by Dave Karlotski
There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Thursday, 20 December 2007
Humans remain the strangest animals
Meet the shepherd who herds with his car
December 19 2007 at 06:08PM
Paris - A selection of unusual animal goings-on in 2007:
Heavily-armed police surrounded a bank branch in the Philippines after a jangling alarm alerted them to movements inside it. When all exits but one had been closed off, and the police piled in for the expected showdown with armed robbers, a stray cat sauntered out. It had set off the alarm after getting in through a small hole in the roof.
Among recipients of the spoof "Ignobel" awards for zany science, handed out each year at the time of the real Nobel prizes, was one for a research team which ascertained that hamsters could more easily get over jet-lag when given the sexual impotence drug Viagra. Another winning team tried to find out whether rats could distinguish between Japanese and Dutch when spoken backwards - they couldn't.
A pet cat taken to a veterinary clinic in Australia with dilated pupils, a racing heart and agitated movements, turned out to be high on cocaine and other drugs left around after a party. It recovered.
In Sweden, the risks involved in giving medical treatment to large animals were illustrated when a giraffe collapsed on zoo officials who were trying to anaesthetise it. The boss of the zoo suffered concussion, while the unfortunate giraffe died from its fall.
Hedgehogs are a threatened species on the British mainland, where they notably get run over by cars, but they are far too numerous on the remote Scottish island of Uist, where they eat the eggs of rare birds. When animal lovers got upset about the local practice of culling the prickly creatures, the local authorities simply decided to round them up alive, take them across the water and release them.
Security officials taking part in an anti-corruption drive in Bangladesh were called to the home of a former government minister not to seize ill-gotten luxury goods, but to confiscate an impressive menagerie. Animals kept illegally in the man's home included four deer, seven peacocks, two emus and various other rare birds.
A 17-year-old tame cockatoo at a wildlife sanctuary in England decided that a bowl of chocolate Easter eggs was the real thing, and spent two weeks sitting on them, officials said.
Officials from a town in Australia's tropical north Queensland region suggested that local golfers could try practicing their drives on cane toads - an introduced species that has become a notorious pest. Animal rights defenders were not amused.
Fishery officials in China restocked a river with 13 truckloads of live carp, only to realise that thousands of residents from a nearby city had immediately swarmed to the banks a short way downstream and caught almost all of them.
The rustic image of the traditional sheep-herder took a hit in Greece, when it emerged that a shepherd in the centre of the country had simply trained his flock to follow his car. Getting on in years, the resourceful herder was no longer able to walk alongside the animals.
A bird hunter in the US state of Ohio suffered the indignity of being shot in the leg by one of his own dogs. As he was retrieving a bird, the dog stepped on the trigger of his gun, which was lying on the ground and pointing in his direction.
In a bid to emulate the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" in Los Angeles, dog fanciers in London inaugurated a canine version. Many of the first inductees were in fact fictional creatures, including the film stars Lassie and Fang, the latter from the "Harry Potter" stories. But fans of the Belgian boy detective Tintin, a cartoon character, regretted the omission of his dog, Snowy.
Meanwhile a real-world dog, a Maltese called Trouble, was reported to have been removed from her residence in New York and taken to live at an undisclosed location in Florida. Trouble became probably the richest canine in the world when her late mistress, controversial hotel heiress Leona Helmsley, left her 12 million dollars in her will. The dog's keepers explained that she had received death threats in New York.
December 19 2007 at 06:08PM
Paris - A selection of unusual animal goings-on in 2007:
Heavily-armed police surrounded a bank branch in the Philippines after a jangling alarm alerted them to movements inside it. When all exits but one had been closed off, and the police piled in for the expected showdown with armed robbers, a stray cat sauntered out. It had set off the alarm after getting in through a small hole in the roof.
Among recipients of the spoof "Ignobel" awards for zany science, handed out each year at the time of the real Nobel prizes, was one for a research team which ascertained that hamsters could more easily get over jet-lag when given the sexual impotence drug Viagra. Another winning team tried to find out whether rats could distinguish between Japanese and Dutch when spoken backwards - they couldn't.
A pet cat taken to a veterinary clinic in Australia with dilated pupils, a racing heart and agitated movements, turned out to be high on cocaine and other drugs left around after a party. It recovered.
