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Cake day: December 27th, 2025

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  • Yep, agreed, it has a lot to do with the geometry of the bike, too. The old, short-tail, drop-bar, racing-style “10 speeds” of my youth felt very precarious, and going over the handlebars was a common occurrence because of the rider’s position. The longer tails, and more-upright posture of the rider, on a city/commuter/hybrid bike puts the bike’s center of gravity much further aft. Going over the handlebars is quite unlikely, and good bike infrastructure that doesn’t put riders in the door zone (or gutter) is much more important than a helmet.


  • This seems to spark inchoate rage or cognitive dissonance when I point it out, but for exactly the same reason, everyone should wear a helmet when driving a car, too. Head injuries are common outcomes of car wrecks, and a debilitating injury. It may feel unnecessary, because the majority of people can go an entire, normal lifetime without a head-injury crash. But, then, exactly the same is true of cyclists.

    Certainly, everybody knows somebody who crashed on their bike and was saved by their helmet. In contrast, I knew people who crashed in their car who may have been saved by a helmet. I say “knew,” because they’re dead.













  • I’m kind of skepitical of the “dirty bomb” idea. Frankly, it sounds like a load of bullshit, because of the πr2 thing. Namely, if you want to irradiate and area to a sufficient extent to cause immediate radiation sickness, then keeping it concentrated is your best bet. A very small bomb, at most.

    The other extreme would be a huge bomb to spread radioactive material over, say, a city. At which point it barely raises the radioactivity above background levels. Or at least doesn’t cause immediately apparent effects. Imagine terrorists issuing a statement like, “Sure, it doesn’t seem so bad TODAY, but wait 'til you see the slight bump in cancer rates in 20 years.”

    Indeed, on looking it up, I see that the experts are skeptical, too, and tests conducted by Israel didn’t find much effectiveness. That could be why we haven’t seen one used.