Answering the News

Harvey Weinstein was shouted down when he started talking about the culture that he was working within as an abuser.  It sounded like he was blaming the culture of accepted abuse as an actual reason for his behavior, and if that was what he was doing it was right to shout him down. But, he did put a smudgy finger on something, and until that’s addressed the culture will really not change.  So, right now, let’s not shout anyone down, let’s examine two sides of the same coin and approach this with the full realization that something can be a part of the culture, and still be morally, even legally, wrong, and shouting won’t make it better.  In fact, the root cause might be drowned out by the shouting. Let us also address the fact that women are still not treated as equals in American society.  We can denigrate the Muslims in the Middle East—and we should continue to pressure them to at least move out of the twelfth and embrace at least the twentieth century—or ...

I’ve been a cyclist for over 30 years, and most of those years I’ve been a reader of Bicycling.  Each month I pull the magazine from the mailbox and leaf through it—always front to back, like John Forester might suggest, if he cared about such things—and notate the articles I’ll read more in depth later, and maybe read the shorter blurbs on the spot. The Issue 2, 2019 was no different: What they ride, ultimate guide, how to stuff.  Then: 10 Greatest Upgrades That Changed the Way We Ride, Train, Eat, Look, Talk, and Think About Cycling. Now, I thought, that’s more a challenge than a section title. Power meter, a tiny fraction have ever used that.  GPS, most of us use that.  The Peugeot team jersey, interesting stuff in more ways than one.  Mia Birk, someone most cyclists have never heard about but who benefit from her work immensely.  I turned the page and stared at Jon Knoll’s missive on the molded, multi-density short, and it was almost a Gary...

Austin American Statesman Article: Giant Houses in Small Neighborhoods Giant houses in little neighborhoods is almost as bad as giant houses in giant neighborhoods.  And to successfully rationalize this trend as creating value to match what was paid for the lot the house sits on, takes ignoring a lot of realities. Forgetting the moral arguments where one compares house size to castle size, and how the average size new home talked about in the article is roughly five times the size of the average house in American in 1959.   Or how the waste of building materials to create something multiple times the size any family needs, and then the cost of heating and cooling something many times the size a family needs; or the confusion so many Americans have of the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’; there is the simple equation that an expensive lot with a new house comparable to a neighborhood size standard will still be worth more than the investment.  Often, qui...

How Dirty Does It Have to Get Before You Realize You’re Partly to Blame It makes one wonder: all the people over the past fifty years, pointing to how dirty politics had become; have they any sense of awareness that the pure filth brought about by the political extremists today—most from the religious right, but many on the left, too—is a direct result of their failure to vote?  The feckless rancidity of Ted Cruz, the bellicose stupidities of Donald Trump, the seemingly benign hostilities of a Greg Abbott; can those who sit out democracy, opting with open arms instead for it’s mindless little brother, capitalism, still be unaware that the tarnishing of politics is greatly furthered each time they don’t vote, when they don’t demand better people running for office? This rolling Constitutional crisis is caused by the Silent Majority letting the Vocal Minority not just drive the dialogue, but elect our representatives.  Civility is not dead, it just went to the mall...