I've tried going balls out in my WRX on some dirt and gravel roads up in the mountains on the way to a hike or a river or whatever and it just doesn't work. I don't know how these guys do it. Anything over 30 mph or so is nearly a death wish for me.

You just made me a MotoGP fan.

In reply to this comment by antonye:
>> ^rottenseed:
Thanks I was wondering what he meant by a blue flag. So there's a flag to let you know you're better off packing your bags?


Yes, the blue flag is shown to warn riders that the race leaders are about to lap them. You're supposed to be nice and get off the racing line so the leaders can pass unhindered and you then rejoin.

This is why it's otherwise known as the "there's a race going on and you ain't in it" flag

As for comments about why they're not hurting themselves, the type of crash (a "low-side" where the bike falls due to loss of grip) means that the energy is spent by the rider sliding along the tarmac. The idea is that the run-off (usually grass and then "kitty litter" gravel) will dissipate this energy so you are taken away from the track and slowed down without hitting a barrier. That's not to say that injuries don't happen; should you be rolling or catch something and start to tumble, you're likely to break bones as your arms/legs go flailing. This whiplash will dislocate limbs if you're lucky and break them if you're not. Wayne Rainey was paralysed from the chest down in one such incident while racing in 1993.

Modern riding kit helps a lot; leather is still very difficult to beat (some use Kangaroo leather, others use Stingray skin!) and with reinforced areas and protectors (usually for knees, elbows, shoulders, back and chest) it means you can walk away from a 200mph slide.

For sheer bone-breaking madness, you really don't want to "high-side" a bike. This is where the rear of the bike will lose traction and start to slide. This has the dual effect of tilting the bike and moving it off axis of the direction of travel, like a handbrake turn in a car. This also compresses the rear suspension, usually a single shock absorber. The problem comes when, due to the rear wheel slowing down through sideways motion, the rear wheel grips again. At this point the bike will now try to rotate around the horizontal axis (from one side to the other) due to the sudden grip stopping the slide. This gives the rear suspension a chance to uncompress, and has the effect of firing the rider out of the seat. Give it enough speed, slide and compression and you've just invented the Motorcycle Ejector Seat.

For some great crashes in MotoGP, the bike equivalent of Formula 1, have a look here (fast forward to 5m10s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZEKQHyxMI
And yes, if you watched the #1 crash, Jorge Lorenzo really did break *both* his ankles in qualifying, but went on to race and came 4th!

>> ^rottenseed:
Thanks I was wondering what he meant by a blue flag. So there's a flag to let you know you're better off packing your bags?


Yes, the blue flag is shown to warn riders that the race leaders are about to lap them. You're supposed to be nice and get off the racing line so the leaders can pass unhindered and you then rejoin.

This is why it's otherwise known as the "there's a race going on and you ain't in it" flag

As for comments about why they're not hurting themselves, the type of crash (a "low-side" where the bike falls due to loss of grip) means that the energy is spent by the rider sliding along the tarmac. The idea is that the run-off (usually grass and then "kitty litter" gravel) will dissipate this energy so you are taken away from the track and slowed down without hitting a barrier. That's not to say that injuries don't happen; should you be rolling or catch something and start to tumble, you're likely to break bones as your arms/legs go flailing. This whiplash will dislocate limbs if you're lucky and break them if you're not. Wayne Rainey was paralysed from the chest down in one such incident while racing in 1993.

Modern riding kit helps a lot; leather is still very difficult to beat (some use Kangaroo leather, others use Stingray skin!) and with reinforced areas and protectors (usually for knees, elbows, shoulders, back and chest) it means you can walk away from a 200mph slide.

For sheer bone-breaking madness, you really don't want to "high-side" a bike. This is where the rear of the bike will lose traction and start to slide. This has the dual effect of tilting the bike and moving it off axis of the direction of travel, like a handbrake turn in a car. This also compresses the rear suspension, usually a single shock absorber. The problem comes when, due to the rear wheel slowing down through sideways motion, the rear wheel grips again. At this point the bike will now try to rotate around the horizontal axis (from one side to the other) due to the sudden grip stopping the slide. This gives the rear suspension a chance to uncompress, and has the effect of firing the rider out of the seat. Give it enough speed, slide and compression and you've just invented the Motorcycle Ejector Seat.

For some great crashes in MotoGP, the bike equivalent of Formula 1, have a look here (fast forward to 5m10s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLZEKQHyxMI
And yes, if you watched the #1 crash, Jorge Lorenzo really did break *both* his ankles in qualifying, but went on to race and came 4th!

