illegal aliens (entirely possible), or all immigrants. It is likely that legal immigrants who have not yet obtained residency or citizenship could be disproportionately targeted for deportation, especially if deporting them would make beds available in overcrowded prisons and jails. If I were the government, I’d start sending back the immigrants who were committing crimes, and leave the law-abiding ones alone, wouldn’t you?
Or maybe you’re just in favor of keeping everyone out who’s not already here. The pattern of selective attention to only certain kinds of facts and logic in your blog post suggests as much.
I couldn’t find a link to post this as a public comment on your blog. I hope you will see fit to do so.
I know, it was maybe just a tad bellicose. I should have been more conciliatory, perhaps. Also maybe I should have pointed out the questionable wisdom of taking mid-level bureaucrats’ assertions at face value. Alan Wall’s reply:
All illegal aliens, regardless of what else they do, are lawbreakers. However, a signficant proportion of them commit other crimes as well.
The Mexican government defends illegal aliens in the U.S., and will often use this phrase “they’re not criminals”. However, Mexican officials in less guarded moments point out that some of them are, even by Mexican standards.
Not exactly addressing the criticisms, so I wrote back:
So your defense to the criticism includes no consideration of actual data, no new thinking, and no acknowledgment of the main criticisms I presented. Brilliant. I’m sure you have a great audience who never questions such things. I still invite you to place my comment publicly on your blog post.
Yes, my irritation was showing (*blush*). I am a little ashamed, but perhaps you will also see that Mr. Wall didn’t even address any of the glaring (to me, anyway) flaws I suggested in his original post. He wrote back:
In your message, you never disproved one thing in my blog entry. But, if you’re really determined to see your name in print, send your message to the letters section at VDARE.COM, to jguzzardi@vdare.com
I did so.
Now, as a warning, I tell you that this conversation is about to become hopelessly juvenile. And my part is not much more mature than Mr. Wall’s:
Mr. Wall,
I referred to an entire body of research that casts major doubts on your blog entry (if you need them, I can get you several citations for the research I refer to), and I also pointed out serious errors in the thinking that went into it (I can also probably find a good textbook on logic, if you like). Replying that I haven’t “disproved” anything is not a convincing defense of your position. The more important point, in my opinion, is that your blog post didn’t *prove* anything. In fact, it used innuendo and implication to suggest something that is almost certainly not true. It’s not my job as a reader to prove things; however, it *is* your job, as a supposed journalist, to check your facts and think more carefully before publishing things.
At your suggestion, I have sent my original letter to the “letters” section. Thank you for the link.
Sinking lower…
You continue to rant on, yet you haven’t disproved one thing in my blog entry.
And lower…
Yes, I have. The fact that you can’t see it is a separate issue.
….aaaaaaaand rock bottom:
No you haven’t.
Once the dialogue is at the second-grade level, I don’t think there’s anywhere else to go except perhaps into the colorful world of profanity and “yo mama” jokes. So I’m stopping. Except, of course, to post the conversation here so my friends can mock us both. :D
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July 4th, 2008 — photos, updates
Last week, I liberated an old Velo Sport from a neighbor’s yard. For Brad! For brad, I tell you! This week, I removed (almost) all the extra parts. No more shifters, rear derailleur, front derailleur, 6-speed Atom 77 freewheel, or very-long chain. Now it’s a nearly-respectable, very civilized single-speed bike.
Notes:
- The mtb pedal clips are a little too deep, though joyously wide and tall
- I still need to cut off the offending and extraneous outer chainring on the front (but I don’t have a dremel tool or angle grinder)
- The seat is pretty cheesy; after riding one of those pressure-relieving seats for a couple of years, this one feels like a golf ball is constantly being shoved up my wazoo
- The brakes are pretty awesome
- The steel wheels and Maillard hubs are perhaps not the lightest, but I like them. They both need cleaning.
- The beautiful aluminum sleeve in the center of the drop bars concealed a lousy steel bar under the tape. And the bar was not bilaterally symmetrical! Geez…
- This bike needs a serious bath, and probably everything repacked and lubed
- There is a definite clacking, possibly in the bottom bracket, with every pedal revolution; must diagnose and fix… someday
- The chain that was on this was too skinny to fit over the BMX freewheel, so I got an inexpensive BMX chain
- BMX chains don’t fit in regular chain tools
Anyhoo, I took it for its voyage of rebirth today, and that was fun. I went over to the Chedoke Golf Club and climbed the stairs, then rode along the ridge through the ritzy neighborhoods, then a bit on Bruce Trail, then back through Ancaster and down the mountain on Wilson St. Good ride. I like the bike.
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July 3rd, 2008 — photos
Jazz Hands! Continue reading →
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July 2nd, 2008 — photos
Alex said this was her favorite shot from the Hamilton Harbour fireworks last night, so here it is. O Canada! Two more fireworks pics after the cut.
Continue reading →
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