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Bicycle Helmets
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 132
I've gone on about the unsustainability of those reusable grocery bags, few (if any) of which ever offset their environmental footprints, and travel-mugs, few (or none) of which ever reach the required number of uses needed to offset the disposable paper ones they're replacing, today it'll be about Bicycle Helmets, child car seats, and any number of other bits and bollocks we're forced to buy.
On that note, carrying groceries home in my brand-new canvas grocery carrier when - swinging it over my shoulder - the handles flew off. A 2 cent plastic bag from China would have been more durable. Back to the conversation...
Bike Helmets can't be sold used through thrift shops - like life-jackets or infant car seats they pose a liability - if they don't work as expected or advertised the thrift shop can be held liable.
This is because the helmet "may have" at some point in it's life sustained an invisible injury which compromises it's ability to protect the riders head. If you get in an accident with a bicycle helmet and it's in any way impacted you are supposed to presume it saved your life and purchase a whole new one.
This, of course, is bullshit. Every thrift shop in Canada throws thousands of these away per year - perfectly good, reusable, recyclable, merely so the bicycle helmet manufacturers can sell us another.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. First of all - if the standard of safety / manufacture is so low than they can't withstand multiple impacts (imagine a football/hockey player being required to replace a helmet after every hit?) they should be prohibited. Second of all - it would cost pennies on the helmet - IF THAT - to implement a paint/color change protocol into the design that would show when a helmet had sustained serious injury. This should be a mandate.
Anyways, why change now, we're clearly all on the way to hell in a handbasket...
Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Druid
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 424
First Dickens I've probably read in almost 40 years.
I enjoyed it, probably his popularity threw me off. I was a trifle annoyed that of all the books of his I should choose to read it should end up being the one he died midway through writing, although the trajectory was fair enough that I could make a few sound guesses as to how he would have ended it. What I don't get, though, is what was to become of the abundance of secondary characters - Crisparkle, Honeythunder, Sapsea, etc.
In any event, the bookstores are full of this so in the months it takes for the Postal Strike to resolve itself I can tuck in with a bit of Dickens...certainly he's in the Xmas spirit.
The Telepathy Tapes
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Audio & Podcasts
- Hits: 514
Painting, or doing my experiments, and it helps to take my mind off the job at hand. The radio, unreliable, and so I find YouTube podcasts/interviews/lectures, etc.
The first one, an interview with the "Smartest Man In The World", a different smartest man than the last one. And so I give it a listen and then when he begins his gushing admiration of Trump and talk about the new world order, Angels and Demons, Multidimensional Universe, etc, etc, well, I have to give it up and question seriously his credentials. I mean, there's only so much I can take in a sitting.
But I discover this - the telepathy tapes, which to summarize (I'm not quite done the first season) - argues that non-verbal & autistic children are naturally telepathically/psychically gifted...
Well, I'm not necessarily buying this either, but it does make you think. And after all, we do live in a world where anything can happen...
Patatap.com
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 421
A fun little website that converts finger taps/keyboard strokes into sound and light. Like a pocket synthesizer. I'll let you play with it and figure it out...
Link: Patatap.com
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