Polaris OBark

Trichloroethylene comes to mind. This is a common ingredient in auto brake cleaners, which many people here on bike forum advocate for bicycle disc brakes. This is unambiguously a potent carcinogen, and the EPA is trying to ban it. Isopropanol works just fine, isn't a carcinogen, and isn't particularly harmful unless you drink it.

rsbob 

From the CNN article that Gobicycling posted, “they do more physically demanding activities like gardening or stair climbing”. If that is the criteria, I might qualify for the SuperAger Olympics, and this is not even a tenth of what I maintain. If not on the bike, this is where you will find me:

Polaris OBark

That's stunning.

john m flores 

I still have a decent head of hair, most of it is not gray yet, and my girlfriend flatters me by telling me I look 20 years younger than I actually am. But this Spring, on the eve of my 55th, we hosted a Warm Showers cyclist, Eddie, who is a bit developmentally disabled but otherwise highly functional. As we were sitting in the backyard having pizza, I asked Eddie to guess how old I was; he had done the same to me earlier in the evening so I thought it fitting on the eve of my birthday. Eddie gave me a good long stare and then said, "54...55?" He could have not been more right!

PeteHski

Indeed, very impressive!

Alan K

Nice landscape/garden! 👍

Activities like gardening have benefits beyond simple physical exercise - it’s not only a very productive hobby, it is also great for relaxing one’s mind!

[PS: I haven’t read the CNN article, primarily because I no longer trust CNN, or for that matter most of the “popular” venues of dissemination of information.]

rsbob 

Have to agree there. I don’t go with the main US forms of new media on either side. I typically look at media outside the country which looks at the US more objectively and doesn’t have a dog in the fight.

Alan K

As I grow older and develop a sense of proportion (or lose it, who knows!), I notice that everyone, and I mean everyone, has a dog in every fight they are caring to comment on in their media. If they don’t have their dog in a fight, they are much more likely to ignore the show. One has to pay attention to all possible angles to begin to decipher whose dog is trained to lick or attack whom and why!
Of course, I may well be wrong. 😉

rsbob 

“trained to lick”…?
Not this guy. He was trained to sit.

PeteHski

I’m certainly wary of “popular” media, particularly online. Books by legit qualified authors are usually the best source of quality, detailed information. The media is full of noise and bias, although I still have respect for the BBC for news coverage and topics of casual interest.

Alan K

You are correct about quality of books published by some exceptional authors.

Availability of online access to “information” also resulted in a predictable but unfortunate demise of true investigative reporting, and ultimately truth in reporting.

About scientific matters, I go to the original publications to see if they are published in reputable journals (independent peer reviewed) of high impact rating. But to try and learn facts, the job doesn’t stop there, one has to look at the authors and note who financed their research - establishing their credibility is critically important, given that lately we have seen a great deal of manipulations of “scientific facts” and countless lives have been negatively impacted and even lost. Sadly, the greed of a few, when left unchecked, always results in awful outcomes for the society.

By the way, these comments are not intended to be political - merely a statement of my observations.

john m flores 

There are two sides to every coin. The Internet has democratized the creation and dissemination of information in profound, society-changing ways. Just think of this little forum of ours and the amount of helpful and useful information that is shared on it. In decades past, the only way this kind of information was distributed was either word of mouth or via the handful of publications and the small cadre of editors at those publications. While usually well-curated, it was also very limited; how often were their stories about niche interests like folding bikes, recumbents, 50+ nutrition and fitness, classic and vintage bikes, etc...? Compared to today, those niches received a trickle of information, if any at all.

These days, we're all drinking from a firehose of data, some of it good, some of it bad, and it's incumbent upon each of us to discern the difference. It's challenging, time consuming, and with the advent of AI (and bad actors using it), becoming increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly with subjects further away from our own knowledge sets. Pandora's out of the box and I'm not sure there's any way to put it back. There's still good investigative journalism being done, but it's increasingly hard to get noticed in the firehose.

"May you live in interesting times." says the old Chines proverb. I'm not sure if it was a blessing or a curse.

Alan K

Life is far more than two sides of a coin. I agree that each of us needs to “somehow” find a way to decipher what is closer to the truth. However, no one among us is capable enough to understand all the true details of every field of knowledge that is out there, even if it is available to us. This is why for a well-functioning society, it is vital that those who are entrusted with certain responsibilities and paid for their services, at least majority of them fulfill their legal and moral commitments (yes, it all comes down to fundamental morality or code of ethics). We seem to witnessing a serious deterioration in this aspect of our lives, apparently everywhere.

About the Chinese proverb, I’d be careful about definitions, such as interesting to whom? 😉
Even Covid was interesting to some, they made billions of $ but it wasn’t interesting to most of us pedestrians (or bicyclists).

john m flores 

Not to get too political about it, but when you have gatekeepers of information, you also have the potential of a small group controlling and manipulate perceptions. You see that not only in totalitarian regimes but also here in the United States. This internet-fueled democratization of information has opened my eyes to the ways that US foreign and domestic policy in the 20th century was hidden in plain sight. So while you may look back and see a functioning society, I see a society meant to function for certain groups of people at the expense of other groups of people.

