Photos of cyclists in Holland... or maybe Denmark? Lost the link...

[Peter Cole]

Ron Ruff wrote:
> On Feb 15, 7:00 am, Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
>> It's my guess that a lot of Americans would be happier
>> living in denser more human scaled communities with less dependence on
>> cars, but there's a lot of cultural baggage in the way.
>
> Lots of corporate baggage as well... and I suspect that is the biggest
> reason why it won't happen. Can't have consumers (we exist only to
> work and consume) getting on some downsizing kick. Can't have them
> thinking that they might be better off without all the junk they
> currently "need". The word is always more, more, more...

Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
corporations through advertising. Corporations spend billions annually
on persuasion. Advertising has become increasingly sophisticated, with a
lot of very smart (and well paid) people devoting their professional
lives to the manipulation of tastes and desires. I don't think there's a
conspiracy or cabal, just an emergent system that naturally evolves from
corporate realities (as they exist now).

One of the more interesting explorations I've seen of the connections
between capitalism/corporation and freedom was last year's BBC
documentary "The Trap". The final part of which described the choice
between "positive" and "negative" liberty. The first being "pro-active"
attempts to improve people's lives (welfare state, etc.), the latter
being essentially laissez faire government. The thesis of the program
being that, in the West, we have been following a "negative freedom"
agenda since WWII (mostly) and that the consequence of that has become a
kind of "soul-less" culture. To me, evoking the old motto "If you stand
for nothing, you'll fall for anything."

In America, we made the decision that "greed is good", and have pursued
wealth almost exclusively. We've extended that attitude to our
corporations, under a kind of expansion of the "What's good for GM is
good for America", assuming that a "rising tide will lift all boats". To
some standards it has been a success. The West is more prosperous,
productivity is up and the cold war was won. At the same time, it's
becoming ever more clear that the current policies and practices are
neither sustainable nor scalable to the global economy and that stark
inequalities are emerging. As economic/social ideologies are laid aside,
people, now without secular ideals, seem to be reverting to
fundamentalism. Nature abhors a vacuum.

****** and Stalin ran the business economy with a government agenda. The
US seems more the other extreme where the corporations are running the
government. I think that both produce dystopias. America's social
delusion seems to have been that we can grow our way out of all problems
and conservation has been a dirty word, but all benders produce hangovers.

The quality of life winners over the last half century have been the
social democracies with their rather boring mix of capitalism and
government regulation. I think Kennedy had it wrong, we *should* ask our
country(government) what it can do for us. What else is it there for?

Sorry to have drifted so far from bikes, but I think we've been living
in a "bigger is better" fantasy that gave us Hummers and cul-de-sacs
instead of bike-able communities. We spent $15B here in Boston on the
Big Dig and still can't afford bike racks.

 

[A Muzi]

Peter Cole wrote:
> Ron Ruff wrote:
>> On Feb 15, 7:00 am, Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> It's my guess that a lot of Americans would be happier
>>> living in denser more human scaled communities with less dependence on
>>> cars, but there's a lot of cultural baggage in the way.
>>
>> Lots of corporate baggage as well... and I suspect that is the biggest
>> reason why it won't happen. Can't have consumers (we exist only to
>> work and consume) getting on some downsizing kick. Can't have them
>> thinking that they might be better off without all the junk they
>> currently "need". The word is always more, more, more...
>
> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
> corporations through advertising. Corporations spend billions annually
> on persuasion. Advertising has become increasingly sophisticated, with a
> lot of very smart (and well paid) people devoting their professional
> lives to the manipulation of tastes and desires. I don't think there's a
> conspiracy or cabal, just an emergent system that naturally evolves from
> corporate realities (as they exist now).
>
> One of the more interesting explorations I've seen of the connections
> between capitalism/corporation and freedom was last year's BBC
> documentary "The Trap". The final part of which described the choice
> between "positive" and "negative" liberty. The first being "pro-active"
> attempts to improve people's lives (welfare state, etc.), the latter
> being essentially laissez faire government. The thesis of the program
> being that, in the West, we have been following a "negative freedom"
> agenda since WWII (mostly) and that the consequence of that has become a
> kind of "soul-less" culture. To me, evoking the old motto "If you stand
> for nothing, you'll fall for anything."
>
> In America, we made the decision that "greed is good", and have pursued
> wealth almost exclusively. We've extended that attitude to our
> corporations, under a kind of expansion of the "What's good for GM is
> good for America", assuming that a "rising tide will lift all boats". To
> some standards it has been a success. The West is more prosperous,
> productivity is up and the cold war was won. At the same time, it's
> becoming ever more clear that the current policies and practices are
> neither sustainable nor scalable to the global economy and that stark
> inequalities are emerging. As economic/social ideologies are laid aside,
> people, now without secular ideals, seem to be reverting to
> fundamentalism. Nature abhors a vacuum.
>
> ****** and Stalin ran the business economy with a government agenda. The
> US seems more the other extreme where the corporations are running the
> government. I think that both produce dystopias. America's social
> delusion seems to have been that we can grow our way out of all problems
> and conservation has been a dirty word, but all benders produce hangovers.
>
> The quality of life winners over the last half century have been the
> social democracies with their rather boring mix of capitalism and
> government regulation. I think Kennedy had it wrong, we *should* ask our
> country(government) what it can do for us. What else is it there for?
>
> Sorry to have drifted so far from bikes, but I think we've been living
> in a "bigger is better" fantasy that gave us Hummers and cul-de-sacs
> instead of bike-able communities. We spent $15B here in Boston on the
> Big Dig and still can't afford bike racks.

