Posts by Keir Leslie
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Which are thus preservatives.
(Likewise, Brickley's wee rant against `chemical byproducts' is slightly mad: given that lots and lots of things are chemical byproducts & perfectly food. Like beer, or marmite, or vegemite.)
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I think pretty much every NZ Prime Minister gets at least a knighthood; there's no reason to say that Palmer or Muldoon knighted themselves, it's just what happens to ex-PMs.
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Fact - a NZ ETS will encourage the planting of trees and the removal of sheep and cows in NZ. By doing so it will in turn incentivise the farming of cattle and the destruction of rainforests in the tropics. An ETS will be bad for Planet Earth.
Erm, no offense, but those premises don't lead to the conclusion, and anyway, if we price in externalities universally, then the invisible hand of the market will solve the problems. The solution here is clearly more markets, not less.
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The point of cycling is that certain technologies aren't allowed when going from A to B as fast as possible. I think that maintains my point that cycling isn't a sport about going fast, it is a sport about going fast according to rules.
The constraints make the race interesting, and that's why I said (slightly imprecisely) that they're the point of cycling. Being upset that cycling isn't developing certain types of technology is like getting annoyed that running isn't producing better horses: cycling is a sport which isn't interested in some technologies, and that's why it is cycling and not Formula One. The UCI shouldn't be interested in developing technology*, it should be interested in developing cycling-as-a-sport.
* Which is kind of an inexact term here as well.
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Modern competitive cycling is insanely technological, whether offroad or on. Yes, of course it's about the people, but technology plays at least as much of a role as it does in most sport.
Yeah, of course. But the point of cycling is that some technologies aren't allowed; you can exploit nutrition to the hilt, but you can't turn up with an engine.
I mean, cycling uses technology and I wasn't denying that, but there's strict rules about which technologies, and have been as long as the sport has existed. And those restrictions are fundamental to the conception of cycling as a distinct activity.
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Unfortunately, it's held back the development of better bikes considerably
But cycling isn't about bikes; it's about people.
Cycling has been arbitrarily anti-technology since the invention of the internal combustion engine.
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Is comparison important?
Yeah, I think so. It's a sign that everyone's playing the same sport.
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Do we by the same token discount Bolt's records because he had better shoes than those who came before?
Bolt's shoes are not this much better, and I also think the discontinuity of change is quite important. It's one thing to be unable to compare Beckham to Best; quite another to be unable to compare Beckham to Messi.
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Here's some positive things that we can do: Stop flying off on overseas holidays, stop buying airfreighted goods (including books and stuff bought online), start supporting reforestation projects in NZ, support native wildlife, euthenase feline and canine pets.
Wear hair shirts, fast, pray...
(Come on, books shipped from overseas? That's just nonsense, unless you're already a vegan who walks everywhere. Pretending that various penances will make a difference is daft; if you really care, give money and time to a group campaigning for the environment and vote accordingly. Try and use public transport as much as possible.
And I don't like the idea that we can or should change the world by a bunch of consumerist choices; that's not how this works.)
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If anyone has a right to be upset about the fans, it's the cyclists. After the most recent climb, I don't want to watch anymore. What other sport allows spectators onto the field of play, to hit, throw things at, and get in the way of, shoot the players, and cross the road fatally? It's an absolute debacle.
The Tour goes to the people, and it has to take them as it finds them*.
I'd hate to see the Tour lose that, since it's part of the charm. And yeah, the fans can be morons, but it would be worse for the sport if they were kept behind barriers. And it has been a part of the Tour from the beginning; it's inherent in road racing that you aren't in a hermetically sealed environment, you have to be in a shared space.
* Not my line. I think from Nicholson's The Great Bike Race.