These days, there's more open discussion of such things, but it's sadly lost in the firehose of information and disinformation. I'm not sure which is better.

For sure, that's why it may actually be a curse...

rsbob 

^ Excellent discourse gentlemen.

Alan K

There have always been and in all likelihood, will always be gatekeepers of information - those who seek power/control will always strive to do so… it’s just the human nature! In various societies and nations, the difference is just a matter of degree.
An ideal benevolent monarch has always been a myth, there’s no such thing in any form.
The barrage of information we have today, we might associate with actionable freedom of choices is somewhat naive. The masses in every nation, for the most part, are allowed only as much choices as it suits their upper echelons. Sure, on occasions things might appear to go a little out of their hands but in all such cases, new or emergency laws are enacted to “correct” the situation to keep the public in their proper places.
I know, it sounds negative but the reality is fairly close to it. Of course, many of us learn to be happy with a few trinkets we can afford and enjoy… and then there are personally rewarding hobbies like bicycling and gardening to name a few, 😉👌

kevinkay

Leaner always looks younger!

gobicycling

Somehow this thread has gotten all over the place! So I'll take this opportunity to add one more tidbit. Recently our Next-door had a post that someone had been told to check their furnace for carbon dioxide and had been told by the technician that there was dangerous carbon dioxide in the air and they needed a new furnace. Immediately, numerous other posters stated they must also have their furnace checked for carbon dioxide as soon as possible. I took a moment to explain to them the differences between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. I expressed concern about the lack of scientific knowledge expressed by these posts, and was criticized for doing so. And the thought keeps occurring to me, these people vote!

Biker395 

IMHO, never be afraid to be that little voice in the back of the room pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. If you are right, you will have taught something. If you are wrong, you will have learned something. It astounds me when people make clear errors about something, then get butthurt when someone points out the error. I guess I make enough errors, I'm used to it. lol

gobicycling

Yes. I spent a good portion of my life pointing out emperors who are naked. Interestingly this has been in the area of disability services, where you find an amazing amount of greed among administrators of non-profits. They did not particularly appreciate my posting to thousands of people their salaries, which they had hoped to keep hidden, among other activities. Finally a government auditor followed through and it made the headlines, and heads rolled. Appears there was fraud.
I also got a state law passed requiring more audits of these organizations.

Alan K

“And the thought keeps occurring to me, these people vote!”

I understand that not only do they vote, they do so often… and some manage to come back from hereafter to do just that - vote!
This understanding is based on impeccably reliable information called hearsay! 😉

rsbob 

Your bolded statement is quite correct. I have worked with (not for) a number of non-profits and they have been completely above-board. These include a battered woman’s shelter, housing for the homeless, blood banks, used item recycling by the disabled. The non-profits I take issue with are “Non-profit” hospitals where their CEOs make tens of millions while the nursing and ancillary personnel are under staffed, overworked and stressed, jeopardizing patient care.

Any comments you have based on substantiated fact from reputable sources, or first hand/direct experience, are always welcome.

Regarding dead people voting, I would encourage you to visit the non-partisan site Factcheck.org

Alan K

[QUOTE] Non-profit” hospitals where their CEOs make tens of millions while the nursing and ancillary personnel are under staffed, overworked and stressed, jeopardizing patient care.[/QUOTE]

I do know a fair bit about this variety and had these very people in mind!
And I quite agree that this was a narrow perspective. We do help many of the smaller organizations run by volunteers locally because our own government has dropped the ball.

One of my nieces worked in Washington DC with one those organizations that work with politicians to “influence” changes. After working with them for about 3 years, she was rather disillusioned and felt exploited and quit. But as we know, n=1 is nothing more than hearsay.

I was surprised by dissemination of information based on “facts” in the last few years about many things, including related to Covid by many alphabet soup organizations (NIH, CDC, FDA, WHO etc). All were supposed to be non-partisan… until we learned otherwise.
A few decades ago I used to buy New York Times, Washington Post and read a few more in the library. They were all considered reliable sources of information, until they weren’t. Even NPR, finally proved to be not so un-biased, and I stopped sending them money. I suppose, the general tendency is that if a source of “facts” makes logical sense to us (as in seems in agreement with our notions), it appears more factual.
I’m not sure I’m going to easily trust “facts” supplied to me by left, right, or a non-partisan entity. They are all given a narrative to propagate.In fact, ideally, facts are simply facts, the rest are lies, period.

During the mid-term elections, we went to our public library to cast our votes early, we saw several people bringing in stacks of envelopes individually. That as far as I understand, is quite illegal. Many such observations were made by others in our city. But I imagine all this was deemed as unsubstantiated. We also had several “largely peaceful” demonstrations in our city where a few real and many imaginary shop owners had their businesses destroyed.

We are living in very unusual times. If and when things improve, and I sincerely hope they do, I’ll change my opinion.

I-Like-To-Bike

More "excellent discourse" ?

terrymorse 

Not enjoying the thread drift here one bit.