Old Swedish Bicycle

This bike was my great grandfather's. It came over from Sweden when he did. My grandmother told me stories about riding around on the back of it when she was a little girl.

It's really amazing to see how similar this bike (from the 1920s if memory serves) is to modern bikes and yet there are some big differences.

Among the differences, not the handle bar grips, the 45° rear facing drop outs, the fold-up front rack, and the angle of the seat tube (if you're in to that sort of thing).

This bike looks really sweet and would be an amazing restoration project. I wonder if the spokes are strong enough to ride on and what size the wheels are. I bet there are some weird sized things that used to be the standard and are now difficult to locate. The single speed aspect (I'm assuming there's a coaster brake because I don't see any other brakes) would make it difficult to ride in Tally but not so bad on the coast.

Student Loan Forgiveness Demands from Occupy Wall Street

It makes no sense for the government to forgive student loans.

First of all, there was an agreement between the creditor and the debtor about how the money would be repaid. The balance sheet cannot be wiped clean. Someone must pay the debt or creditors will stop lending money to students. I do not want the government to pay the debt. They spend too much money already. It's unfair to take tax dollars from someone who did not have a child go to college or who had one go on full ride scholarships and make that person pay for an unknown beneficiary of the government.

Next, from an efficiency standpoint, it doesn't make sense to give money to college graduates. They are going to have higher earning potentials than the less educated of their cohort. Forgiving $50,000 in student loans for an individual might lower their monthly obligations by a couple hundred dollars, but will they spend all of that? If you gave that same money to 50 poor people in the sum of $1,000 each, the poor would spend that money a lot faster and probably on more "needed" stuff than the former students.

How Much Does the Internet Weigh?

Put Liquids in Your Checked Luggage

What are my options regarding liquids if I don't want to pay at least $25 each way (and wait at the baggage claim) to check my luggage? The TSA website says that each traveler can't bring bottles bigger than 100mL each and they all have to be contained in a 1 quart bag. They say the 100mL size restriction is a safety measure. What's going to stop a bad guy from flying with 4-5 other bad guys and each splitting up the volume of liquid?

In fact, it wouldn't be too hard for separate bad guy to go through separate screening places and not raise any suspicions and maybe combine their couple hundred milliliters of inert stuff into boom juice once past security (and even before getting on the plane). It's nuts to make me go out and buy travel sized crap just so I can fly. Maybe I have small bottles at home that I can refill myself and that's better than buying stuff, but why can't I take my recently opened tube of toothpaste if I have the space for it? This is a pointless and arbitrary rule and it's slowing everyone down. Stop the guy trying to bring high odor mineral spirits on the plane or maybe 8 molar hydrofluoric acid...leave me alone with my cologne and shampoo. You can't even carry on canned food if there's liquid inside which seems to rule out everything except refried beans. Frustrating.

Pick #265

G Love - "Free at Last"


This is the same as Pick #259!!! Oops.

The Primal Professional Shoe

Pick #264

Angels and Airwaves - "The Adventure"