I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
I will be honest, I ride a bike and disregard traffic laws. Then again, I do the same in a car. However, I do so within reason. I never go the wrong way, I never cross an intersection on red unless it is clear for at least one block, and I always give cars the right of way (something I don't have to do). There is something that I do that really pisses off people in cars: I take the lane when I ride.
ReplyDeleteThen again, downtown Cleveland is quite a bit different that NYC.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I don't think that it is just bicyclists in NY that don't follow traffic laws, it is the majority of them in any city.
ReplyDeleteYou have never been to Amsterdam, then, Joe?
DeleteBah! Europeans are sissies. (I'm kidding, of course).
DeleteNope, never been. I would like to go, but not for biking.
It is true that most bicyclists disregard a great deal of the traffic statutes, it's just too easy to do on a bike. I did get hit by a car a few weeks ago, but I was actually following the law to a T (it was kind of a crazy intersection). Maybe it's karma. Who knows?