Elegant Brodiaea. They are every where on a portion of my walk today. Nice to see the flowers of the field. What did Jesus say about King Solomon?
A friend asked me today what "socialism" means to me. This was my reply:
"To love being social. Ecosocialism? To love being social with nature. Capitalism? To love Capital (money). Seems as simple as that to me."
What side do you want to be on?
Forget old. tired State ownership of economies with a jackboot on the people's neck. The Soviet Union is long gone and buried. Empires collapse in different ways. The Soviets went to the market; meanwhile, GM just became Government Motors (which just might be the best thing that ever happened to GM). Twin sides of Caesar's coin.
For me, Socialism stands in a long, long American tradition of freedom. Of optimizing both human achievement and loving nature. A value system. It is less of an economic system and more of a philosophy. Liberalism with more tools in the shed.
Time to dust off and resurrect the term (Socialism). The other choice is barbarism.
3 comments:
20.66 miles
1:58:00
10.50 mph average
41.13 mph max
Rode to meditation and then did errands in town. The smoked salmon place wasn't open when I got there, but I went back later, since I had time before the ferry.
Carried a gallon of paint, a quart of paint thinner, and a grass whip in my back bike basket, plus a half gallon of Odwalla Superfood -- my drink of choice of late.
It's surprising how quickly the miles rack up doing errands. I'm starting to get inspired to research and write an article on the speed of cars. As a teen, I read somewhere that if you count all the time it takes to pay for cars, you're really only driving 10 mph. I can average a bit more than that, and my bike costs much less, so I have a lot more time!
Captcha for this comment is "lymeask" -- and coincidentally, someone was just asking my about Lyme disease in the last few days... ;-)
Impressive Ian,
I'm thinking your little experiment is proving what your hypothesis: that cars can be more trouble than they are worth.
Be careful though. I spent a year commuting to work by bike in the Napa Valley. A twenty mile round trip. One night after midnight I hit a curb and fell. Broke both my arms. Made me nearly helpless...especially with toileting and dressing.
allan
Ouch, Allan! I so far have escaped serious injury. But I've been reading some interesting reports online about bicycle safety, and it looks safer than being in a car. See http://cyclehelmets.org/1026.html
Today I started out to do the figure 8, but opted to do a "bigger block". I'm mapping out my riding options beyond the standard 6-mile "around the block" I've done so many times. Now I have 6, 10, and 12-mile options. I have a few more to measure. It turns out that getting out the door is the hard part, and once out, the difference between doing 6 and 12 miles is not significant.
10.31 miles
49:39
12.47 mph average
37.29 mph max
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