In Sweden, the risks involved in giving medical treatment to large animals were illustrated when a giraffe collapsed on zoo officials who were trying to anaesthetise it. The boss of the zoo suffered concussion, while the unfortunate giraffe died from its fall.
Hedgehogs are a threatened species on the British mainland, where they notably get run over by cars, but they are far too numerous on the remote Scottish island of Uist, where they eat the eggs of rare birds. When animal lovers got upset about the local practice of culling the prickly creatures, the local authorities simply decided to round them up alive, take them across the water and release them.
Security officials taking part in an anti-corruption drive in Bangladesh were called to the home of a former government minister not to seize ill-gotten luxury goods, but to confiscate an impressive menagerie. Animals kept illegally in the man's home included four deer, seven peacocks, two emus and various other rare birds.
A 17-year-old tame cockatoo at a wildlife sanctuary in England decided that a bowl of chocolate Easter eggs was the real thing, and spent two weeks sitting on them, officials said.
Officials from a town in Australia's tropical north Queensland region suggested that local golfers could try practicing their drives on cane toads - an introduced species that has become a notorious pest. Animal rights defenders were not amused.
Fishery officials in China restocked a river with 13 truckloads of live carp, only to realise that thousands of residents from a nearby city had immediately swarmed to the banks a short way downstream and caught almost all of them.
The rustic image of the traditional sheep-herder took a hit in Greece, when it emerged that a shepherd in the centre of the country had simply trained his flock to follow his car. Getting on in years, the resourceful herder was no longer able to walk alongside the animals.
A bird hunter in the US state of Ohio suffered the indignity of being shot in the leg by one of his own dogs. As he was retrieving a bird, the dog stepped on the trigger of his gun, which was lying on the ground and pointing in his direction.
In a bid to emulate the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" in Los Angeles, dog fanciers in London inaugurated a canine version. Many of the first inductees were in fact fictional creatures, including the film stars Lassie and Fang, the latter from the "Harry Potter" stories. But fans of the Belgian boy detective Tintin, a cartoon character, regretted the omission of his dog, Snowy.
Meanwhile a real-world dog, a Maltese called Trouble, was reported to have been removed from her residence in New York and taken to live at an undisclosed location in Florida. Trouble became probably the richest canine in the world when her late mistress, controversial hotel heiress Leona Helmsley, left her 12 million dollars in her will. The dog's keepers explained that she had received death threats in New York.
Oh dear ... this is bad
Scorpions stamped out
December 20 2007 at 07:18AM
By Political Bureau
The days of the elite crime-fighting unit, the Scorpions, are numbered.
The Scorpions will be disbanded by June next year at the latest, according to discussions at the ANC's national conference on Wednesday.
It is not clear what the effect will be on pending cases, especially into police chief Jackie Selebi and ANC president Jacob Zuma.
Scorpions investigators will find a new home in the SA Police Service, while their prosecutors will remain in the National Prosecuting Authority and the justice department.
The news on the fate of the Scorpions emerged after the peace and stability commission agreed at the ANC's conference on Wednesday that the unit be disbanded.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula confirmed that the commission had met and that it had endorsed the ANC's June policy conference proposal. All that remains is the official stamp of approval, when the proposal is put before the ANC conference plenary for the final decision.
"The commission has taken the decision to dissolve the Scorpions, but the conference ultimately decides," Nqakula said.
On Wednesday, ANC delegates attending the commission said the view was that the Scorpions were responsible for their own downfall.
The perception that the crimefighting unit was used by senior government officials to target Zuma was said to be one of the principal reasons for its demise.
The unit has often been claimed to be an example of President Thabo Mbeki's alleged abuse of power.
The failure of the Khampepe Commission and the perception that the Presidency had intervened to stop suspended National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli from arresting Selebi on several charges were cited as other reasons for Wednesday's decision.
The ANC is also expected to call for the metro police to fall under the command of the police commissioner.
December 20 2007 at 07:18AM
By Political Bureau
The days of the elite crime-fighting unit, the Scorpions, are numbered.
The Scorpions will be disbanded by June next year at the latest, according to discussions at the ANC's national conference on Wednesday.
