Branko’s Weblog

Mandatory bicycle helmet laws: why? What kind of injuries are bicycle helmets supposed to reduce or stop?

A cursory web search delivers two types of web sites, those of people and orgs vehemently against bicycle helmets, and those moderately in favour. The ones against point out that bicycle helmets rarely every help, but since you cannot prove a negative, there is little other data they can point to. The burden of proof lies with the pro-helmet group, but those tend to stick to vague statements along the lines of “a bicycle helmet protects you in the case of crashes, but also in the case of falls.”

Neither type of website tries to explain what kind of injuries a bicyclist is likely to have, and how a helmet would help against these injuries, or fail to do so.

This lack of data unfortunately and pro-actively turns any discussion about bicycle helmets into one fuelled purely by myths and assumptions, and a political one to boot.

The only figures I could find were at the totally unrelated blog of Toby Sterling, who points out that most lethal bike accidents in Amsterdam in 2006 were the result of bicycles stopping in the blind spot of large trucks, even though blind spot mirrors have been obligatory since 2003.

Well, internets, have you useful links for me?

(Via his old man.)

Once upon a time there lived a beetle that wanted to be an elephant.

What is an elephant? its friends wanted to know. Is it something you can eat? Can you stroke its hair? Does it have cable television?

I don’t know, the beetle said, but I am convinced it would be great to be one.

An elephant that just happened to pass by had overheard everything, and was surprised. Am I something you can eat? How do I taste? What is hair? Do I have cable television?

The elephant lifted the beetle off the ground, held it in front of its left eye, and asked: what is a beetle?

A witch who also just happened to pass by transformed the beetle into an elephant and the elephant into a handsome fellow whom she chained to the clammy wall of the small castle a few miles into the forest. There she stroked his hair until he went crazy. And then she stroked his hair until he died. And then she stroked his hair until he had none left.

Taken at the Louis Braillelaan in Zoetermeer, the World Trade Center in Amsterdam, and on the Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam respectively.

Doing science fiction is very like doing farce, in one area only: it’s real people in an unreal situation. [...] If they’re real people, then it works.

- Gareth Thomas

Ah, welcome to the virtual home of a lunatic.

Today there is a common cold on the menu, like yesterday, and similar time-units before. Rather fuzzy in the head, I am.

So now I am condemned to the hell of daytime television.

Have you ever noticed how some interviewees respond to their interviewers as if they are explaining things to literal retards? I always assumed there is just this type of interviewee, you know, who explains anything to anyone this way, slowly, deliberate, and not to afraid to pronounce and then answer every hidden assumption.

But with retards doing the interviews, it is hard to say what is going on these days.

Today I felt a little fitter than yesterday. This renewed vigour, I felt, was proven by the fact that yesterday I preheated the oven, but had forgotten to put the buns in. Whereas today… and then doubt started to creep in. I checked the kitchen. Suffice it to say that unlike yesterday, today I had preheated the oven, taken the buns out of the fridge, and then … I just walked away.

Am I the only one who, when cleaning the kitchen floor, lavishes about four times more attention upon the white tiles than the black?

I am going to try and come up with a couple of achievable, yet challenging New Year’s resolutions. In fact, that will be the first one.

In the meantime I wish you a good 2010.

Lovely little funky Christmas tune by Laura Vane and the Vipertones:

He was a very good bullshitter, by which he meant a very bad one.