Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Olbermann On Bicycling?

Kieth Olbermann made a comment regarding the Prop 8 voting results(see video below). He lays out a well thought argument regarding on why something like that proposition is wrong. It occurred to me that someone as articulare as him could do the same for the transportation bicycling community. It seems that there are parallels to these issues.

Riding a bicycle for transportation, driving a car, or perhaps those of the "bi" category whom like to ride bikes and drive cars for transport all must have the equal right do so.

And, by the way, there are cyclists attending the Prop 8 protest rallies/marches. Last night(at et the Santa Monica Pier - Colorado and Ocean, in Santa Monica, California) there were at least a couple hundred or so bicyclists. This is based on an observation of how many attending the protest that had bicycle with them

Other protests, such as the one in front of the LDS church and in West Hollywood (Santa Monica Blvd and San Vicente) had large numbers attend via bicycle. And it seems that attending these rallies via bicycle has some strategic advantages over driving to them by personal car - finding parking, cutting through traffic and road blocks, and shortcuts on a bicycle. And even for getting to rallies a bit further away, getting their by multi-modal transport of bicycling part way and taking your bicycle on the public transit buses and trains makes it possible to get there and back with most convenience.

I welcome your comments.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Creatures On Air

TED Talks have uploaded alot of new archived videos of speakers from the TED conferences. And one of those videos is a presentation by Theo Jenson and his "Living Creatures". Info about his psuedo living creatures when are powered by wind power. In the TED presentation he speaks of how he is using energy storage through the use of compressed air. The compressed air will allow the animal to continue to operate while wind is absent for periods of time



Theo Jenson info: LINK - Download video