Or how to stay the hell out of blind spots. When I rode, I was constantly amazed by the numbers of fellow riders who didn’t understand that in order to be seen, you have to start by not hiding.

I did not. I did only single-tie systems for mathematical purity. (Just kidding. I might have tried it if I had thought to!)

No problem! I was once at a place that imposed a mandatory necktie policy. I hate neckties, so I thought I’d at least have fun with it. I wore ties as silly and varied as I could get away with and tied them different every day. That book was a boon.

It seems to me that if you are going to include 4-in-hand, a traditional necktie knot, then you should include these: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie (at a minimum) and possibly reference this: https://phys.org/news/2014-02-mathematicians-ways.html (177,147 ways). 😀

They’re called “dessert forks” in the same way that some people call the small spoons “dessert spoons”.

Canada deals with some of those problems by having a separation of state and medicine similar to our separation of state and church.

For example, I think we are the only country in the world with no abortion law. It’s a medical procedure, so it’s left to the medical community to develop standards of care and standards of practice.

It’s not perfect, but it’s worked out quite well since the 1980s. There were some major cases that led to our abortion laws being struck down by the courts and no government has yet had the courage to introduce new legislation of any kind.

I cannot know your experience and won’t pretend to.

Unless your objective is to be even more disliked and disrespected than you are now, being deliberately annoying will not get you far.

If you just want respect as a thinking, feeling human, you’re going to have to be respectful of other thinking, feeling humans, ignoring and blocking those who are too immature to have respect for others.

There are people out there who think that power is the source of respect. They are, of course, wrong. The only path to respect is through the elimination of power structures, so that respect can be mutually sought through understanding, not obedience.

I don’t like assholes, so I don’t seek them out. I try to give the assholes who engage with me the respectful engagement they crave but don’t deserve, then block the ones who stay assholes. If I feel surrounded by assholes, I disengage completely until I’ve figured out whether I’m actually the asshole or I’ve stumbled into a snakepit. (And everybody is sometimes an asshole. The secret is to not make it part of your identity or to assume that it’s part of theirs.)

Life is so much more pleasant when disagreements are respectful engagements with learning opportunities instead of just screaming matches.

Good luck on your journey.

This is what I was referring to. There are a number of variations on the theme.

If you are really in a pinch:

1. Feed a length of hose into the source until only a small amount is left clear of the liquid.

2. Put your thumb over the exposed end, or otherwise make the end as close to airtight as possible.

3. Rapidly pull the hose out of the liquid, moving the end down to the destination container. The end must be below the top surface of the source, the further the better.

4. Release your thumb/seal. If you’ve done it all correctly, the hose will be nearly filled with liquid and enough of it will be below the surface of the source to start the siphoning process.

If the source liquid is too far below the opening for this to work with the length of hose you have, you can manually pump it far enough to start a siphon, by rapidly submerging and lifting the hose while alternating the closing of the top. Open top while submerging, closed top while lifting. You have to push down faster than what gravity pulls the liquid back down. Ideally, you’re lifting fast enough to get some help from the liquid’s own inertia when you reverse course.

Ingesting gasoline is deadly in far smaller doses due to something called hydrocarbon pneumonia. My dad very nearly died as a result of having a tiny amount get past his throat while siphoning gas to a small engine’s tank.

If you must siphon gas, go buy a cheap “pump siphon” from Canadian Tire.

Ingesting gasoline is deadly in far smaller doses due to something called hydrocarbon pneumonia. My dad very nearly died as a result of having a tiny amount get past his throat while siphoning gas to a small engine’s tank.

If you must siphon gas, go buy a cheap “pump siphon” from Canadian Tire.

Until now, I’ve never seen anything with epoxy that I found visually impressive. And you went all the way to stunning!

That’s googol.

Yes, it was very badly constructed. I had to read it a couple of times to decode it, and I have the advantage of having graded essays :)

That would have been awesome, but I suspect that it was just the arms and that it was powered in some way, hence “pendulum-like”.

Gauges measured stress on the metacarpals during punches and slaps on padded-dumbbell targets created with a pendulum-like device.

I take “a pendulum-like device” to mean they suspended either the arms or the targets and swung them to a collision.

Gauges measured stress on the metacarpals during punches and slaps on padded-dumbbell targets created with a pendulum-like device.

I take “a pendulum-like device” to mean they suspended either the arms or the targets and swung them to a collision.

Heh. I gave up trying to figure out voting a long time ago. I find it both fascinating and disturbing that there are people out there who see anything I write as worthy of a dowvote. :)

I remember vaguely an article from a few decades ago that claimed Montreal was the only Canadian city that at least tried to do snow clearing right.

Saskatoon, for example, is abysmal and always has been.

I once heard that property taxes would have to increase by a lousy $50/year to bring Saskatoon snow clearing up to Montreal standards. That’s when I finally realized that governments at all levels, as they are currently organized, are basically useless when it comes to figuring out how to best serve the population.

Anyone who hasn’t followed that link needs to do so now! It’s got human cadaver arms manipulated with fishing line and guitar tuning knobs. It’s got a link to an article titled “Your Face: Punching Bag or Spandrel?”

You can’t possibly find a better way to spend 10 minutes!

One thing to watch out for is that anyone with an iPhone or using something like Air Guard on Android can easily discover that your bike is tagged. If well hidden or inaccessible, that might deter the thief. If not well hidden, it might take only a moment to deal with.