It is not clear what the effect will be on pending cases, especially into police chief Jackie Selebi and ANC president Jacob Zuma.
Scorpions investigators will find a new home in the SA Police Service, while their prosecutors will remain in the National Prosecuting Authority and the justice department.
The news on the fate of the Scorpions emerged after the peace and stability commission agreed at the ANC's conference on Wednesday that the unit be disbanded.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula confirmed that the commission had met and that it had endorsed the ANC's June policy conference proposal. All that remains is the official stamp of approval, when the proposal is put before the ANC conference plenary for the final decision.
"The commission has taken the decision to dissolve the Scorpions, but the conference ultimately decides," Nqakula said.
On Wednesday, ANC delegates attending the commission said the view was that the Scorpions were responsible for their own downfall.
The perception that the crimefighting unit was used by senior government officials to target Zuma was said to be one of the principal reasons for its demise.
The unit has often been claimed to be an example of President Thabo Mbeki's alleged abuse of power.
The failure of the Khampepe Commission and the perception that the Presidency had intervened to stop suspended National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli from arresting Selebi on several charges were cited as other reasons for Wednesday's decision.
The ANC is also expected to call for the metro police to fall under the command of the police commissioner.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
Bring back the death penalty
Vandals deface ancient San rock art site
December 19 2007 at 11:00AM
By Aeysha Kassiem
Valuable rock art that paints the colourful history of the country's past is being defaced.
While rock art sites - painted by the San up to 6 000 years ago - throughout the Western Cape are protected by the National Monuments Council (NMC), a rock art site in Elands Bay has been scribbled over.
An NMC sign close to the site reads: "The Elands Bay cave rock paintings reflect the religious experiences and beliefs of the San (Bushmen) whose ancestors lived in this area for more than 20 000 years.
"Please enjoy looking at the art but do not touch the paintings or deface them and the other rocks in the vicinity in any way. Wetting the paintings is particularly harmful."
The NMC no longer exists and has been replaced by provincial resource heritage authorities.
The Clanwilliam Municipality did not respond to messages left by the Cape Times.
Director for arts, culture, language and heritage at the provincial department of cultural Affairs and Sports, Jane Moleleki, said on Tuesday it was the first time she had been informed of the damage. She urged the public to respect the province's heritage.
"Rock art is our heritage in the Western Cape. It has to be preserved and should be protected. If there is vandalism, the department will have to look into it."
She said accessibility to the site is usually what affected its protection.
"It does depend, to some degree, on where it is situated - whether there is easy access then it makes it easier for vandals. Other sites are on private property."
Asked whether cleaning the vandalised rock art also affected the paintings, she said it depended on how the piece had been vandalised. Sometimes specialists had to be brought in.
"We need to educate people through community participation and explain to them the significance of rock art and how it contributes to our heritage and its importance."
aeysha.kassiem@inl.co.za
http://www.lonker.net/art_african_1.htm
December 19 2007 at 11:00AM
By Aeysha Kassiem
Valuable rock art that paints the colourful history of the country's past is being defaced.
While rock art sites - painted by the San up to 6 000 years ago - throughout the Western Cape are protected by the National Monuments Council (NMC), a rock art site in Elands Bay has been scribbled over.
An NMC sign close to the site reads: "The Elands Bay cave rock paintings reflect the religious experiences and beliefs of the San (Bushmen) whose ancestors lived in this area for more than 20 000 years.
"Please enjoy looking at the art but do not touch the paintings or deface them and the other rocks in the vicinity in any way. Wetting the paintings is particularly harmful."
The NMC no longer exists and has been replaced by provincial resource heritage authorities.
The Clanwilliam Municipality did not respond to messages left by the Cape Times.
Director for arts, culture, language and heritage at the provincial department of cultural Affairs and Sports, Jane Moleleki, said on Tuesday it was the first time she had been informed of the damage. She urged the public to respect the province's heritage.
"Rock art is our heritage in the Western Cape. It has to be preserved and should be protected. If there is vandalism, the department will have to look into it."
She said accessibility to the site is usually what affected its protection.
"It does depend, to some degree, on where it is situated - whether there is easy access then it makes it easier for vandals. Other sites are on private property."