Uh, Tip O'Neill got all us _other_ Americans to pay for your 'killer
black hole', not just Bostonians.

Regarding advertising, I never see ads for any sort of product area I
might actually buy. More 'water off a duck' than 'subliminal coercion'.

Yes, I sing the song of 'the country's going to hell' as do most people
my age. My readings of ancient Greece and Rome show this not to be a new
problem.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

 

[John Forrest Tomlinson]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:00:00 -0500, Peter Cole
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I'd love to see a little "melding". A few decades ago, it was accepted
>(in the US and a lot of Europe) that cities had to accommodate cars or
>be totally abandoned for the suburbs. That line of thinking nearly
>destroyed a lot of cities. There's a growing interest in using bikes to
>reduce urban traffic congestion, especially in pre-auto laid out cities.
>It's not a total solution, but cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen show
>how far it can go.
>
>What strikes me is how much of all this is just cultural (in the
>broadest sense). If you think a big car and drive-through lifestyle is
>upscale then "progress" is in that direction. It's just as easy to
>regard downsizing as progress. It can take a long time to change
>people's cultural mindset, and I don't think it is entirely, or even
>mostly, rational.
>
>Bikes are under-utilized in the US as transportation. America is a big
>place, and not very much of it resembles Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but it
>seems the underlying values that formed the suburb and car culture
>(space, convenience and luxury) are coming into serious question (new
>urbanism). It's my guess that a lot of Americans would be happier
>living in denser more human scaled communities with less dependence on
>cars, but there's a lot of cultural baggage in the way.
>
>In my neck of the woods (MA, USA), bicycles are associated with children
>(although ever less so), poor people, eccentric people and fitness
>freaks. Perhaps one day cycling here will be perceived as "cool", like
>Amsterdam and Copenhagen. In the mean time, cycling infrastructure faces
>the chicken & egg problem, and there's deserved skepticism for the
>"Field of Dreams" argument (if you build it they will come). Still,
>especially for us lonely utility cyclists, the examples of other cities
>are a source of inspiration and a demonstration of the feasibility of an
>alternative solution (the old one being piping cities with highways) to
>urban transportation bottlenecks.

Where I live (New York City), daily cycling use increased about 30% in
the last five or six years and I think it's still growing. There are
a few neighborhods where for several reasons a lot of people ride
bikes for short commutes or to get to the subway station, where they
lock and take the train.

 

[Tom Sherman]

[email protected] aka Frank Krygowski wrote:
>
> Several years ago, I came across a book about promoting human scaled
> communities in America: _Visions for a New American Dream_ by
> Nelessen. The author apparently holds seminars for communities to
> help them determine what the residents want the community to be like.
> He then helps identify strategies to achieve that. To determine what
> residents want, one of his techniques is to show a series of street
> photos of other communities, asking residents to rate their
> preferences between a series of contrasting photos.
>
> In the book, he summarized the typical results. "What we want" was
> typified by a tree-shaded, architecturally interesting residential
> area with sidewalks, or by a nice, old-style walkable downtown. By
> contrast, "what we build" was shown as a wide open cul-de-sac
> development with huge cookie-cutter houses dominated by garage doors,
> with no trees and no sidewalks; or strip-mall plazas with acres of
> near-empty parking lots, tons of traffic and no pedestrian access.
> Really, the differences seem to come down to dominance by people, vs.
> dominance by cars.[...]

There must by some government plot to make the inferior and sterile
cul-de-sac neighborhoods, since the FREE MARKET always produces what
benefits people the most unless the government interferes, because the
FREE MARKET is infallible.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[[email protected]]

On Feb 15, 10:41 am, [email protected] wrote:

> Words like " The Dutch rider said the generator lights he saw in use
> in Holland
> were weak, useful mainly for avoiding being ticketed"?  Hmm.  Nope,
> that's a direct quote of your words.
>
> But it turns out the Dutch rider was imaginary.  Or alternately, he
> exists, but you were putting words in his mouth!

I'll quote the whole thing. I was wrong, at least in identifying the
nationality (or maybe not) of the responder.

