Disqus - Latest Comments for bikeboyron

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:45:49 -0000

Right. That's not the point. Read comment number 6 and 11.

Re: Alberto Contador Post Tour de France Press Conference

bikeboyron — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:54:40 -0000

Uh-oh. I wonder if you're the Living Strong of the Living Strong and Healthy blog fame? http://livingstrongandhappy...
If you are, we know how rabid a supporter you are of Lance Armstrong. It is pointless to argue with you. You go as far as to delete people's comments on your blog when they talk with a perspective that's different from yours. Talk about helping in the freedom of expression. Hatred and nothing more comes from the likes of you.

Regardless, your statement that "Contador was suspended for doping issues you idiot" must be trying to make us believe that he did dope. Its ironic that a person who says "see the facts" must come and pollute this website with their own vitriol.

FYI, here are the facts for you : Contador was identified based on references to his name that appeared in the first review of police documents in Puerto. A more thorough review when officials had more time, however, revealed no damning evidence that Contador was implicated in the doping scandal. A Spanish judge and the UCI both cleared Contador. Even the elusive Fuentes, speaking in 2006 on Spanish radio, said he never worked with Contador. Even that traitor Johann Bruyneel said of Contador 'The UCI admitted they made a mistake by including Alberto in this case.'

Read the source of this information and get the facts first, before you come here and start blasting off your Living Strong bombs. The first few were duds.

Source : http://velonews.com/article...

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:51:13 -0000

"Last year The Sun carried a story about an 11-year old girl who went under the wheels of a car. The newspaper showed the smashed pieces of the helmet which she believes saved her life. If her head was in that smashed helmet at the time her head would have been smashed, too. It’s far more likely that the helmet came off before being crushed by the car. Very few children wear properly fitting helmets. Most kid lids can be flicked off with ease, negating any safety benefits."

I see your theory. You provide little evidence of it but let's take your theory. If the helmet indeed came off and became crushed under the car wheels, it must mean the car wheels or maybe even the road impacted her helmet first. Without the helmet however, its likely she would have suffered some kind of head injury, or even her brains would have been splattered out on the road. Want to see some of that? Well, long ago there was a shock site called Ogrish.com and I could lead you to specific videos that would spoil your appetite for lunch. Ofcourse, Ogrish doesn't exist anymore so we won't do it.

See how you didn't talk about the above possibility? But you diverted the attention of the reader by jumping on your idea that the helmet came off, it got crushed, it doesn't provide protection, yada yada.

See Carlton, I'm not a fool. I know where you're heading with this, which is why I came here with the "knee jerk" reaction like you sang in your twitter account. I have dealt with lots of comments of this nature. About 2 years now.

A final word - One sad consequence thats indirectly taking place because of this kind of behavior is that its entirely de-sensitizing the story of someone's tragedy. No more does the fact that someone's life was saved matters or that they became injured. The helmet critic doesn't really care about it apparently. He or she just wants to dispel the so-called myths of helmets, while making the victim a pawn. They arrive at a news article or a story with a pre-meditated agenda in mind. I'm sure you won't disagree in your mind, even though you'll tell me otherwise.

Ron
"Cozy" Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:50:24 -0000

Done. Changed to exactly how you wanted it.

We're disagreeing but you never provided a response to the logic disconnect between the second link shown in the post and your thoughts on how helmets are bad in an accident with a motor vehicle, how they decrease cycling, how they don't do anything to save a person's life..yada yada.

I too am against helmet compulsion laws but I don't waste a huge amounts of time fighting against them, as done by a large number of people on the internet and other media. Be respectful towards laws but be careful about what you show in support if you want to go against it.

For instance, the study on decrease in cycling numbers due to helmet laws are also pretty sketchy but I'm not going to talk about it in length because I have written
about it before. To have a complete understanding of such studies, you need to understand complex statistical treatments of data. If I ask you a question on how raw data was treated in such experiments, you wouldn't be able to give me an answer. The capacity to understand the rigorous analysis done by researchers and even critique them comes from an understanding of this math. I have studied some of these research papers you're talking about end to end and found out that it requires atleast a focused university level education in statistics to get an idea of what they're doing on data.

