ride or wrench?

Quoted message said:

frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
states american civilization moves weakly toward not doing but playing
electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using the
internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
oriented entertainment.

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

it was an age effect?
but now goes across the age spectrum due to an insidious internet
placebo effect?

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

Quoted message said:

it was an age effect?
but now goes across the age spectrum due to an insidious internet
placebo effect?

Datakoll, I think that you have caught us. This internet is insidious, here
one feels like one is acting, relating or doing while sitting and watching
the pixels move before our eyes.

Has anyone done a seasonality survey of newsgroup use?

Do we talk more about tech in the winter and more about racing and training
in the summer?

How many hours more could we ride if we were not here?

Dave
Noblesville, IN

Werehatrack said:

Quoted message said:

frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
states american civilization moves weakly toward not doing but
playing electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using
the internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
oriented entertainment.

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

It's a big step in the right direction. The population needs to be filtered
anyways. All we need to do is withhold treatment for overweight citizens to
prevent insurance premium rises for everyone else.
--
Phil, Squid-in-Training

Where's the hatrack said:

Quoted message said:

Frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
that states American civilization moves weakly toward not doing but
playing electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using
the internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
oriented entertainment.

Quoted message said:

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

Quoted message said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

Is hunting impacted by incoming artillery or is it small arms fire,
either kind would affect my participation, above and beyond not
finding killing of wildlife for sport a positive pastime. We are not
hunter-gatherers.

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

And public acceptance of obesity has increased by about 100% according
to today's press. This is my be an indicator of what percent of
adults currently are obese in comparison to the previous survey.

Jobst Brandt

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Where's the hatrack said:

Quoted message said:

Frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
that states American civilization moves weakly toward not doing but
playing electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using
the internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
oriented entertainment.

Quoted message said:

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

Hm. In the studies I have seen one of the major activities being reduced
by Internet-addicts such as myself* is TV.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

I'd have to look at the numbers on

Quoted message said:

Is hunting impacted by incoming artillery or is it small arms fire,
either kind would affect my participation, above and beyond not
finding killing of wildlife for sport a positive pastime. We are not
hunter-gatherers.

Hunting is a dual-use technology. I suspect that the biggest hits for
hunting are the ongoing urbanization of America (so that today's
urbanites didn't even grow up living in the country and hunting with
their fathers) and the reduced financial incentives to hunt food (food
is cheaper, incomes are higher).

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

And public acceptance of obesity has increased by about 100% according
to today's press. This is my be an indicator of what percent of
adults currently are obese in comparison to the previous survey.

I have to go fix my bikes.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

Look at it this way:
When was the last time a bicycle company or advocacy group had a
SuperBowl ad? Now, compare what people in the US spend on bicycles to
what fast food and processed food providers spend on advertising.....
Add to that the current thought that that about one half the genetic
input for type 2 diabetes (the insulin resistance part) creates a
propensity for obesity in times of plentiful food (the trait supposedly
has survival value among populations that undergo periodic famines),
and you may end up with a bit more sympathy for those who are obese and
a bit less for the institutions that make money off food sales. And why
DOES a salad at cost two to four times as much as a burger at most fast
food places, anyway?

Robert Leone [email hidden]

Ryan Cousineau said:

Hunting is a dual-use technology. I suspect that the biggest hits for
hunting are the ongoing urbanization of America (so that today's
urbanites didn't even grow up living in the country and hunting with
their fathers) and the reduced financial incentives to hunt food (food
is cheaper, incomes are higher).

I think the decline is due to both urbanization meaning less opportunity
to do it and fewer folks knowing how to do it. You need an
apprenticeship in hunting you don't in many other pursuits.

If I got the idea to go out and kill an elk for meat, I'd be lost as how
to do it. How would I find an eligible elk and then, once dead, how do I
butcher it, get 1,000 lbs of elk back to my house to eat and so forth.

I had several false starts riding a bicycle until, through chance, I met
a guy who was a retired pro. He told me about the need for fitment and
so forth which made riding a bicycle doable for me. It seems to me that
figuring out how to hunt would be enormously more difficult So unless I
have a teacher, it'd be closed to me.

As to the OP, I think we're clearly moving toward a watching not doing
populace. My daughter, age 13. lives on line. She and her tech oriented
school buddies, seem to prefer meeting online to in person.

-paul

Quoted message said:

And public acceptance of obesity has increased by about 100% according
to today's press. This is my be an indicator of what percent of
adults currently are obese in comparison to the previous survey.