Note "...had a couple of beers in that square" and (approx) "my
daughter buying her used bike".

This could be your worst nightmare, Frank: an American who has spent
enough time (by any reasonable standard) to know something about Dutch
bike use. My paltry ten days or so, well, I was scratching the surface
when I noticed how flat the tires were.

Because, when I went back to look for that quote, I noticed the
"dynamo" pictures. Which caused me to question, even with this tiny
sample, how much the Dutch "know" (competency?) about mounting/
adjusting dynamo lights so the lights will work, let alone not foul
spokes or wheel somehow if accidently flipped on.

> Fine.  Whatever the reason, the generator users were more satisfied,
> which argues against your blanket condemnation of generators.

I think I pretty well limited my negative remarks to the units I used.
I coped, they were not "forget and use" equipment. Go back to the
dynamo photos from Holland. Enough to make one doubt that Dutch police
bother with lightless bikes much.

And I slid a few props to the bottom bracket style items, too. I've
obviously touched a nerve here and again, is there a problem with
batteries you haven't expressed yet, some kind of general thing? Like
cowboy hats and helmets making you nervous about looking funny?

> Whatever the frustrations, they affected the evaluations of the
> battery-powered riders more than the generator powered ones.  The
> survey results are in _Bicycle Quarterly_ Vol. 6, number 2, beginning
> page 19.

Now I'm wondering how many generators failed, and what the actual rate
of successful repair might have been-- wires getting ripped loose,
perhaps losing a fastener due to vibration-- IOW, things much more
difficult to resolve successfully than trying to find a coin or
screwdriver to open a battery compartment <g>.

> > > Oh, those silly, silly Dutch!  I bet you can't wait to enlighten them
> > > about the value of bicycle pumps!  "Look, Hans, the air really helps!
> > > Why didn't we ask an American sooner than this??"

Repeating, just to show some fairly egregious reaching on your part.
Don't think they're silly, don't really care; just made an observation
that, like I said, is a theme of repeated humor I saw in some printed
material. Humor, Frank. Mild self-deprecation, that helps one not take
themselves so seriously that, for instance, someone mentioning the bad
old days (pre- zener diode!) of generator lights makes the blood boil.
And fingers itch.

(me)
> > Lots of tires observed with very little air in them. They make fun of
> > that, themselves.

(Frank):
> Then you should have demonstrated your superior American knowledge,
> and lectured them sternly about their bicycles!

There you go again, Frank. What's the deal? (I feel a little like Mac
against PC here...)

> After all,
> disparaging the Dutch in person isn't much worse than disparaging them
> on the internet, is it?

DISPARAGING? That's the complete opposite of anything you've ever
heard me "say" in this or any other thread here. Or elsewhere.

> > > I'm sorry, but I don't have a model number for you.  I checked.  It's
> > > a bottom-bracket mounted generator, sometimes called a "roller"
> > > generator, axis of rotation parallel with the wheel axle.  The
> > > roller's about 1.4" diameter, about 1.5" long, the rolling surface is
> > > knurled chrome steel, the end caps are black plastic.  I have at least
> > > three of them mounted on various bikes.  They date from the 1980s.
> > > AFAIK, they're no longer manufactured.

More diameter than the bottles, at least by a little? My foggy memory
shows an even larger wheel for one BB dynamo I somewhat remember. And
"knurled", with much shallower pattern than the bottles? That might
help a lot with "quiet".

Dispensing with the bottles, I'll go take a look for BB style and
report back, just for general interest. Hey, you wouldn't have to cut
a hole in the fender!

> You seem to have trimmed - and are pretending to forget - the
> inventory I gave you.
>
> Yes, those Soubitez are my favorites.  But I've used, and still use,
> many others.  I have an old Union bottle on one of my bikes, and I've
> got a spoke-drive FER on one of my wife's bikes.  I've got a S-A
> Dynohub built up but not installed.  I've used a Mitsuba bottle unit
> and a Cibie bottle unit in the past.  Also a Sanyo bottom bracket
> unit.
>
> But of course, I'm repeating myself.  And I think you're attempting to
> save face by retroactively restricting discussion to one specific
> generator design.

Thanks for the list. More to check out. Again, I talked about my
experience with the Soubitez and Union lights I used.

FWIW, I seem to have remembered that one Soubitez was plastic bodied--
could that be true? I know the Union "with taillight" one was. The
plastic one(s) didn't seem to ride the wheel as well-- maybe a little
extra weight helped there? I believe Union had a metal-bodied unit, as
well.

> If you want to discuss advantages and disadvantages of the several
> generator styles, we can do that.  If you want to discuss generator
> lights vs. battery lights, we can do that.  But don't go shifting the
> topic of conversation trying for Usenet points.