There are people who don't know a thing about these topis, yet if a research study's conclusions suit their belief system, they'll be more than happy to preach about it and spread it. I for one am skeptical of any research study on any subject for that matter, until and unless I can get a copy of that study in my hand and I can spend a night reading it on my desk to understand where their ideas come from.

Cheers,

Ron

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:02:27 -0000

You have little evidence that the news anchor, journalist etc etc believed that "a piece of safety equipment is more protective than it is." This is simply your personal opinion; there is no credible evidence that what you say is true. Leave the past inflated reports stating that helmets save lives out of this. Those topics are not connected to this, atleast considering the way you approached the news. It is random luck.

Okay, I'm going to leave this now. It seems you are convinced what you're doing is logical. Carry on.

Ron
Cozy Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:44:51 -0000

Carlton,

You said : These have better potential than polystyrene to deflect bullets, even if just fractionally.

Agreed, 100%. Any rational human being can understand that. Tell it to a kid by showing him the properties of metal and foam through a science experiment and even he will understand that. The point is, your brought this article and wrote on it with some flawed logic, which only was an unnecessary reaction (read my comments above).

No where in the news article you linked to is there a statement stating the advantages of helmets to deflect bullets. You will agree with that. You thought process reflects the mentality 'Damn, another article claiming helmets are effective to protect your life. Must bunk this one.' Either that, or you think news readers are fools.

Atleast you could have appreciated the fact that a man's life was saved, be it luck or otherwise.

Ron
Cozy Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:27:57 -0000

Well then. Back to the drawing board? :)

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:52:32 -0000

Again, sorry but its been the fifth time that I read the article you linked to. I checked again. The headline still stands : "Firefighter Arrested In Bicyclist Shooting" and not what you created. Even if it was (website may have changed the headline), they are simply stating that helmet saved his life, which is the obvious as indeed it saved his life, without making any co-relation between bullets and the deflecting properties of helmets. A stroke of luck. You, however, went overboard with the article because there is already some pre-conceived notion in your head as you read it. You think there is some conspiracy out there.

Ron
Cozy Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:28:54 -0000

Dear Carlton,

You're being very emotional about your stance against helmets. Calm down. There wasn't need for a long one because I know how you think.

You have a grand mission, which is proving that helmets decrease cycling. Any opportunity you get to take a snitch at it, you will grab without abandon. Your blog is a vehicle to advance these ideas.

In this latest episode, you want to take another snitch at a protective wear by citing an article that stated that a man was shot in the head while cycling but the helmet stopped the bullet short of his head. Its the same as saying that the lapel pin on a President's jacket deflected a stray bullet from entering his heart. The point is that sheer luck saved him. No one will argue with you that the lapel pin is to be worn because it saves your heart from bullet. In fact, if you marketed such a product by saying this and swindled people, you may even be put behind bars.

Same logic here. Helmets are not made to deflect bullets. We all knew that. You do. But you bring this story here, and connect it with your exisiting belief that they are bad anyway for the cycling. What relation does one have with the other?

I assumed that being the author of a Bike to Work book and also being a cycling advocate, you would exercise a tad bit more intelligence from your side. I know what your agenda is. But you can be free to think whatever you want to.

-Ron
Cozy Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:48:10 -0000

Dear Carlton,

And yes, I did read the article. Not one mention of a sentence such as "Polystyrene cannot absorb the energy from a full-on car or truck smash." Where do you manufacture these fancies from?

Ron
Cozy Beehive

Re: Polystyrene deflects a bullet? Bunkum!

bikeboyron — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:42:09 -0000

Polystyrene cannot absorb the energy from a full-on car or truck smash.

Dear Carlton,

No one said it is. So where's the problem? I'm forced to think that you're pretty affected by the consequences of such a news article on the web, so you have to immediately come on the web and try and take a snitch at helmets by your own philosophy.

Ron
Cozy Beehive