Jobst Brandt

On NPR very recently they made reference to a survey of whether people
found overweight people attractive. In the recent survey it was a very
high percentage saying yes overweight was attractive. They compared
this to responses from 1980 where a very small percentage of people
said overwieght was attractive.

Werehatrack said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to want
to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of the
activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports have been
on the decline for the past 20 years.

I'm surprised to hear this. Cabela's sure seems to be doing well!

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching since
TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret that
Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

No argument there. What's sad is how our children are becoming couch
potatoes. This does not bode well for the next generation of workers, or
businesses -- except maybe health care!

Matt O.

rleone said:

When was the last time a bicycle company or advocacy group had a
SuperBowl ad?

Of course bike companies, let alone advocacy groups, can't afford
Superbowl ads.

Quoted message said:

And why DOES a salad at cost
two to four times as much as a burger at most fast food places, anyway?

Yuppie marketing. People will pay more to "eat healthy."

Matt O.

Quoted message said:

Where's the hatrack said:

Quoted message said:

Frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
that states American civilization moves weakly toward not doing but
playing electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using
the internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
oriented entertainment.

Quoted message said:

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

Quoted message said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

Is hunting impacted by incoming artillery or is it small arms fire,
either kind would affect my participation, above and beyond not
finding killing of wildlife for sport a positive pastime. We are not
hunter-gatherers.

While we are not hunter-gatherers in the main, we have eliminated the
natural predators which kept grazing herds in check in the past,
leading (in many areas) to an overpopulation of deer which needs to be
thinned regularly. Although there are people who would harvest the
deer for meat if they could do so economically, the combination of the
cost of the hunting license and the fees for access to lands where
hunting is possible have made the cost of the venison higher than fine
cuts of beef from a grocer. There is a need for meat in the lower
echelons and a need for herd size control; both could be addressed in
a mutually beneficial arrangement, but this isn't done.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

And public acceptance of obesity has increased by about 100% according
to today's press. This is my be an indicator of what percent of
adults currently are obese in comparison to the previous survey.

I have no problem with the "size acceptance" movement when it is
properly applied; there are people who genuinely can't reduce their
weight due to some physiological quirk, and I can respect that. OTOH,
I find the demand for blanket acceptance that "fat is OK" to be more
of an indicator of surrender to a largely false perception than
anything else.

The majority of obesity results from insufficient activity relative to
dietary intake, pure and simple. For those whose career choice is as
much at the root of the matter as anything else, I have some
tolerance. The reality of modern US life is that strenuous activity
is absent from most occupations now. Furthermore, the American
insistence upon reliance on the automobile, combined with the
pernicious effects of suburbanization and zoning (which tend to put
needed facilities beyond walking distance) has removed most of the
daily exercise from ordinary activities.

The real problem is that people have come to view "exercise" as
something that is an activity unto itself; they miss the point that
they could multitask it in with other things by simply choosing a
different approach in certain areas. Even something as simple as
using the stairs instead of the elevator can maintain muscle tone and
make "liesure" activities less tiring and more beneficial...but it's
just not part of the US culture. Even in good weather, people will
drive their car two blocks to get a lottery ticket. Walking or riding
a bike would be better for them, and the bike might actually be
faster, but the default is the car or whatever powered transport may
be present.

I have some hope that the continuing rise in fuel prices will start
pushing people out of their cars, but it's going to take much higher
costs than we have now before it will make much of a dent.

--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Paul Cassel said:

Ryan Cousineau said:

Hunting is a dual-use technology. I suspect that the biggest hits for
hunting are the ongoing urbanization of America (so that today's
urbanites didn't even grow up living in the country and hunting with
their fathers) and the reduced financial incentives to hunt food (food
is cheaper, incomes are higher).

I think the decline is due to both urbanization meaning less opportunity
to do it and fewer folks knowing how to do it. You need an
apprenticeship in hunting you don't in many other pursuits.

True to an extent, but the knowledge is neither impossible to acquire
nor so arcane that a personal demonstration is required before the
activity can possibly be successful.

Quoted message said:

If I got the idea to go out and kill an elk for meat, I'd be lost as how
to do it. How would I find an eligible elk and then, once dead, how do I
butcher it, get 1,000 lbs of elk back to my house to eat and so forth.

There are numerous places to get the needed instruction;
field-dressing an elk or deer is relatively simple, and the subject is
adequately covered in a booklet that need not be bigger than a typical
road map. (I have several such.) The biggest obstacle is digestive;
most modern urbanites would lose their lunch and their appetite for
meat if they had to do the initial butchering that's needed when
bringing home a carcass. After that, however, there are meat
processing specialists who will, for a fairly reasonble cost, complete
the process of cooling it down, carving it into appropriate pieces and
wrapping it for transportation and storage.