Well, we'll be doing a lot better if you stop repeating the "why
didn't you lecture the Dutch bikers" thing. Really. And accusing _me_
of shifting subjects, again. I've shown a fair openness toward
"generators", if not much love for the ones I actually used.

> > I'm not the one who led the laps around the roseberry bush, Frank.
>
> Oh?  See below.
>
> > > See if _she_ can find this in the comments to the original article:
> > > "The Dutch rider said the generator lights he saw in use in Holland
> > > were weak, useful mainly for avoiding being ticketed."
>
> > At this point, moot.
>
> So, when asked to back up a claim she invented, does your daughter
> also say "It doesn't matter!!" and stomp off to her room?  Is that
> what you meant by "Half a step back at a time, and only when
> surrounded on three sides"?

Well, Frank, you went on about bottle generators, but then implied/
said/painted the picture that "the good one" you have is a BB style--
the one that illuminates the road better than the battery lights of
people who have followed you, the unit that has been (again, per your
implication completely reliable, and maybe even trouble-free, and so
forth. IOW, if the "point" is not to be moot, then you're going to
have to show me some kind of parity between the BB style and the
bottle style as to function and reliability. I'm playing pretty fair
with you here, whether such is deserved or not, as your "testimonial"
is really all that's asked for.

"Stomping off"? Where do you get that krap, Krygowski?

Repeating, I "fixed" my faulty (but perhaps not inaccurate as to
actual fact) attribution, so you can drop that subject, which was a
pretty weak point in the first place. "Grasping at straws". --D-y

 

[[email protected]]

On Feb 15, 9:41 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:

(I wrote):
> I'll quote the whole thing.

(Then failed to quote)

Dang. Must have been a long day or something:

(quote):
Great web page! It brings back a lot of good memories. I've had a
beer or two in that very square.

When my daughter was purchasing her used bike in Maastricht, she asked
the shop proprietor what the best lock was, he replied, "Many locks!"
She spent fifty euros on the bike and 38 euros on the locks. I was
told by a local that bicycle theft is second most popular sport after
speed skating.

More than helmets, I think the biggest difference in bike culture
between SF Amsterdam are that bikes are rarely used for sport or
exercise in the Netherlands, it's all transport. The other
differences are speeds are slower, distances traveled shorter and the
terrain much flatter in the Netherlands.

Finally, "bottle" generators are cheap and the cops hand out tickets
to cyclists without lights which explains their popularity. What's
really bad though, is that the tail-light goes out when the bike
stops. I don't understand how more cyclists are not rear ended at
intersections on rainy nights.

Anyway, thanks for a great piece.

--
Mike Jenkins
Barrington, IL (end quote)

So, the dad spent some time there, the daughter apparently was to
spend some time there (bought the ship anchor bike lock for the used
bike, which from my brief reading would seem to have been a klunker,
at that price.

He didn't say anything about the saggy tires, I noticed. --D-y

 

[Ron Ruff]

On Feb 15, 3:18 pm, Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
> corporations through advertising.

I suspect it has been reduced to a science. Remember all the stories
of subliminal advertising from several decades ago? Hard to believe
that just went away. Shopping is the solution to every crisis...

No conspiracy except the fact those who have power and wealth tend to
seek any means possible to increase it.

It doesn't take a genius to see that we have technology and resources
to produce a veritable utopia... yet even those of us who are well off
live like scared slaves. Plato lamented a few years back that slaves
were necessary, so that others could have the leisure for more
interesting pursuits. For quite awhile now we have had the ability to
make machines our slaves, and live lives of leisure... but we seem to
lack the will or imagination to bring it about.

 

[Tom Sherman]

Ron Ruff wrote:
> On Feb 15, 3:18 pm, Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
>> corporations through advertising.
>
> I suspect it has been reduced to a science. Remember all the stories
> of subliminal advertising from several decades ago? Hard to believe
> that just went away. Shopping is the solution to every crisis...
>
> No conspiracy except the fact those who have power and wealth tend to
> seek any means possible to increase it.
>
> It doesn't take a genius to see that we have technology and resources
> to produce a veritable utopia... yet even those of us who are well off
> live like scared slaves. Plato lamented a few years back that slaves
> were necessary, so that others could have the leisure for more
> interesting pursuits. For quite awhile now we have had the ability to
> make machines our slaves, and live lives of leisure... but we seem to
> lack the will or imagination to bring it about.

Some get their enjoyment out of life by power over others. This behavior
is taught in the upper classes.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[Clive George]

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

>FWIW, I seem to have remembered that one Soubitez was plastic bodied--
>could that be true? I know the Union "with taillight" one was. The
>plastic one(s) didn't seem to ride the wheel as well-- maybe a little
>extra weight helped there? I believe Union had a metal-bodied unit, as
>well.

