26 August, 2005

It’s the end of another week and it has ended with a bit of a fizzle really. Almost no students in the class today which was annoying and frustrating – two hours I could have spent doing something else. Turns out we’re not allowed to beat students into attending so I guess they’ll just have to wait until social welfare collapses and they have to pull finger or…starve I guess. Probably 2-3 more years left in the old system yet though so good luck.

The ride home was, unfortunately in the middle of heavy traffic and I keep forgetting how moronic heavy traffic can get. I still haven’t figured out if it’s the process of driving that makes people behave badly or the people themselves. Either way it’s really dangerous riding a bike amongst people who don’t seem to understand that the car doesn’t end right behind their eyeballs…that whacking great lump of metal behind the drivers seat still follows the basic laws of physics and will crush a cyclist quite quickly I imagine.

I thought this was an interesting comment from James Howard Kunstler:
“America consumes one-quarter of the world’s daily production of 84 million barrels of oil. More than half of our share is burned in cars and trucks. In fact, our economy now amounts to little more than running 200 million motor vehicles around the suburban metroplexes in the service of ever more slapped-together McHousing developments, big box stores, and fried chicken huts. That’s our economy. That’s all we do anymore.”

The scale is different I guess but it still freaks me out to think that if you took the numbers and the word America from the start out this could describe damn near any western country. Sad really but nothing home made tequila can’t numb. Brave New World anyone?