Hey,
I’m thinking about the New Year and how to approach it. What the hell do we do, correct, fight or walk away from? This would be a good topic for Tony Sanfelipo.
I feel like the message needs to be facebook simple and direct. I listened to an interview by an author about federalism and how the state governors could get together and fix the nation.
I listen and read a lot. We are going in lots of directions as you will see portrayed in the news from time to time. I suppose we need to find a way and find a message that will cause young and old to spring to life and fight for Freedom once more.
UNCLE MONKEY ON ADDICTION– Yeah , that is one of the things I try to explain to people about Los Angeles. There is a VERY thin veneer of glitz and glamour. People go on about the Chinese theatre and I’m like there are homeless people on either side and they use it as a toilet when the red carpet is rolled up.
LA is a very blue collar city. For the twenty or so stars in a movie there are hundreds working behind the camera. Combine that with working on movies/tv shows is temporary employment where you might work on it for a couple months and then you are looking for another job makes for a very transient city.
On the other side of the coin is the port and industrial. The first thing people ask them is if they know anyone famous. The expectation of success is incredibly high.
I’ve never been to Las Vegas but I assume it is very similar. For every big roller there are hundreds working in the casinos and shows, thousands more gambling their rent cheque.
Addiction is wide spread and if you don’t drink or do drugs – seeing the world without tinted lenses can really wear on a person.
Deadwood has the same problems as anywhere else. The difference is that within moments you can be out on the highway riding (as opposed to the hours it can take to get out of LA).
Riders flock to the Black Hills throughout the riding season so wherever you stop you’ll be meeting fellow riders. In the end it comes down to your own state of mind, who you are.
When my daughter was a teenager she tried moving to a small town for the summer to live with her grandmother and get clean but she immediately gravitated to the drug users that were there. All these years later she still struggles because she surrounds herself with people who use – not one of them spend an evening watching a movie, reading a book, working in a garage.
The same applies to me and you. If the addicts and destitute bother you in LA they will bother you in South Dakota. I feel very isolated, that I don’t have a group of friends that I can spend time with. Moving anywhere isn’t going to change that because I’m a very private person who keeps to himself. So until I change myself, a change of location isn’t going to change anything.
–Bad Uncle Monkey
LIMITED TIME SHORAI BATTERY DEALS– 20% OFF STORE WIDE CODE: FALL20 Offer Ends Tuesday Nov 28th, 2017
BRAND New Bikernet Reader Comment!
THANKSGIVING BIKERNET MAGNIFICENT NEWS for November 22, 2017
Your comment on Courtney Force is false. The Top Fuel Champion Is her sister Brittney. Courtney drives funny cars.
— Mike Gosson
mikesharleyrepair007@gmail.com
Cle Elum, WA
Scientists Say Earth Is Doomed Without ‘Urgent’ Action — Just Like They Did 25 Years Ago
11/14/2017
Environment: This week, thousands of scientists issued a bleak and terrifying “second notice” to mankind about how we will destroy the planet unless we take “urgent” action. If this warning is as reliable as the first notice these scientists issued in 1992, we have nothing to worry about.
In an article published in the journal Bioscience, 15,364 scientists warned that we are “jeopardizing our future” and that “immediate action” is needed to “safeguard our imperiled biosphere.”
“Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out,” the scientists say.
The article is meant to be an update on a 1992 notice — ominously titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” and signed by 1,700 leading scientists — that predicted environmental catastrophes to come if humans remained on the current course.
But the 1992 statement was wildly off the mark in its dire predictions.
Back then, the world’s leading scientists said that, if current trends continued, air pollution would get worse, water supplies would run short, the world’s supply of fish would sharply decline because of dying oceans, land would become less productive, vast acres of forests would be “gone in a few years,” mass extinctions would limit the ability to develop new medicines, and unchecked population growth would cause more to live in poverty and suffer malnutrition.
“No more than one or a few decades remain,” the scientists warned 2-1/2 decades ago, “before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.”
Turns out that the world didn’t make any “fundamental changes” those scientists said were so urgently needed. If anything, it went faster in the same direction.
There was no concerted effort to control population, which grew by almost 1.9 billion — a 34% increase in 25 years. We didn’t “move away from fossil fuels” — global consumption climbed nearly 56% since 1992. We didn’t “greatly reduce overconsumption,” either. Consumer spending on goods and services soared some 56% from 1990 to 2010.
And what happened to the “fragile planet” that was supposedly on the knife’s edge of permanent destruction?
The per-capita supply of fish worldwide climbed roughly 30% over those years.
World hunger and poverty have dropped dramatically. The share of the global population that is undernourished declined more than 40% between 1990 and 2015, U.N. data show. The share of the global population living in abject poverty went down by more than 35%.
Land has gotten far more productive, not less. In fact, the share of land devoted to agriculture hasn’t budged since 1990, according to the U.N. report. Think about that for a minute: We are able to feed 34% more people, and feed them better than ever, using the same amount of land!
In the U.S. at least, air pollution is down since 1992 for every single pollutant the EPA measures. And our CO2 emissions are down since the mid-1990s, thanks not to government regulations, but because of the fracking innovation.
That massive deforestation predicted by scientists? The amount of forest land in the world declined by just 3% from 1990 to 2010, the U.N. report says. (In the U.S., it’s increased.)
What’s also interesting about the scientists’ 1992 warning is that it barely mentions global warming, which is the cause for all the current end-of-the-world predictions.
But today’s doomsday scientists are making the same fundamental mistake they made 25 years ago.