Asked whether cleaning the vandalised rock art also affected the paintings, she said it depended on how the piece had been vandalised. Sometimes specialists had to be brought in.
"We need to educate people through community participation and explain to them the significance of rock art and how it contributes to our heritage and its importance."
aeysha.kassiem@inl.co.za
http://www.lonker.net/art_african_1.htm
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
More maths (?)
Monkeys ace mental maths test
18/12/2007 07:50 - (SA)
Chicago - A college education doesn't give you much of an edge over a monkey when it comes to doing some basic arithmetic, according to a study released on Monday that underscores the surprising mental agility of our simian relatives.
In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as well as college students, showing they're no slouches when it comes to number crunching.
The macaques got their sums right 76% of the time, while the students got the correct answer 94% of the time in a series of increasingly challenging maths tests.
"We know that animals can recognise quantities, but there is less evidence for their ability to carry out explicit mathematical tasks, such as addition," said Jessica Cantlon, a researcher at Duke University Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience in Durham, North Carolina.
"Our study shows that they can."
The study in the Public Library of Science Biology comes just a couple of weeks after Japanese researchers revealed that young chimps outperformed college students in tests of short-term memory.
The young chimps surprised the Japanese investigators by being able to retrace patterns of numbers flashed up on a computer screen faster than their human rivals.
The current study, according to researchers, goes one step further by showing that primates can process information as well as reproduce it, and that there's more to our closest living relatives than "monkey see, monkey do."
Evolutionary past
It also suggests that basic arithmetic may be part of our shared evolutionary past.
"Humans have some pretty sophisticated problem-solving skills, but this study suggests they may also be able to tap into some primitive method of making calculations," said Carlton.
She said the assumption is that the monkeys are using the same kind of primitive non-verbal mathematics.
For the test, the monkeys and students were seated at a computer and shown a screen with a certain amount of dots, followed by a screen with another amount of dots.
The third screen contained two boxes, one containing the sum of the first two sets of dots, and one containing a different number. The monkeys were rewarded with the soft drink, Kool-Aid, for selecting the box containing the correct sum of the sets.
The students were told not to verbally count the dots.
The average response time for both the college students and the macaques was one second, and at least in one other respect, their performance was surprisingly similar.
Both the monkeys and the students took longer to make a choice and made more mistakes when the two choice boxes were close in number.
"We call this the ratio effect," said Cantlon. "What's remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate." - Sapa-AFP
____________________________________________________________________
I'm confused.
18/12/2007 07:50 - (SA)
Chicago - A college education doesn't give you much of an edge over a monkey when it comes to doing some basic arithmetic, according to a study released on Monday that underscores the surprising mental agility of our simian relatives.
In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as well as college students, showing they're no slouches when it comes to number crunching.
The macaques got their sums right 76% of the time, while the students got the correct answer 94% of the time in a series of increasingly challenging maths tests.
"We know that animals can recognise quantities, but there is less evidence for their ability to carry out explicit mathematical tasks, such as addition," said Jessica Cantlon, a researcher at Duke University Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience in Durham, North Carolina.
"Our study shows that they can."
The study in the Public Library of Science Biology comes just a couple of weeks after Japanese researchers revealed that young chimps outperformed college students in tests of short-term memory.
The young chimps surprised the Japanese investigators by being able to retrace patterns of numbers flashed up on a computer screen faster than their human rivals.
The current study, according to researchers, goes one step further by showing that primates can process information as well as reproduce it, and that there's more to our closest living relatives than "monkey see, monkey do."
Evolutionary past
It also suggests that basic arithmetic may be part of our shared evolutionary past.
"Humans have some pretty sophisticated problem-solving skills, but this study suggests they may also be able to tap into some primitive method of making calculations," said Carlton.
She said the assumption is that the monkeys are using the same kind of primitive non-verbal mathematics.
For the test, the monkeys and students were seated at a computer and shown a screen with a certain amount of dots, followed by a screen with another amount of dots.
The third screen contained two boxes, one containing the sum of the first two sets of dots, and one containing a different number. The monkeys were rewarded with the soft drink, Kool-Aid, for selecting the box containing the correct sum of the sets.
The students were told not to verbally count the dots.
The average response time for both the college students and the macaques was one second, and at least in one other respect, their performance was surprisingly similar.