If we're talking bottles here, the bog standard union unit was metal-bodied.
They worked well enough for me when I was young - and they were nice and
cheap too. 'Course I didn't do nearly as much distance then - but then
neither do most city bikes.

cheers,
clive

 

[[email protected]]

On Feb 15, 10:43 pm, "Clive George" <[email protected]> wrote:

> If we're talking bottles here, the bog standard union unit was metal-bodied.
> They worked well enough for me when I was young - and they were nice and
> cheap too. 'Course I didn't do nearly as much distance then - but then
> neither do most city bikes.

Yes, somewhere I saw/used a Union metal body bottle, front.

I meant to write "plastic", for a later era. Squarish shape, rear
mount, with headlight?

I could go get my 1977 Lickton's catalog out but I think the Union/
Soubitez were about eight bucks. "Two lunches", approx. --D-y

 

[A Muzi]

> [email protected] aka Frank Krygowski wrote:
>> Several years ago, I came across a book about promoting human scaled
>> communities in America: _Visions for a New American Dream_ by
>> Nelessen. The author apparently holds seminars for communities to
>> help them determine what the residents want the community to be like.
>> He then helps identify strategies to achieve that. To determine what
>> residents want, one of his techniques is to show a series of street
>> photos of other communities, asking residents to rate their
>> preferences between a series of contrasting photos.
>> In the book, he summarized the typical results. "What we want" was
>> typified by a tree-shaded, architecturally interesting residential
>> area with sidewalks, or by a nice, old-style walkable downtown. By
>> contrast, "what we build" was shown as a wide open cul-de-sac
>> development with huge cookie-cutter houses dominated by garage doors,
>> with no trees and no sidewalks; or strip-mall plazas with acres of
>> near-empty parking lots, tons of traffic and no pedestrian access.
>> Really, the differences seem to come down to dominance by people, vs.
>> dominance by cars.[...]

Tom Sherman wrote:
> There must by some government plot to make the inferior and sterile
> cul-de-sac neighborhoods, since the FREE MARKET always produces what
> benefits people the most unless the government interferes, because the
> FREE MARKET is infallible.

Last evening I visited my (once) favorite thrift store which has moved
10 miles west* to a gridlocked curvy-street area.
Quite a cultural shock (shudder). But we'll assume that someone likes
those stupid curvy roads despite higher costs in every respect,
especially including emergency and snow services, as house buyers pay
extra to live there!
I found the experience mystifying. And frustrating.

Having grown up in a rural environment, I wanted to own a house with
sidewalks in a gridded-street neighborhood. So I bought one, a pleasant
bike ride from where I work. Choice is good, even when some choose
differently from you and I.

(*Tom, since you know Madison, from Fiore to behind West Town)
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

 

[[email protected]]

On Feb 15, 10:41 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> On Feb 15, 10:41 am, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > Words like " The Dutch rider said the generator lights he saw in use
> > in Holland
> > were weak, useful mainly for avoiding being ticketed"? Hmm. Nope,
> > that's a direct quote of your words.
>
> > But it turns out the Dutch rider was imaginary. Or alternately, he
> > exists, but you were putting words in his mouth!
>
> I'll quote the whole thing. I was wrong, at least in identifying the
> nationality (or maybe not) of the responder.

Yep. Good of you to admit that.

> Because, when I went back to look for that quote, I noticed the
> "dynamo" pictures. Which caused me to question, even with this tiny
> sample, how much the Dutch "know" (competency?) about mounting/
> adjusting dynamo lights so the lights will work, let alone not foul
> spokes or wheel somehow if accidently flipped on.

Once again: those people ride bikes constantly. And, according to
the quote you liked, "cops hand out tickets to cyclists without
lights." It's pretty unrealistic to envision them not knowing that
their lights don't work, or that their generators are jamming in their
spokes. Or that their tires are low! Give them _some_ credit!

> I think I pretty well limited my negative remarks to the units I used.
> I coped, they were not "forget and use" equipment.

> > > > I'm sorry, but I don't have a model number for you. I checked. It's
> > > > a bottom-bracket mounted generator, sometimes called a "roller"
> > > > generator, axis of rotation parallel with the wheel axle. The
> > > > roller's about 1.4" diameter, about 1.5" long, the rolling surface is
> > > > knurled chrome steel, the end caps are black plastic. I have at least
> > > > three of them mounted on various bikes. They date from the 1980s.
> > > > AFAIK, they're no longer manufactured.
>
> More diameter than the bottles, at least by a little?

Yes, of course.

> And "knurled", with much shallower pattern than the bottles? That might
> help a lot with "quiet".

It is quieter than most bottle units I've used. I believe that's also
because it's in a location where its sound is more shielded from my
ears.

> Dispensing with the bottles, I'll go take a look for BB style and
> report back, just for general interest. Hey, you wouldn't have to cut
> a hole in the fender!