Quoted message said:

I had several false starts riding a bicycle until, through chance, I met
a guy who was a retired pro. He told me about the need for fitment and
so forth which made riding a bicycle doable for me. It seems to me that
figuring out how to hunt would be enormously more difficult So unless I
have a teacher, it'd be closed to me.

Instruction in target shooting can be had fairly easily. Instruction
in locating the game is harder. Part of the problem is the hunting
season itself; the fact that most of the hunters descend upon the
hunting lands on the same day tends to minimize the success rate in my
estimation.

Quoted message said:

As to the OP, I think we're clearly moving toward a watching not doing
populace. My daughter, age 13. lives on line. She and her tech oriented
school buddies, seem to prefer meeting online to in person.

My SO is similar, but my daughter (who is a theater techie) has moved
away from that tendency; she has even managed to collect a group
around her that rides instead of driving quite a bit of the time. It
can be done, but there has to be some encouragement, and the setting
has to provide the opportinities for it to work. I'm lucky; here it's
not hard to get around on a bike.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Quoted message said:

Look at it this way:
When was the last time a bicycle company or advocacy group had a
SuperBowl ad?

At those prices, only Trek could afford it, and maybe not even them.

Quoted message said:

Now, compare what people in the US spend on bicycles to
what fast food and processed food providers spend on advertising.....

More importantly, compare the time and money people spend on bikes to
the time and money they spend at McDonald's alone.

Quoted message said:

Add to that the current thought that that about one half the genetic
input for type 2 diabetes (the insulin resistance part) creates a
propensity for obesity in times of plentiful food (the trait supposedly
has survival value among populations that undergo periodic famines),
and you may end up with a bit more sympathy for those who are obese and
a bit less for the institutions that make money off food sales. And why
DOES a salad at cost two to four times as much as a burger at most fast
food places, anyway?

Salad materials can't be delivered frozen; as such, they are much more
difficult to efficiently supply, and they require just as much
processing time and manpower as a fancy burger. Add to that the fact
that the managment of most such establishments understand that there's
a certain minimum sale amount per customer that needs to be maintained
if the unit is going to be profitable. Taken together, twelve cents'
worth of lettuce, carrot and cabbage becomes a two-dollar small salad
if you're lucky. At a regular rstaurant, th salads are used as a way
to ensure that the customer still leaves feeling full when the
portions are somewhat miserly in the main meal; this is essential for
repeat business. (Of course, the whole "leaves feeling full" thing is
another part of the problem; a lot of people would benefit from merely
stopping at the point at which they are no longer hungry, but that's
not the custom.)
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Werehatrack said:

Quoted message said:

...american civilization moves weakly
toward not doing but playing electronic games and
watching electronics...

Quoted message said:

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

Lol! Like the three stages of sex in marriage?
Tri-weekly.
Try weekly.
Try weakly.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Werehatrack said:

Quoted message said:

Where's the hatrack said:

> Frank deFord of sports illustrated said on NPR that a study exists
> that states American civilization moves weakly toward not doing but
> playing electronic games and watching electronics-that is not using
> the internet resource to do something but only for vacuous non-goal
> oriented entertainment.

Quoted message said:

I believe it's "weekly" in this instance.

Quoted message said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to
want to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of
the activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports
have been on the decline for the past 20 years.

Is hunting impacted by incoming artillery or is it small arms fire,
either kind would affect my participation, above and beyond not
finding killing of wildlife for sport a positive pastime. We are not
hunter-gatherers.

While we are not hunter-gatherers in the main, we have eliminated the
natural predators which kept grazing herds in check in the past,
leading (in many areas) to an overpopulation of deer which needs to be
thinned regularly. Although there are people who would harvest the
deer for meat if they could do so economically, the combination of the
cost of the hunting license and the fees for access to lands where
hunting is possible have made the cost of the venison higher than fine
cuts of beef from a grocer. There is a need for meat in the lower
echelons and a need for herd size control; both could be addressed in
a mutually beneficial arrangement, but this isn't done.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching
since TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret
that Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

And public acceptance of obesity has increased by about 100% according
to today's press. This is my be an indicator of what percent of
adults currently are obese in comparison to the previous survey.

I have no problem with the "size acceptance" movement when it is
properly applied; there are people who genuinely can't reduce their
weight due to some physiological quirk, and I can respect that. OTOH,
I find the demand for blanket acceptance that "fat is OK" to be more
of an indicator of surrender to a largely false perception than
anything else.