^ Mike Gravel is supposedly in your quadrant.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008

>> ^Arg:
I'd be amazed if this man is capable of tying his own shoelaces.


I meet him and he is an intelligent, funny and likable guy. Of course you can mock and spout something about a person that you don't know instead of dealing with what he says.
Ben Stein was considered one of the smart guys before he decided to make his movie about Evolution. Now (even though he is not a Christian) he is mocked in similar fashion.
I was under the impression that this is a country where people can speak their mind and challenge thought?! Isn't that, an open discusion and reasoning, what makes sience worthwhile and lead to something?
Funny how nobody wants to talk about the things that Darwin said would have to fall into place to prove his theory. Funny how many of the “proof” comes out forged or plain false? If it is so clear and logigal… why the need to forge things? Funny how these known forgeries are still used in school text books today?!

Just to name a few:

Piltdown man: Found in a gravel pit in Sussex England in 1912, this fossil was considered by some sources to be the second most important fossil proving the evolution of man—until it was found to be a complete forgery 41 years later. The skull was found to be of modern age. The fragments had been chemically stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth had been filed down!


Nebraska Man from the Illustrated London NewsNebraska man: A single tooth, discovered in Nebraska in 1922 grew an entire evolutionary link between man and monkey, until another identical tooth was found which was protruding from the jawbone of a wild pig.


Java man: Initially discovered by Dutchman Eugene Dubois in 1891, all that was found of this claimed originator of humans was a skullcap, three teeth and a femur. The femur was found 50 feet away from the original skullcap a full year later. For almost 30 years Dubois downplayed the Wadjak skulls (two undoubtedly human skulls found very close to his "missing link"). (source: Hank Hanegraaff, The Face That Demonstrates The Farce Of Evolution, [Word Publishing, Nashville, 1998], pp.50-52)


Orce man: Found in the southern Spanish town of Orce in 1982, and hailed as the oldest fossilized human remains ever found in Europe. One year later officials admitted the skull fragment was not human but probably came from a 4 month old donkey. Scientists had said the skull belonged to a 17 year old man who lived 900,000 to 1.6 million years ago, and even had very detail drawings done to represent what he would have looked like. (source: "Skull fragment may not be human", Knoxville News-Sentinel, 1983)


Neanderthal: Still synonymous with brutishness, the first Neanderthal remains were found in France in 1908. Considered to be ignorant, ape-like, stooped and knuckle-dragging, much of the evidence now suggests that Neanderthal was just as human as us, and his stooped appearance was because of arthritis and rickets. Neanderthals are now recognized as skilled hunters, believers in an after-life, and even skilled surgeons, as seen in one skeleton whose withered right arm had been amputated above the elbow. (source: "Upgrading Neanderthal Man", Time Magazine, May 17, 1971, Vol. 97, No. 20)

The theory of embryonic recapitulation asserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops. Ernst Haeckel proposed this theory in the late 1860’s, promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution in Germany. He made detailed drawings of the embryonic development of eight different embryos in three stages of development, to bolster his claim. His work was hailed as a great development in the understanding of human evolution. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. (source: Russell Grigg, "Fraud Rediscovered", Creation, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.49-51)

Mike Gravel and Kucinich.

Am sorry but Ron Paul does make good points in most cases but he his economic views are counter productive. I think most people are too swayed by his strong rhetoric and don't delve deeper into specific policies.

Lyndon LaRouche? ROFLMAO.

I'm mixed between Ron Paul and Kucinich too, they both have similar ideas about foreign policy, but their ideas domestic policy is very different. Both good, but different.

At some point I might have voted for Gravel, because he just makes so much damn sense. But I dunno.

Ron Paul was the republican front runner for a very long time, he and Mike Gravel for the Dems were the only people telling the truth and willing to change America's foreign policy.

Now Brzezinski, 'Obama's brain' is running the show, which means they will move into Pakistan and Darfur to control the oil and gas going to Russia and China. These will be new wars fought under a banner of 'humanitarianism' instead of 'terrorism'. That's the Real Change you got America, well done.

*face palm

He's just a man, another politician who knew what the American people wanted and needed after 8 years of Bush. He's not a revolutionary and dramatic shift in US policy. That would have been Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Vincent Bugliosi Mike Gravel Dennis Kucinich Sean Penn Ralph Nader prosecu' to 'Vincent Bugliosi, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Sean Penn, Ralph Nader, prosecute' - edited by gwiz665

"This is about research without bias, critical thinking and the scientific method being suspended for, what could be, the most important election of our time."

Isn't it always that? I mean look that the last couple of elections. It is always about who is better at flinging feces.

I think it is sad when someone like Obama doesn't hit very much back in debates and he is deemed the loser of it. McCain tells straight up lies in the debate and no one bats an eye. Obama also makes unsubstantiated claims in the debates, though, so he's certainly not clean.

If it was about who was better for the American people Ron Paul or Mike Gravel would be president in about a month.

We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite

Once upon a time when crack was gold
And hip-hop was not yet platinum sold
I scoured the streets for stacks to fold
My mood like my hair was relaxed and blowed
I hated police and my teachers were beasts
My heat in the trunk of the classic Caprice
The one university, I knew the deal
So I cooked it, bagged it, put it on sale
Now philosophically you'd be opposed
to one inhaling coke via mouth or the nose
But economically I would propose
that you go eat a dick as employment froze
And I felt like an abandoned child
Left to fend for myself in the wild
While every courtroom, judge and gavel
were there to bury me under the gravel
Or at the bottom of the finest malt ale
Observe; you'll find without fail
That in every neighborhood and penitentiary
There exists many others who are similar to me and

We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite

In later years I lost some peers
Who mixed burners with Belvedere
And took shots from gung-ho cashiers
The world was cold yet hell was near
So I seek for a kilo
And my stack got a little bit taller like Skee-Lo
A street CEO
There was all of this hell well and not one hero
The intensity was fortified
As I clenched five digits on the forty-five
Barely down at the retail store I would detail more
But I don't wish this action to be glorified
There was a plan I was eager to listen
To not sleep in the park in the fetal position
Having to wipe off canine fecal emission
Otherwise I'd survive without legal permission
It's an equal division and then we go to prison, which is a little decision
All I wanted was a Regal to glisten
And my kids would have meat in the kitchen and complete ammunition
It's a given once the people are driven that

We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite

Get your work up! Get your work up!

We are born from the mildew, the rust, the heathenous lust
The dreams in the dust, the evidence flushed
The grieving is just, they're thieving from us
Insulted and cussed, this evening we bust
Appears unstable and under the table
We like free speech but we love free cable
We're taught from the cradle the Bill Gates fable
Which leads to high speeds in Buick LeSables
We have no excuses just great alibis
And poker faces you can't analyze
Our politicians sell our soul and our cries
With blood on their hands they can't sanitize
We're the have-nots, but we're also the gon'-gets
Not just talkin 'bout the Lex with the chrome kits
You can get that by yourself with the four-fifth
Let's all own shit then toast with Patron hits

I'm splitting my vote up here; Mitch Daniels for Governor (Republican?!... I know! and I post on the sift!) and Barack Obama for President. (I'm also voting for the new Republican Attorney General of Indiana, but that's a whole 'nother thing... www.z4ag.com)

Obama first really caught my attention when he spoke eloquently about the importance of transparency in where government money is going. But much more important than his speeches, he introduced legislation (with a Republican colleague) to begin doing exactly what he knew was important; use technology to make it easy for everyone to see who is getting what, when and why. (http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2008/06/shining-a-brigh.html) He's done this 'practice what you preach' thing a few times over, like in pairing up with former Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar to drag us back on track in the very neglected area of destroying stockpiles of Cold War and older missiles just sitting around in other countries (http://obama.senate.gov/press/070111-lugar-obama_non/).

Anyhow, after that I looked through his webpage and what other bills he has supported and read some of his speeches, and it became clear that he's almost too good to be true. I read about him being raised by his mom and his grandparents, and of how his mom dying of cancer making a huge impact on how he saw the Government failing American's in an area that effects everyone. Blah blah blah... I'm way for Obama now.

So I actually went out into the country with a friend recently and did some 'canvasing' for Obama down a lot of gravel roads. I learned there's a lot of indecision out there.


... oh yeah, one more thing I wanted to mention; the McCain campaign loves to point out how liberal Obama's senate voting record is*... the asterisk next to this comment is to remind you he's been in there for four Bush years, four years of voting against completely ridiculous political bullshit that poisoned some otherwise good bills. Obama seems like a guy who loves working towards an agreement, but despises anybody trying to force his tacit approval of bullshit.

First thing you learn when driving through the desert over there is that these beasts own the road. If one of them comes towards you and the sealed road is too narrow for both of you, YOU are the one that wants to pull over.
While they usually would go off the road to avoid hitting you, the last thing you want is the cloud of gravel these things stir up to hail down on your windshield...

You are all deluded if you think either one of the candidates will do markedly better than bush.

Kucinich, Gravel, Paul, all far better choices, all suppressed by the media and laughed at by their own party.

Face it, your country is fucked.