Both the monkeys and the students took longer to make a choice and made more mistakes when the two choice boxes were close in number.
"We call this the ratio effect," said Cantlon. "What's remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate." - Sapa-AFP
____________________________________________________________________
I'm confused.
Friday, 14 December 2007
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
Mathematics
'Mathlete' breaks own record
11/12/2007 21:11 - (SA)
London - The world's fastest human calculator on Tuesday broke his own record for working out a 200-digit number using nothing but brainpower to produce the answer in just over 70 seconds.
Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, correctly calculated the 13th root of a random 200-digit number from a possible 393 trillion answers.
The so-called 'mathlete' produced the answer of 2 407 899 893 032 210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London's Science Museum.
A computer was used to produce a random 200-digit number before he sat down to calculate the answer in his head.
The museum's curator of mathematics, Jane Wess, said: "He sat down and it was all very quiet - and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it.
"I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally.
"He seems to have a large memory and he's made this his life's ambition. It's quite remarkable to see it happen. A very small number of people have this extraordinary ability; nowadays there is only a handful."
Lemaire, who attends the University of Reims in northern France, began demonstrating his prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100-digit number but gave up trying to improve his performance when he calculated an answer in under four seconds in 2004.
Like an athlete, he trains his brain daily for the far harder task of finding the 13th root of 200-digit numbers.
11/12/2007 21:11 - (SA)
London - The world's fastest human calculator on Tuesday broke his own record for working out a 200-digit number using nothing but brainpower to produce the answer in just over 70 seconds.
Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, correctly calculated the 13th root of a random 200-digit number from a possible 393 trillion answers.
The so-called 'mathlete' produced the answer of 2 407 899 893 032 210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London's Science Museum.
A computer was used to produce a random 200-digit number before he sat down to calculate the answer in his head.
The museum's curator of mathematics, Jane Wess, said: "He sat down and it was all very quiet - and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it.
"I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally.
"He seems to have a large memory and he's made this his life's ambition. It's quite remarkable to see it happen. A very small number of people have this extraordinary ability; nowadays there is only a handful."
Lemaire, who attends the University of Reims in northern France, began demonstrating his prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100-digit number but gave up trying to improve his performance when he calculated an answer in under four seconds in 2004.
Like an athlete, he trains his brain daily for the far harder task of finding the 13th root of 200-digit numbers.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Friday, 7 December 2007
We mourn the death of ...
London Times Obituary for Mr. Common Sense:
'Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: * Knowing when to come in out of the rain;* why the early bird gets the worm;* Life isn't always fair;* and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Elastoplast to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.' And a little extra.....................
'Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: * Knowing when to come in out of the rain;* why the early bird gets the worm;* Life isn't always fair;* and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Elastoplast to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.' And a little extra.....................
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Blogging
Wow. I made over 2000 hits :D, it's been going a long time now for me. A couple of things have changed, not all or the better, but not all bad either.
I copy and paste TOO MUCH now, instead of creating essays. Partly becauseit takes a lot of energy, and i'm lazy, but partly because i want what's here to be good, mostly. When i look and ealuate my environment, little to smile about.
Seriously, traffic - bad, work - dull, politics - scary, religion - absurd.
I try keep positive, but same time sometimes all i can do is say "LOOK".
Some of the shit going on in the place is beyond words.
I'm just keeping on, i suspect that one day i'll look back and think that thee really are the golden years, halcyon days.
I'll keep going, hopefully for some time.
Peace
I copy and paste TOO MUCH now, instead of creating essays. Partly becauseit takes a lot of energy, and i'm lazy, but partly because i want what's here to be good, mostly. When i look and ealuate my environment, little to smile about.
Seriously, traffic - bad, work - dull, politics - scary, religion - absurd.
I try keep positive, but same time sometimes all i can do is say "LOOK".
Some of the shit going on in the place is beyond words.
I'm just keeping on, i suspect that one day i'll look back and think that thee really are the golden years, halcyon days.
I'll keep going, hopefully for some time.
Peace
Monday, 3 December 2007
Last ride for Evel Knievel, man of steel and scars
Daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel is seen in 1977 in the Warner Brothers movie "Viva Knievel!".
EVEL Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and '70s, has died. He was 69.
Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999 he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted through a blood transfusion after one of many violent spills.
Only days before his death, he and rap artist Kanye West settled a lawsuit over West's use of Knievel's trademarked image in a music video.
Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers in 1968 by vaulting his motorcycle 45 metres over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a bone-breaking crash.
He continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcycle in 1974.
Knievel's showmanship, skill and disdain for death were so admired that he became a folk hero.
Performing stunts hundreds of times, Knievel repeatedly shattered bones as well as his bikes. When he was forced to retire in 1980, he told reporters that he was "nothing but scar tissue and surgical steel".
He underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. "I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me," he said.
His health was also compromised by years of heavy drinking; he said at one point he was consuming half a bottle of whiskey a day, washed down with beer chasers.
Robert Craig Knievel was born in the copper-mining town of Butte, Montana, and raised by grandparents.
As he told the story, he acquired the name Evel as a boy. Arrested for stealing hubcaps, he was taken to jail, where the police were holding a man named Knofel, whom they called "Awful Knofel".
They decided to call Robert "Evil Knievel". The name stuck, and some years later, Knievel legally took the name Evel, changing the "i" to "e" because he thought it looked better.
A star athlete at school, he volunteered to be an army paratrooper in the 1950s and made 30 jumps. Afterwards he played hockey with the Charlotte Clippers. Then he took up motorcycle racing until falling and breaking bones in a 1962 race.
At 27, he became co-owner of a motorcycle shop. To attract customers, he announced he would jump 12 metres over parked cars and a box of rattlesnakes and continue on past a mountain lion tethered at the other end. Before a thousand people, he did the stunt but failed to fly far enough; his bike came down on the rattlesnakes. The audience was in awe.
"Right then," he said, "I knew I could draw a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff."
He hit the big time in 1968 with his jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace. "It was terrible," he said afterward. "I lost control of the bike. Everything seemed to come apart. I kept smashing over and over and ended up against a brick wall, 165 feet away."
The accident left him with a fractured skull and broken pelvis, hips and ribs. He was unconscious for a month. But soon after his recovery, he jumped 52 wrecked cars at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
In 1974, Knievel decided to jump almost 500 metres across the Snake River canyon in Idaho. Before thousands of spectators , he took a rocket-powered motorcycle up a long ramp at 560 km/h and soared some 600 metres above the canyon. But his parachute opened prematurely, and he and the cycle drifted to the canyon floor, leaving him without serious injury. He made $US6 million.
He also made a great deal of money the next year when he jumped over 13 double-decker buses in London. He crashed there, too, breaking pelvis, vertebrae and hand.
In Chicago, he soared over an aquarium tank containing 13 sharks but skidded on the exit ramp and fractured his right forearm and his left collarbone.
In 1986, he was fined $US200 in Kansas City, on charges of soliciting an undercover policewoman for immoral purposes. And in 1995, after leaving his wife of 38 years and living with Krystal Kennedy, a younger woman, Knievel was charged with assaulting her. Kennedy ultimately declined to press charges, however, and married him in 1999.
Evel Knievel once described himself as "the last gladiator in the new Rome".
"I am a guy who is first of all a businessman," he once said. "I'm not a stunt man. I'm not a daredevil. I'm" — he paused — "I'm an explorer."
NEW YORK TIMES
■ Knievel played himself in the 1977 movie Viva Knievel! The plot featured a rival trying to kill Knievel and use his 18-wheel truck to smuggle cocaine. George Hamilton portrayed him in a 1971 film and George Eads played him in a 2004 television movie.
■ Among Knievel's notable feats were clearing 19 cars, sailing over 13 Mack trucks and jumping 13 double-decker buses in London, as well as a failed attempt to leap the Snake River canyon in Idaho on a rocket-powered motorcycle.
■ A jailer in Montana was responsible for Knievel's nickname. As a youth, Knievel had several run-ins with police and the jailer dubbed him "Evil Knievel". In order not to be perceived as a bad guy, Knievel later changed the spelling to "Evel" as his daredevil career took off.
It’s said Evel Knievel often quoted (and lived…) the words of Theodore Roosevelt: ‘Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though chequered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.’ Amen.
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One of the last great men of our time, fearless.
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