Get Smart: Knowing Your Nipple From Your Elbow

Firstly, yesterday I suggested that the pairing of bicycles and plumbing supplies into a single retail establishment would be an unusual one.  However, I should have pointed out I was talking about the Planet Earth and not You-Know-Where, where a reader tells me that bikes and plumbing go together like nipples and elbows:

Actually, I'm not a plumber so I'm not even sure nipples and elbows go together, but I'm pretty sure you can screw a nipple into an elbow.  And obviously I'm not talking about actual nipples and elbows, because it's pretty difficult to touch your nipple with your elbow, unless you're Peta Todd:

Speaking of pasties, some bike racer guy won the prologue of some race, and the director of some rival team is saying it was because of a sticker:

“Gaudin had a sticker on his helmet, which is in principle not allowed. It covered a vent” in the helmet, he said.

Let's have a closer look at that helment:

(The sponsorship crisis in pro cycling is clearly worse than I thought.)

I don't know if that's illegal, but it sure looks delicious.

In other helment news, a reader tells me that a Canadian university student has conducted a study on them:

The conclusion?  Crashing into cars while riding your bicycle is more dangerous than not wearing a helment:

The study found that the greatest injuries were caused by cyclists crashing into vehicles; the faster the vehicle, the greater the injury. The study also found that the lack of helmet use while biking was not as great a risk factor as were collisions.

You can't put one over on the Canadians.

I know what you're wondering now: "What if I put a bunch of stickers on my helment.  Will that help?"  No, it won't.  But what might help is more bike lanes:

Williamson points out that until now, researchers have been focused on helmet protection for children. “Maybe we need more designated bike lanes separated from the roads to ensure safety,” she says.

Though that's clearly an absurd notion, since every North American knows the best course of action is strapping on a helment and pretending to be a car.  (Short of actually driving a car, of course, which is what you really should be doing.)  Between that and paying the "largely symbolic" $25 bike tax in Washington (state) people are bound to respect us--even though we're polluting the atmosphere with our heavy breathing, as roughly twenty millionty billion people have informed me some morontard state representative thinks:

He does make a good point about the increased heart rate and respiration, which is why there should also be a "largely symbolic" $25 tax on pictures of Peta Todd:

Drivers, on the other hand, should not be taxed because they don't exhale carbon dioxide--assuming, of course, they're trees:

(It's very difficult for trees to find cars with sufficient headroom.)

Or assuming they're humans who equip their cars with onboard trees large enough to offset their vehicles' emissions:

Though all it takes is one glimpse of some cyclist's "muffin top" or "sideboob" to cause the driver to begin panting, thus upsetting this precarious balance:

By the way, it's well-known that the most significant source of greenhouse gases on America's roads is Amish motorpacing, thanks to the carbon dioxide emissions of both horse and cyclist:

Not to mention the inevitable equine flatulence from all those PowerBars.

You'd think at a certain point politicians would stop saying idiotic things about bikes.  You'd also think that at some point we'd experience a "Newtown moment" wherein we decide we're no longer going to accept the high death toll caused by cars--though that doesn't seem likely to happen, at least in New York.  If you were looking for a "Newtown moment" the last week would be as good as any, since first we had this:

But instead of demanding action from the NYPD and the DA, Stringer announced that he is sending a letter to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “This is a shot across the bow to the Department of Transportation to take meaningful action,” Stringer said.

It’s a strange tactic, given that DOT is expected to continue its implementation of protected bike lanes and pedestrian refuges in East Harlem this year — a project that was, for a time, obstructed by Stringer appointees to Community Board 11.

And then we had this:

The BMW’s owner, Takia Walker, 29, of the Bronx, was arrested on Sunday on charges of insurance fraud; she is accused of buying and registering the car under false pretenses. Mr. Hamilton said the woman and Mr. Acevedo did not know each other and that Mr. Acevedo had probably borrowed the car from a mutual friend.

Instead, I'm pretty confident that the city will continue to largely ignore matters like truckers who don't follow truck routes, speeders, and people who register their cars illegally, and instead they'll continue to focus on ticketing cyclists--at least until such time as they can finally remove all the damn bike lanes.

By the way, drivers love to blame bike lanes for inconveniences like traffic and lack of parking, though if you towed and impounded every car in New York City that's illegally registered out of state you'd probably reduce the amount of traffic congestion in the city by 40%.  If you're a New York City cyclist you may have noticed that half the cars that try to run you over have Pennsylvania plates and big "Brooklyn" decals on the rear windshield to let you know that they're not really from there, and it's twice as insulting to think that they shouldn't even be on the road in the first place.

Sadly the idea of treating vehicles proportionately to the amount of harm they're capable of causing makes about as much sense to the typical American as an LSD trip:



I mentioned this project some time ago, but apparently the filmmakers have "retooled," by which of course I mean they've taken more acid.

He really should be wearing an appropriate helment: