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Re: Anyone with me?

Yeah. Need develop social things. But likely too late. SUV have to do for now. Make me feel superior. Until I step out of it. Then self-esteem plummets. Need to be idiot in other ways. Make me feel superior again. Lost cause. Only feel worse. People recognize me as idiot. No relief from self. Must, must, must climb back into SUV.
 

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this idiotic anti-EPA stuff gives bikers a bad name

It does. We need to roost. I agree, but until honda and all those

guys have a reson to build an EPA meeting 2-stroke, they won't.

Buy the 4-stroke relax and ride. While you're at it, send money to

the AMA so they can do some REAL good. Imagine if the AMA had

the clout to set aside a special "motorcycles only" land like the

do with the HOV lanes in LA and Seattle. Imagine how fast you

could get to work on your bike then, with less of a chance of getting

killed. Imagine if we could get everyone off those stupid stupid SUVs

and on to nice little bikeys. Imagine if all the bikers were smart enough

to understand that 1% of emissions is still a BFD, especially when it

comes from 0.00001% of the total vehicles. Come on guys, get your

head out of the sand and into Shoei helmet

-P
 

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Re:politicians are the real strokes

Okay, let's inject a little reality hear. As with the current clunker laws, destroying a 2-stroke will allow some entity to collect a federal certificate(voucher) that can then be sold to any segment of industry that needs to pay for these vouchers which allow them to exceed their own federal pollution restrictions. So that 1/2 of 1% isn't really going away, it's just be re-distributed to the industrial segment of our society. So while we get our balls busted on ever growing cost of vehicle ownership pollution levels stay the same only the culprits change, and they have enough money to avoid a Capitalistic government. Money is power.
 

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Just to clarify a few things...



1. I didn't mean that bikes got better mileage than cars because of efficiency... I meant that they get the same power out of a smaller engine because of efficiency, or better power out of the same size engine.



2. Bikes have a far HIGHER drag coefficient than cars, but they do have less weigh to tow around.



3. The Honda S2000 engine is a MARVEL of efficiency, which kind of makes my point, doesn't it? It's also employing a VAST amount of high-tech innovations to accomplish that amount of power from such a small engine, and the S2000 is the exception, not the rule. What do you think a bike with variable valve timing, a fuel/air delivery that was optimized at every point of the RPM/load range through an advanced fuel injection system would do? The S2000 engine is precisely twice a large as my bike's, it makes ALMOST twice as much HP, and my bike is 8 years old, carbureted, and based on a design from the mid-80's. Not much of an endorsement for the S2000, is it? So... What's the real difference here? Smog Equipment. Don't get me wrong, I think smog equipment is a GOOD thing. I just don't think it belongs on a vehicle that represents 4% of the passenger vehicles traffic on the road. They're attacking us because we are a small, fringe group with nearly no voice, and they can piss off 4% of their constituency and still get reelected. The EPA is not truly interested in cutting down pollution, or they'd regulate Suck Utility Vehicles, those bloated overweight, underregulated, poor handling oversized station wagons with huge tires and 4WD. Soccer moms do not need a giant 4WD to take their kids to the mall. If you have that many kids (and who does these days? Not many) go buy a friggin' minivan or a station wagon. Geez....
 

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Simple economics

Ever been to Minneapolis? The state instituted a ridiculous self-defeating vehicle emmisions test program that was recently ditched. It was determined, even before the start of the program, that auto pollutants were decreasing. That didn't stop the west-office branch of the Kremlin, the Minnesota state legislature, from shoving the program through anyway. It was NEVER proved that the program contibuted to the reduction of smog (a problem we don't have anyway; nobody here even knows what the smog ratings used in other cities mean.) The worst offenders, the clapped-out 1979 T-birds with no catalytic converter (like my dad's) could trick their way through the tests with a couple gallons of isoproyl alcohol, and if that didn't work, they were given a waiver anyway.

Nobody here seems to have turned onto a simple principle of economics: the law of diminishing returns. Great advances have been made in the reduction of emissions over the last 20 years, to the point that one subcompact car from the mid-eighties puts out more pollution that several new Ford Excursions. As more time passes, the turnover of the nationwide fleet ensures that less and less of the old polluters are on the road. As vehicles get cleaner, however, the cost to continue to reduce new vehicle emissions becomes greater and greater. In other words, reducing airborne pollutants by 90% may cost the same as the next 5% reduction to 95%. A point is reached where the cost is much greater than the benefits. Take a look at the EPA's '97 edict that ground-level (0-2000 feet, I belive) ozone (smog) levels from .09 to .08 ppm. The projected cost was in the neighborhood of 9.6 billion, and the EPA's estimate on health benefits ranged from 1.5 to 8.5 billion. Clinton's economic advisors once put the estimate of health cost benefits at only 1 billion. Here's where the politics come in: the administration (and the EPA) disregarded an uncontradicted Energy Department report suggesting that because of the ozone's ultraviolet-blocking properties, reducing ground levels of it would result in 25-50 new melanoma deaths, 2-11 thousand new melanoma cases, and 28,000 new cataract cases each year. Clearly, the EPA, one of the biggest practitioners of junk science, wasn't interested in the cost or the facts.

It may everbody feel warm and fuzzy to say hey, why not reduce pollution that last 3 percent, with no reduction in performance levels? When a new Honda f4 costs $25,000, you'll know why.
 

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Re: Simple economics

My point was to say that actual reduction of pollution where it is at problem levels is not neccessarily the goal of the EPA, or environmentalists. Surely, that is the point to a certain extent, but wouldn't my point about environmental policy in Minnesota prove otherwise? I can't shake the nagging feeling that many evironmentalists simply use pollution as their raison d'etre to enforce their desire to change my lifestyle. Why else would they go after motorcycles, a negligible source of pollution by any standards? Think about it: even if we completetly eliminated pollution, do you think that they would cease their whining? They are building a 650 million (at least that is the current estimate) dollar light-rail line here right now. That's for an eleven-mile route that carry an estimated 18,000 passengers per day. That kind of money would buy each rider a new Ford Expedition, and that doesn't count people who would ride twice in one day. We will also have to subsidize the rail line to the tune of 10-11 million a year just to keep it going. The reason for this magnificent boondoggle is to reduce congestion and pollution, neither of which will be accomplished, as no car owner in their right mind would risk their life riding it, knowing the kind of people that will be on it. Yet this project is being hailed by environmentalists as the solution to all our problems.
 

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Re: I thought Wranglers onlt came with V6

They come with inline 6's (or a wheezy four cylinder), but mine has been fitted with a Chevy 350 LT1 V8 (MPI.) Can't wait for that Rubicon Express YJ coil spring conversion to come out!! Of course, then I'll need Dana 44 front, Airlockers, 4-point harnesses (oops, wrong message board.)
 

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Truce?

I wasn't accusing you, Eric, of being insulting. I was merely trying to get a little slack for flaming the "pig" name caller.

The fact remains that Socialism and Communism both have profound social ramifications. There is a huge philosophical difference between those and the assumptions our country was built on. In those systems, government is assumed to be the all-powerful entity. People only have rights or privilages because the government allows them to. In other words, the people have no inherent "rights", they only have what the government gives them. Our government was built on the assumption that humans have rights, granted by God, that are independent of government. The government cannot grant or take away those rights, in can merely secure or infringe upon them.

The communist/socialist notion that all rights spring from government is the philisophical assumption upon which the government assumes control of the means of production, decides who gets what, and institutes social regulations, i.e., in the case of communism, promotes atheism.

Of course, I agree that compared with other countries, we do not have the same levels of wealth redistribution. But compared to the conditions in this country at the time of the revolution, we are virtually enslaved. Our founders, if alive, would no doubt consider us cowards in the worst way for allowing the government to do what does.

I agree that people on both sides can be asses, and as Gabe will attest to, I certainly can be one at times. But that doesn't neccessarily mean that they're wrong (at least in the case of the right, haha!!)
 

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Good Idea...

I love your biker-only lanes idea. I would pay hard cash, above and beyond my regular tax bill to see it happen. Of course, they wouldn't get much use for several months out of the year here in Minnesota! Maybe there could be an agreement that from May to August, no cars are allowed in the bike lane. I love getting on the "sane lane" here in the middle of the afternoon in June and rocketing down the freeway well into triple-digit speeds in a near-straight, dead-empty car pool lane, drawing looks of disgust and jealousy from cagers on either side of the cement barriers. Life is good at 140!!
 

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Re: FYI

Your bad mileage with your SUV does NOT chap my hide... It sounds like you actually might use it OFF ROAD, which is what the damned things were MEANT FOR. What chaps my hide is when I seed some soccer mom in a Surburban or an Excursion with ONE kid in the car, going down the road, with the vehicle being completely clean and unscratched. Never been off the pavement? Sell it.
 

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Re: Emissions

There is indeed an relationship between fuel consumption and emissions. While it is possible for a 20MPG vehicle to emit more of a particular hydro-carbon than a 10MPG vehicle, the fact remains that an engine releases carbon into the atmosphere in proportion to the amount of fuel that it burns (the fuel is composed (in part) of carbon, the more fuel in, the more carbon out unless you are proposing that low emission engines transform elemental carbon into some other element). That said, I don't like traditional two strokes that burn a fixed proportion of lubricant for each unit of fuel, too bad Bimota did get the VRdue to work. Maybe Orbital will yet develop an alternative usable for motorcycles. Oh by the way, I have had asthma for almost 40 years (since I was child). I really doubt that there is an increase in childhood asthma, I suspect that there are simply more reported/diagnosed cases. In any event, asthma is controllable, I climb long steep hills on my bicycle even with asthma. It's not a big deal (at all). Everyone should ride bicycles, everyone would be much healthier, cycling does not wear out joints (like running does) and the environment would be the better for it. An added benefit is that the maximum speed that anyone could ride would have to do with ones innate physical prowess and not the ability to purchase a bigger engine :cool:
 

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But I digress.....

I do not see the problem with this. It is known that a very large vehicle provides more safety than a small one. I would never deny anyone with the means the ability to provide all the safety they can for themselves and their family. Fortunately, there are a few freedoms we still have. Maybe they have a legitimate use for a large vehicle. Maybe you didn't see the other 5 kids she had in the car before whe dropped them all off at their homes. Maybe her husband gets stacks of plywood and hundreds of pounds of fertilizer. Should they have to buy another car just for those times when they don't need the space?

Why doesn't anybody ever complain about jacked-up pickup trucks with straight pipes that get 11 MPG either? I personally don't care about those either, but if we want to be fair.... For crying out loud, it has now become en vouge (at least around here) to have a brand-new 1 ton diesel crew-cab dually. Some of these people hardly ever use it for anything other than transportation. Where's the flap about that?
 

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Re: Emissions

>>Why do you think childhood asthma is at it's highest rate in recorded history? <<

Could also be because there are more kids in the world now than ever in recorded history...
 
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