It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Smell Pine)

So not sure if you heard, but apparently there's this thing called "climate change," and the upshot is we're all going to either fry or drown, depending on where we live:

The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.

Yep, heat-loving insects.  Here's what they'll look like:

If you're smart, you're making plans, and as a graduate of a state university who broke a thousand on his SATs (but only after taking an intensive prep course) you can bet I'm dealing with this problem head-on.  (Always wear your helment when dealing with problems head-on.)  Here's how:

First, I've moved my family to higher ground and onto the mainland so that I can watch and laugh from the parapet as the other four boroughs are swallowed up by the sea.

Second, climate change means extreme weather such as massive blizzards in winter, baronial rainstorms in spring, scorching heat in summer, and flesh-eating locusts in autumn.  For this reason, I now seize every single fair-weather opportunity to fuck off for a bike ride, because there aren't going to be too many left.

In other words, if I check my phone and see this, I drop whatever it is I'm doing and grab the nearest bike:

Unless what I'm doing is eating a sandwich, in which case first I finish eating the sandwich, and then I take a nap if the sandwich made me sleepy.

Third, I'm raising my seventeen (17) children to flourish in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by heat-loving insects in which antibiotics are useless and toxic floodwaters lap at our ankles, forcing us ever inland until we're all huddled for survival atop the Continental Divide like those US Airways passengers who landed in the Hudson.

Unfortunately, I haven't quite figured out how to raise them for survival, especially given the increasing disparity between rich and poor.  Basically, I'm torn.  Part of me thinks I need to groom them to make billions of dollars and join the ruling elite, and part of me thinks I need to train them to hunt and kill and scavenge and use weapons and be resourceful so that they thrive as rebel soldiers in the inevitable class war.

Then I realize I have no idea how to make billions of dollars or be resourceful on an elemental level, so instead I just placate them with juice boxes and Netflix.

In the meantime, I try to console myself with the fact that people who are smarter, got higher SAT scores, and went to better colleges than me are hard at work averting the destruction of the Earth and building a better future, and indeed the key to our survival can be summed up in two words:

ROBOT CARS!!!

Sure, car-dependence is highly impractical, uses a shitload of resources, and contributes to the totally ass-tarded city planning you find in 99% of the United States, but maybe if the computers are driving the cars it will all work out, right?  Yeah, that's the ticket!  All we really need to sort out now is who they run over in the EXTREMELY UNLIKELY event that anything goes wrong:

The problem is starkly highlighted by the next scenario, also discussed by Noah Goodall, a research scientist at the Virginia Center for Transportation Innovation and Research. Again, imagine that an autonomous car is facing an imminent crash. It could select one of two targets to swerve into: either a motorcyclist who is wearing a helmet, or a motorcyclist who is not. What’s the right way to program the car?

Hey, awesome, it's "Sophie's Choice" on wheels!

Here's an idea: instead of having the car decide whether to run over the kid on the tricycle or the woman pushing a stroller, why not just make the car fucking implode?  That way, the only victim is the driver.  It's time we brought a little nautical honor to the roadways here in Canada's udder.  The captain should always be ready to go down with the ship, even if that ship is a Prius running on the Android operating system and the voyage is a run to the Whole Foods in Gowanus--which should be swept out to sea any day now.

Of course, there are people who are working on alternatives to the robot car, like this bunch of brainiacs who have invented a recumbent sperm mobile:

Amazing.  I've always yearned for the sensation of being buried alive while traveling to the store to buy absolutely nothing because of the complete lack of cargo space.  Not sure how useful this contraption is for, well, anything really, but I'd sure love to see some good YouTube video of the typical Walmart customer trying to squeeze into one.

If only there were some sort of machine that was relatively inexpensive, required no fossil fuels, carried cargo, posed virtually no threat to other road users, and could travel for miles at a time under human power:

(Smug as a bug in a rug.)

Alas, a perpetual motion machine like that is the stuff of myth.

Speaking of cargo bikes, here's a thousand bakfietsen full of smugness for you:

I do love my Big Dummy, but my favorite was the Fred porn:

Full Scattante kit, a Primal jersey, and a GoPro manssiere?  Wow.  That's almost TMFFOR!  (Too Much Fred For One Ride.)

Lastly, in yesterday's post I included the following photo of the Son of Scattante:

Which prompted a reader to ask me a number of questions, including this one:

5) Are you aware that your carrying-a-bike-on-a-train-craft is lousy?

Then, he included the following photo, ostensibly an example of how to do it properly:

Now that's TMBDFOT!  (Too Much Bike Dork For One Train.)  About the only thing missing is a GoPro manssiere.  (Though I suspect the guy on the right simply hasn't slipped his on yet.)

Speaking of trains, some sort of tandem conveyance with space for hundreds of passengers running on a dedicated roadway between the suburbs and the city center could make for a safer and more efficient alternative to the robot car.

Yeah, right, it'll never happen.