If you want a bottom bracket generator, Andrew Muzi carries them.
http://www.yellowjersey.org/dynamos.html
I haven't used that one, though, so I can't vouch for it.

But understand, there are downsides to this design too. See below.
Different people have different priorities about these things.


> > Yes, those Soubitez are my favorites. But I've used, and still use,
> > many others. I have an old Union bottle on one of my bikes, and I've
> > got a spoke-drive FER on one of my wife's bikes. I've got a S-A
> > Dynohub built up but not installed. I've used a Mitsuba bottle unit
> > and a Cibie bottle unit in the past. Also a Sanyo bottom bracket
> > unit.
>
> > But of course, I'm repeating myself. And I think you're attempting to
> > save face by retroactively restricting discussion to one specific
> > generator design.
>
> Thanks for the list. More to check out. Again, I talked about my
> experience with the Soubitez and Union lights I used.
>
> FWIW, I seem to have remembered that one Soubitez was plastic bodied--
> could that be true? I know the Union "with taillight" one was. The
> plastic one(s) didn't seem to ride the wheel as well-- maybe a little
> extra weight helped there? I believe Union had a metal-bodied unit, as
> well.

I think most manufacturers make both metal bodied and plastic bodied
generators. My guess is that the plastic ones tend to be lower
quality. I put about ten minutes riding time on a plastic Basta unit
and I was disappointed in the output, but I didn't try to diagnose
it. OTOH, I fixed up a commuter bike for a certain non-mechanical
person and included a very cheap discount-store plastic generator. It
worked very well for something like ten years. It stopped working
only recently - but she's now married to an electrical engineer, so I
figure he can fix it. ;-)


> ... you're going to
> have to show me some kind of parity between the BB style and the
> bottle style as to function and reliability.

OK. Bottom bracket (or "roller") units tend to slip much worse if
ridden on muddy surfaces. They also normally have longer wire runs, a
potential problem if you carry your bike on stairs, into buses, etc.
They can't be turned on and off as easily while riding (except a few
have had remote levers). They are hard to mount on some frames, where
short chainstays, chainstay bridges, or kickstands may interfere. The
Sanyo units of old used to have actuation levers that wore out. And
bottom bracket units are now almost extinct. OTOH, they are quieter,
and the Soubitez (at least) can drive two headlights in series without
slipping, probably due to the larger diameter roller. My Soubitez
also has less drag than a standard Union bottle.

Bottle units are much more available. They are a little noisier.
They are easier to reach for turning on and off, and if front mounted,
have less wire to run. Mounting is more straightforward (but with
either type, you must be careful of alignment). Also, with bottle
units, some have chirality (to use r.b.tech's newest favorite word)
and so must be chosen for the proper side of the bike. On certain
models, slipping is pretty easily controlled by adjustable spring
pressure and/or special drive wheels. Understand, bottle units vary
in drag. Decent quality ones have drag that's negligible for
practical (non-racing) purposes. And as with the bottom bracket
types, drag is zero if off.

Hub units are the top of the class, but are more expensive, especially
if you have to pay someone to build the wheel. No slip under any
conditions. Higher efficiency (i.e. less drag) than the first two
types, but there's a small amount of residual drag even when off
(negligible for the SON). "On-Off" is just an electrical switch.
Probably most reliable, although all generators are probably more
reliable than battery lights as a class.

There's one (AFAIK) spoke drive unit on the market. It's more
efficient than anything but a hub unit, but it's heavier, noisier and
(IMO) uglier than any of its competitors. Older ones had a reputation
for eventually breaking the internal cogged drive belt. It is immune
to slip. You must stop to turn it on and off. It adds a little
complication to wheel removal.

Compared to battery units, none are much good for mountain biking.
All have the great virtue of giving light when needed, at a moment's
notice, no matter where you are, with no worries about remembering to
charge the batteries, or a battery being too old to take a full
recharge, or disposable batteries that were _supposed_ to be good, or
someone stealing the light from a parked bike, or being surprised by a
work meeting that extends after dark, etc.

A generator makes your bike headlights as much a non-issue as your car
headlights. It dispenses with a lot of fuss, and makes the bike much
more practical. Which is probably the real reason the Dutch like
them.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[A Muzi]

> Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
>> corporations through advertising.

Ron Ruff wrote:
> I suspect it has been reduced to a science. Remember all the stories
> of subliminal advertising from several decades ago? Hard to believe
> that just went away. Shopping is the solution to every crisis...
>
> No conspiracy except the fact those who have power and wealth tend to
> seek any means possible to increase it.
>
> It doesn't take a genius to see that we have technology and resources
> to produce a veritable utopia... yet even those of us who are well off
> live like scared slaves. Plato lamented a few years back that slaves
> were necessary, so that others could have the leisure for more
> interesting pursuits. For quite awhile now we have had the ability to
> make machines our slaves, and live lives of leisure... but we seem to
> lack the will or imagination to bring it about.