The majority of obesity results from insufficient activity relative to
dietary intake, pure and simple. For those whose career choice is as
much at the root of the matter as anything else, I have some
tolerance. The reality of modern US life is that strenuous activity
is absent from most occupations now. Furthermore, the American
insistence upon reliance on the automobile, combined with the
pernicious effects of suburbanization and zoning (which tend to put
needed facilities beyond walking distance) has removed most of the
daily exercise from ordinary activities.

The real problem is that people have come to view "exercise" as
something that is an activity unto itself; they miss the point that
they could multitask it in with other things by simply choosing a
different approach in certain areas. Even something as simple as
using the stairs instead of the elevator can maintain muscle tone and
make "liesure" activities less tiring and more beneficial...but it's
just not part of the US culture. Even in good weather, people will
drive their car two blocks to get a lottery ticket. Walking or riding
a bike would be better for them, and the bike might actually be
faster, but the default is the car or whatever powered transport may
be present.

Thankfully I have not had problems with eating, body
weight, or physical conditioning; neither am I skillful at
any athletic endeavour. With that said this book changed
my life when I was eighteen.
_Exercise_Without_Exercise, 1934; Devan, S. Arthur.

Sitting, standing, walking, lying. Every motion, shift,
reach, etc. is exercise. Our head masses 3 kg. Holding it
up is work. Sitting straight in a chair for an hour is
work. Try it.

Then there are the bad habits to address. How stiff are
the muscles in you neck, back, etc? You cannot just change
that by wanting to or by some magic or radical
calisthenic.

Stand up. Drop the arms. Visualize a hinge pin in your
sternum. Imagine putting your elbows in you hip pockets.
Let the hinge open up. Take a breath. Let it all out.

--
Michael Press

Werehatrack said:

Although there are people who would harvest the deer for meat
if they could do so economically, the combination of the cost of the
hunting license and the fees for access to lands where hunting is possible
have made the cost of the venison higher than fine cuts of beef from a
grocer. There is a need for meat in the lower echelons and a need for
herd size control; both could be addressed in a mutually beneficial
arrangement, but this isn't done.

Hunters for the Hungry (www.h4hungry.org) does a pretty good job. Also,
the authorities (police, sheriffs) do controlled kills occasionally to
reduce the number of deer-car incidents, and the meat is donated to
various food banks, etc., if possible.

People do still hunt for food around here, on both public and private
lands.

Most venison for sale commercially is farm-raised, primarily for quality
control, and to meet food safety regs. It's expensive because it's a
specialty item with a small and fickle market.

Matt O.

Matt O'Toole said:

Werehatrack said:

With a few exceptions, most "outdoor sports" are seeing a decline in
participation. Hunting is among the worst impacted (no one seems to want
to discuss the fact that the reason is very simple; the cost of the
activity has become prohibitive), but nearly all outdoor sports have been
on the decline for the past 20 years.

I'm surprised to hear this. Cabela's sure seems to be doing well!

Quoted message said:

The US population has been steadily shifting from doing to watching since
TV came on the scene. The trend is not new. It is no secret that
Americans, by and large, are becoming couch potatoes.

No argument there. What's sad is how our children are becoming couch
potatoes. This does not bode well for the next generation of workers, or
businesses -- except maybe health care!

I read a really creepy article about how retailers are gearing up for a
big growth segment: the type II diabetic.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Paul Cassel said:

Ryan Cousineau said:

Hunting is a dual-use technology. I suspect that the biggest hits for
hunting are the ongoing urbanization of America (so that today's
urbanites didn't even grow up living in the country and hunting with
their fathers) and the reduced financial incentives to hunt food (food
is cheaper, incomes are higher).

I think the decline is due to both urbanization meaning less opportunity
to do it and fewer folks knowing how to do it. You need an
apprenticeship in hunting you don't in many other pursuits.

I was trying to say that, but you said it better.

Quoted message said:

As to the OP, I think we're clearly moving toward a watching not doing
populace. My daughter, age 13. lives on line. She and her tech oriented
school buddies, seem to prefer meeting online to in person.

I think you underestimate how much doing is going on online. Between
flickr, blogs, amateur video (not that kind), podcasting, the DIY ethic
embodied by magazines like Make, and, well, rbt, there's a lot of
creativity going on. A lot of action is happening in all those fields
from people who are (or were) doing it for fun, not money.

Even chat is an interactive pastime, not passive like TV.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos