"People actually drove reasonably well and there weren't any major issues with it. "

Except for leading the nation in deaths per highway mile...yeah, I suppose?

Funny how the only person I know to be killed in a traffic collision was, in fact, killed by a drunk driver in Montana.

People don't drive "reasonably well" - ever. People have poorly maintained vehicles, especially in a by-and-large poor state like Montana with very little vehicle inspection. People stare at their cell phones, don't keep their windshields clean, don't use sunglasses, drink, spend too much time fiddling with the radio, get distracted by passengers. Our nation devotes virtually zero resources to any enforcement of traffic laws except speeding. Unless Montana starts doing roadside spot vehicle inspections when they are caught breaking some other law...

Guess who picks up the tab for the millions of dollars in medical care when Joe Cowboy slams his pickup truck into a family of four because he was doing 90mph and his bald tires couldn't stop him in time? The federal government, aka You and Me.

I've never considered this before, but isn't that a bit of "the law of unintended consequences"? For instance, if I know that I can commit a single crime now and pay the full rate or commit multiple crimes and pay them off in parallel, why deterrent is there for me to limit my activities?

I've always hated a law that I've heard of (this is strictly hearsay, I've never actually verified it) where in some parts of the US, if you involve a gun in a robbery there's an automatic minimum sentence which is in line with the sentence for having a gun and committing assault; just by having the gun you're already in as much trouble as if you used it, so there really isn't any incentive to not use it if you think doing so could allow you to avoid capture and prosecution. If you're going to be charged for attempted homicide, it's not like taking a hostage is going to add to your sentence at the end of the day and it has the most narrow chance of getting you off the hook.

My SO is a paralegal and I'm always amazed at the perverse incentives that are built into the legal system since you always seem to be in for a pound when you're in for a penny. No doubt legislation passed by someone "tough on crime", but the public seems to support it. I've always thought that putting someone in a place where they stand to lose nothing is a rather poor position to put them in.

<rambling>
For instance, I had lost my license due to unpaid tickets (I thought I had paid them all off, but I must have missed a payment) and I was pulled over for a taillight being out. At this point I now had a suspended license for driving on a suspended license (aka, strike two before they pull it for 5 years in the state I was then living). I went to a concert with some friends and they all hit the booze a bit hard and when it came time to drive home and they were all too drunk, we let the least drunk guy drive. It was more dangerous than the sober guy driving, obviously, but we reasoned that if we got pulled over the law would take it easier on a guy with a first DUI, a wife and a kid than a guy with a third violation for driving on a suspended license. The math was easy; I got "caught" (I didn't know I was doing anything wrong) a second time and they took my license for a year for the second infraction; your first DUI infraction is an automatic 1 month suspension or so. We knew which crime was "worse" in this case by what would have happened to myself versus what would have happened to the drunk guy that drove us home. We also knew which was safer, but it's not like the cops would have taken that into account, so it wasn't really a consideration in our assessment of the situation.
</rambling>

"They're much like normal biles otherwise and I presume exactly as comfortable."

Comfort comes almost entirely from the tire size and pressure relative to rider weight and road conditions. The frame is largely irrelevant, at least for anything made in the last few decades by any half-competent company.

"Getting the bearings and power transmission were apparently the harddest bits."

Getting alignment on these items is the hardest bit. Bicycles require an incredible degree of proper alignment of a couple of key components in order for things to work right, mostly shifting, but also handling-wise.

"I'd guess that yet another disadvantage of a wooden bicycle, at least when sharing the road with motor vehicles, is that it's impossible to trigger a green traffic signal without enough metal surface to disturb the flux in the induction loop beneath the approach to the intersection."

1)Inductive loop sensors are much better than they used to be, and many can detect aluminum bike frames, metal in the wheels (almost all spokes are metal - carbon fiber spokes are very rare; many rims are still aluminum), or the metal in the drivetrain (chain, cables, derailleurs.)

2)A large percentage of bicycle frames are made from carbon fiber; even many wheels these days. No different from wood.

3)Many traffic lights now use camera-bases systems. They're cheaper and easier to set up/maintain, and can quantify the number of vehicles for better decisions regarding prioritization, etc. I think some can detect emergency vehicles, provide traffic statistics, and record video if there's a crash.

Some, but not all states, allow cyclists to go through a light if it doesn't change for them after X minutes. Idaho allows cyclists to treat red lights as stop signs, a law groups are trying to get passed here.

I'd take your post more seriously if you didn't make absurd generalizations like "steel is very stiff and wood is very flexible." From that alone it's obvious you understand nothing about materials.

They were boneshakers because they didn't have pneumatic tires. This is not true of a modern bicycle, and we also have far more understanding of mechanical systems and materials, including wood, now.

It is a widely perpetuated myth, mostly by bicycle frame makers who are attempting to get you to spend gobs of money on special designs, frame materials, etc that are "vertically stiff and horizontally compliant" (this phrase is now such marketing cliche it's mocked a lot)...that road bicycle suspension happens in the frame. It doesn't/shouldn't. It happens almost entirely in the tire/tube; when you go over a bump, the rest of the tube+tire stretches slightly to absorb the impact, and then contracts back. Some suspension also happens in the wheel; a wheel is quite strong in part because the spokes and rim both have some give to them.

Just as with cars, the most effective suspension is the one that has the least unsprung weight. So for example, high performance cars often have suspension and brake components made out of high-strength-for-weight materials, but in general, car manufacturers try to keep the weight of the suspension down.

On a bicycle with a properly sized and inflated tire for the rider's weight and road conditions, there is very little unsprung mass

http://shameproject.com/report...

Why did you, after college, attend the National Journalism Center, a corporate-funded program created to counter the mediaâ(TM)s alleged âoeanti-business biasâ?

Why, as someone who is half-Jamaican, have you repeatedly associated yourself (and apparently continue to do so) with the white supremacist organization EPPC, which fights activists for economic justice?

Why did you write for American Spectator, which churned out anti-Clinton conspiracy theories?

Why did you recycle tobacco industry propaganda and quote lobbyists for Washington Post articles you "wrote"? Why did Phillip Morris consider you, according to their internal documents, to be a "friend" who could be counted on for pro-tobacco-industry stories?

Why did you clearly promote drugs for treating ADHD in kids, in which you heavily quoted researchers who were paid heavily by the pharma industry?

Why did you cite a pharma-industry cited study and defend the industry when it was attacked for high drug costs?

Why did you blame the victims in the Enron collapse, defending executives who committed gross fraud?

Art for ants?!

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

• Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
• Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
• Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
• Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
• This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

I've still got an American passport and I'd need strong reasons to ever get rid of it.

As it stands now, it is the only one I have. I'd love to have a passport from an EU country but that takes some effort. I had hoped having great grandparents that emigrated from Hungary would have helped, but now I don't think so. I could go the traditional route but that requires a level of proficiency in Hungarian that I doubt I'll ever attain.

Yep. American, living in Hungary.
 
I agree about Reddit, in terms of the defaults. But I view it logged in. I've unsubscribed from that stuff that I find useless and learn a decent amount from the subreddits that I do read. The smaller subreddits have less activity, so they are easy to keep up with and they have a better signal to noise ratio.

Well - it is the language for native Android development. I think that will mean something for a while.

And I think you can still make good money working on Cobol - so there is that.