The early wild claims for subliminal effects have been discredited. The
effect is real but hardly 'mind control'.

To slavery, Toutain's "Economics in the Ancient World' posits that
plentiful slave labor inhibited technological development. Can we not
already see the effects of our technology on human capacity? Most young
people can't do arithmetic without a machine and compose badly, with all
video experiences and little reading...
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

 

[Peter Cole]

A Muzi wrote:

> Uh, Tip O'Neill got all us _other_ Americans to pay for your 'killer
> black hole', not just Bostonians.

True, I didn't wan to rub that in.

>
> Regarding advertising, I never see ads for any sort of product area I
> might actually buy. More 'water off a duck' than 'subliminal coercion'.

To a certain extent that's true for me too, I made a choice many years
ago to stop watching commercial TV (the worst offender), but with
"product placement", the lines grow increasingly blurred.


> Yes, I sing the song of 'the country's going to hell' as do most people
> my age. My readings of ancient Greece and Rome show this not to be a new
> problem.

Yes, but they did both actually go to hell. There were eras that nobody
would have wanted to be a Greek or Roman, I hope we're not entering one
of those.

 

[A Muzi]

> "Clive George" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> If we're talking bottles here, the bog standard union unit was metal-bodied.
>> They worked well enough for me when I was young - and they were nice and
>> cheap too. 'Course I didn't do nearly as much distance then - but then
>> neither do most city bikes.

[email protected] wrote:
> Yes, somewhere I saw/used a Union metal body bottle, front.
> I meant to write "plastic", for a later era. Squarish shape, rear
> mount, with headlight?
> I could go get my 1977 Lickton's catalog out but I think the Union/
> Soubitez were about eight bucks. "Two lunches", approx.

Two lunches? $24.95?
http://www.yellowjersey.org/lolite.html

The Soubitez #22 'Featherweight' and CA-120 nylon dynamos were of better
quality and lasted as well as the CL-89.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

 

[Clive George]

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:98752cd5-128b-4c31-b6e8-cb737ce02a8b@n77g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>On Feb 15, 10:43 pm, "Clive George" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> If we're talking bottles here, the bog standard union unit was
>> metal-bodied.
>> They worked well enough for me when I was young - and they were nice and
>> cheap too. 'Course I didn't do nearly as much distance then - but then
>> neither do most city bikes.
>
>Yes, somewhere I saw/used a Union metal body bottle, front.
>
>I meant to write "plastic", for a later era. Squarish shape, rear
>mount, with headlight?

Dunno, never seen any bar the traditional bottle shape. Possibly two
different size bottles, and we did have a black one for a while. These were
normally mounted on a clamp on the chainstay on which the rear lamp sat -
obviously the front had its own.

>I could go get my 1977 Lickton's catalog out but I think the Union/
>Soubitez were about eight bucks. "Two lunches", approx. --D-y

Possibly 12 quid for a union lighting set, early 1980s.

Interestingly IME the union front lamps I have are quite a lot better than
the current BUMM lumotec filaments bulbs.

cheers,
clive

 

[Tom Sherman]

Andrew Muzi wrote:
>> [email protected] aka Frank Krygowski wrote:
>>> Several years ago, I came across a book about promoting human scaled
>>> communities in America: _Visions for a New American Dream_ by
>>> Nelessen. The author apparently holds seminars for communities to
>>> help them determine what the residents want the community to be like.
>>> He then helps identify strategies to achieve that. To determine what
>>> residents want, one of his techniques is to show a series of street
>>> photos of other communities, asking residents to rate their
>>> preferences between a series of contrasting photos.
>>> In the book, he summarized the typical results. "What we want" was
>>> typified by a tree-shaded, architecturally interesting residential
>>> area with sidewalks, or by a nice, old-style walkable downtown. By
>>> contrast, "what we build" was shown as a wide open cul-de-sac
>>> development with huge cookie-cutter houses dominated by garage doors,
>>> with no trees and no sidewalks; or strip-mall plazas with acres of
>>> near-empty parking lots, tons of traffic and no pedestrian access.
>>> Really, the differences seem to come down to dominance by people, vs.
>>> dominance by cars.[...]
>
> Tom Sherman wrote:
>> There must by some government plot to make the inferior and sterile
>> cul-de-sac neighborhoods, since the FREE MARKET always produces what
>> benefits people the most unless the government interferes, because the
>> FREE MARKET is infallible.
>
> Last evening I visited my (once) favorite thrift store which has moved
> 10 miles west* to a gridlocked curvy-street area.
> Quite a cultural shock (shudder). But we'll assume that someone likes
> those stupid curvy roads despite higher costs in every respect,
> especially including emergency and snow services, as house buyers pay
> extra to live there!

People are told by popular culture (advertising) this is what to aspire to.

