ajft

Now how is this for serendipity, up until today I had never heard this magnificent new verb(?), then all of a sudden it appeared in a mailing list that I read... and was promptly shot down by the grammar police. Incentivise.. now what the heck is that meant to mean and who on the planet made it up?

Half an hour later and I find that the BBC has compiled a list of the top 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate and there it is at number four! I expect to see the list in The Age in about a week and the Herald Sun a week or so after that, but I could have the order wrong.

Amazing! The combination of a very short commute and the cold winter weather means that on any given day I generally see no other cyclists, or around one or two a week. Maybe the rising petrol prices, a glitch in the statistics or a fluke of my timing, but in the last 24 hours I've met ten other bicycle commuters while riding to and from work! Maybe I should keep a log of how many other riders are about through the colder and then warmer months... Three on the cycle paths in Oakleigh last night, an older Chinese couple and then a woman who nearly fell off in front of me at the sharp-right into the station car-park — its a pain of a corner, she got her wheel caught in the channel off the concrete path, but its never made easier by the dumped shopping trolleys that get pushed to the end of the car-park and occasional beer bottle, syringe or illegally parked car.

Then this morning riding up North road there were another two guys, one fast in lycra on a road bike, one slow in jeans on a mountain bike, both riding up the bus lane and likely to be abused or attacked by the bus drivers. Had a chat to the roadie as we rode along and he was astonished to find that its illegal to ride in the bus-lane, that VicRoads has redecorated the road so that any cyclists have to ride in the next lane out, being overtaken on the left and right by faster vehicles — he claimed it was ridiculous and stupid, then carried on riding right where he was.

This evening there were another four or so, three of them riding home up North road in the bus-lane.

I wonder what would happen if the police started policing along here, booking every cyclist and motorist who illegally uses the bus-lane? Perhaps then a few more people would give a damn about the lanes and the laws if they found that they were actually enforced! The general Aussie attitude on the road seems to be "pass as many laws as you want, I'll ignore 'em and you won't enforce 'em."

What a magnificent use for the internet The Twat-O-Tron, sieving through the detritus that is the public's responses and rantings on the BBC's "Have Your Say" feedback.

For a piece of its magnificence, I quote you:

global warming climate change no such thing its just another tax does anyone realise that the bastions of political correctness are trying to kil lus all because they want to destroy us from within all englishmen should get out of the eu and get our country back soon this country will be majority muslim with a mosk in ever yvillage

No, I do not agree with the views above, the spelling, or the idiot who wrote it.

Now if only someone could write an equivalent that takes as input the vitriol and ignorance that rains down whenever there's an article in the press on cycling in Australia and daring to use a bike as an ordinary piece of transport, and not as something that is transported about on the 4WD for a Sunday ride in the park.

“Bumper stickers reveal link to road rage”

Hardly earth shattering, but their research shows that people who most strongly identify with their cars are the ones that get the angriest and are most prone to road rage.

“Hating cyclists: some preliminary findings”

Not much in the way of interpretation, but a large body of analysis of the feedback to any media stories on cyclist-motorist interaction in Australia.

“Road Safety and perceived risk of cycle tracks and lanes in Copenhagen” (pdf)

Fascinating reading, a safety report from Copenhagen, home of those "Copenhagen lanes" that Bicycle (paths) Victoria are obsessed with — when they're not obsessed with other bicycle paths. Reports what many cyclists already know or believe, that while cycle paths encourage more people to ride, they also increase the collision and injury rate.

Ah, the pleasures of a slight misreading of a news headline.

"Do not panic-buy petrol, says PM"

or is it

"Do not panic; buy petrol, says PM"

From $100 a barrel at the start of the year to around $139 this week, the "Australian motorist" screaming blue murder at the government that "someone ought to do something" as petrol prices rise from $1.33 a litre to $1.66 over the same period. My, my, even some of the Americans are starting to notice that their god-given right to drive a big truck is costing them a lot of money. Riots in Nepal, Indonesia and elsewhere as the price goes up, strikes by truck drivers and fisherman in assorted parts of Europe. Um, what do they want to have happen, a government mandated low price? I really can't see that having any workable effect.

There seem to be two opposing views to the source of the price rises; one is that its good 'ol "supply and demand", as two billion Chinese and Indians haul their economies into the first world, they want resources... lots of resources. Lots of demand and a finite amount of oil. OPEC responds by putting up the price. The other point of view seems to be that it is all completely artificial and driven by speculators, that the "real" price should be around $60-$70US a barrel and that it'll all come down to that in a year... two at the most....

Hmmm, a bit of the latter and a lot of the former I suspect. If I knew then I'd be very rich, but I'm not very rich so I guess we can infer that I don't know. Throw into the mix the elephants in the room of peak oil and global warming, together with appease-the-public governments with two-year maximum attention spans. Interesting times.... I'll just have to watch, live and learn.

From Bruce Schneir's Schneier on Security, possibly one of the best articles I've ever read on the increasing harassment of anyone who dares to wield a camera in a public place:

... The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography. ...

Thank you Bruce.