> I found the experience mystifying. And frustrating.
>
I remember 20 years ago when that was farm land. Now Cross Plains is
becoming a suburb.

Not a good place to walk and bicycle, since all the traffic is forced
onto a few, high speed, multi-lane streets. I used to ride a bicycle
from the near west side to Rayovac, but that was when the traffic was
still relatively light.

> Having grown up in a rural environment, I wanted to own a house with
> sidewalks in a gridded-street neighborhood. So I bought one, a pleasant
> bike ride from where I work. Choice is good, even when some choose
> differently from you and I.
>
> (*Tom, since you know Madison, from Fiore to behind West Town)

Here I see almost no cyclists in the suburbs, except for the occasional
"training" group in a pace line, or a few people riding hybrids along
the MUPs. Lots of cyclist commuters in the downtown area with its
gridded streets and relatively slow moving traffic.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[Tom Sherman]

Andrew Muzi wrote:
>> Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
>>> corporations through advertising.
>
> Ron Ruff wrote:
>> I suspect it has been reduced to a science. Remember all the stories
>> of subliminal advertising from several decades ago? Hard to believe
>> that just went away. Shopping is the solution to every crisis...
>>
>> No conspiracy except the fact those who have power and wealth tend to
>> seek any means possible to increase it.
>>
>> It doesn't take a genius to see that we have technology and resources
>> to produce a veritable utopia... yet even those of us who are well off
>> live like scared slaves. Plato lamented a few years back that slaves
>> were necessary, so that others could have the leisure for more
>> interesting pursuits. For quite awhile now we have had the ability to
>> make machines our slaves, and live lives of leisure... but we seem to
>> lack the will or imagination to bring it about.
>
> The early wild claims for subliminal effects have been discredited. The
> effect is real but hardly 'mind control'.
>
Television does seem to have the ability to frame a cultural outlook,
which can serve just as well as actual mind control for some purposes,
since it establishes the social and moral values of the majority.

> To slavery, Toutain's "Economics in the Ancient World' posits that
> plentiful slave labor inhibited technological development. Can we not
> already see the effects of our technology on human capacity? Most young
> people can't do arithmetic without a machine and compose badly, with all
> video experiences and little reading...

Yes, children should not be allowed to have calculators until late high
school. I have noticed with younger technicians at work that they are
good at entering data into programs, but relatively simple calculations
seem beyond them.

I differ on the word processor, since the ability to edit "on the fly"
is of great advantage, while not influencing actual composition in any way.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[Tom Sherman]

[email protected] aka Frank Krygowski wrote:
> [...]
> If you want a bottom bracket generator, Andrew Muzi carries them.
> http://www.yellowjersey.org/dynamos.html

This phrase is priceless: "Short chainstays, tight clearances and
general obstinance are impediments to this style of mount."

> [...]
> I think most manufacturers make both metal bodied and plastic bodied
> generators. My guess is that the plastic ones tend to be lower
> quality. I put about ten minutes riding time on a plastic Basta unit
> and I was disappointed in the output,[...]

At which time Frank said "Enough!"

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[Michael Press]

In article <[email protected]>,
A Muzi <[email protected]> wrote:

> > Peter Cole <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Yes, but I think that (ever more) culture is being defined by
> >> corporations through advertising.
>
> Ron Ruff wrote:
> > I suspect it has been reduced to a science. Remember all the stories
> > of subliminal advertising from several decades ago? Hard to believe
> > that just went away. Shopping is the solution to every crisis...
> >
> > No conspiracy except the fact those who have power and wealth tend to
> > seek any means possible to increase it.
> >
> > It doesn't take a genius to see that we have technology and resources
> > to produce a veritable utopia... yet even those of us who are well off
> > live like scared slaves. Plato lamented a few years back that slaves
> > were necessary, so that others could have the leisure for more
> > interesting pursuits. For quite awhile now we have had the ability to
> > make machines our slaves, and live lives of leisure... but we seem to
> > lack the will or imagination to bring it about.
>
> The early wild claims for subliminal effects have been discredited. The
> effect is real but hardly 'mind control'.
>
> To slavery, Toutain's "Economics in the Ancient World' posits that
> plentiful slave labor inhibited technological development. Can we not
> already see the effects of our technology on human capacity? Most young
> people can't do arithmetic without a machine and compose badly, with all
> video experiences and little reading...

I do not think prevalence of literacy and mathematical ability
are any different. In the public library I see high schoolers
working away on their school work all the time.

For a while I tutored high school mathematics. The students
were bright, motivated, cheerful, and apt.

A clerk in a candy store and I were talking. Geography came up
as I tried to place the European city where an item was
made. She said she was not good at geography. I named one
of my favorite geography trivia questions:

What major European city is on the same parallel of latitude
as New York City?

(we are in California.) She named the city straight off.
People are generally bright.

--
Michael Press