They are blind, apparently, to the fact that when people are emboldened by free-market capitalism they are amazingly innovative and will ceaselessly devise new technologies and new ways of doing things that are cheaper, less energy-intensive and less polluting. There’s no need for the massive central planning or worldwide austerity these scientists keep demanding.
Our bet is that when 2042 comes around, the terrifying “second notice” from the world’s leading scientists will look just as ridiculous as the first one does today.
–Climate Depot
pennyworth [pen-ee-wurth]
noun
1.
a bargain.
2.
QUOTES
I’ll ask Patty to go to the costumer’s with me. She will get me a good pennyworth.
ORIGIN
Pennyworth is from before 1000. The Middle English form is penyworth and the Old English form is penigweorth.
PRINCIPLE GALLERY ALEXANDRIA– We’re open regular hours this weekend so you can come see the final days of Jeremy Mann’s solo exhibition.
If you aren’t able to make it to the gallery before Monday, fret not! We’ll have Jeremy’s unsold works on hand and many of the pieces on display, even after the show is uninstalled.
Next up, is our always popular large group exhibition, Small Works. Bethanne Cople and Elizabeth Floyd will be doing live painting demonstrations during the Small Works opening reception from 1-4pm on December 2nd.
Jeremy Mann
Solo Exhibition
LATEST FROM LOWBROW– At noon EST an assortment of motorcycle parts and accessories hit the Flash Sale page. They are priced at crazy low prices, and when they are sold out that is it!
They just went live for today, and be sure to check back tomorrow (Sunday the 26th) and Monday at noon as a new batch of products shows up! Also be sure to scope out the sales we have going on through end of day Monday and take advantage!
“Montana” price drop! —
Quick note to let you all know I have dropped the price of “Montana” to $2500 + Shipping! This is an insane deal for this guitar. It’s worth more on the open market, but I hate ebay’ing Guitars. Hoping a friend or fan will buy her and appreciate her story!
Email nickperrimusic@gmail.com
For Sale: “Montana”
My 2002 Gibson Custom Shop Historic 1960 Les Paul Special “double cut” in TV Yellow!
This is the cream of the crop for a reissue of this guitar, and they didn’t make many. Finally now they are reissuing them again for 5K, but to be honest, it’s widely know that the early 2000’s is the best era for reissue Gibson guitars.
I used Montana on virtually EVERY SONG on the new Mount Holly album. It was used to record all the overdubs on the entire record. You can see photos from the recording here. I also used the guitar live on a number of occasions, especially in the UK where I had her stationed for the last 2 years. She is back in California now though, and has been freshly setup and is sounding and playing better then ever.
The guitar has the stock neck pickup, and a Lollar P90 in the bridge, although I will include the stock Gibson bridge pickup as well.
$2500 USD + shipping.
This is an incredible deal. She is easily worth 3-4K
Email nickperrimusic@gmail.com
Video below as well of me playing her in England during our 1st “UK Promo Tour”.
1st come 1st serve.. good luck!
Why Calling Electric Cars ‘Zero Emission’ Is Blatantly False Advertising–
Environment: If truth-in-advertising laws were properly enforced, any company that labeled a battery-powered car as “zero emissions” would be guilty of breaking the law. A new report, in fact, shows that electric cars can be worse than conventional cars when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
In a recent news release, General Motors (GM) said it planned to someday be an all-electric “zero emissions” car company. Toyota (TM) says it wants all its cars to be “zero emission” by 2050. Other car companies are making similar promises. The push to go electric is largely being driven by fears about global warming and the desire to reduce CO2 emissions.
But the term “zero emission” is so unbelievably and wildly misleading that it’s a wonder anyone gets away using it.
Yes, the plug-in electric cars that automakers are touting — and states like California are mandating — don’t emit pollutants from their tailpipes.
That doesn’t mean they don’t contribute to pollution. It just means that the source of the pollution moves from the car to a power plant. That’s especially true when it comes to CO2 emissions, which the power plant might pump out in copious amounts, depending on its energy source.
So, every time an electric car gets recharged, it’s contributing to additional CO2 emissions.
Just how much CO2 is made plain in a new report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. It calculated the CO2 emissions from plug-in electrics, depending on the energy sources used to generate electricity in various countries, and then translated that into miles per gallon.
The result is eye-opening.
The report — authored by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle — notes that an electric car recharged by a coal-fired plant produces as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered car that gets 29 miles per gallon. (For context, the average mpg of all the cars, SUVs, vans and light trucks sold in the U.S. over the past year is 25.2 mpg.) A plug-in recharged by a natural gas-powered plant is like driving a car that gets 58 miles per gallon.
Solar, wind and geothermal do far better on this score, but they generate a small portion of the nation’s electricity. More than 64% of electricity is generated by coal, natural gas or other fossil fuels.
The U of M researchers calculate that, given the energy mix in the U.S., the average plug-in produces as much CO2 as a conventional car that gets 55.4 miles per gallon.
In China — which is winning all sorts of plaudits for its commitment to electric cars but is more dependent on coal — a plug-in generates the same CO2 as a 40 mpg car. In India, plug-ins are even less clean, emitting the same CO2 as a car that gets 35.7 mpg.
Worldwide, the researchers found, the CO2 emissions from electric cars are equal to a 51.5 mpg car.
That is better than conventional cars on the road today, to be sure, but it is far from zero.
And even this exaggerates the environmental benefits of electric cars because the report doesn’t take into account the additional CO2 emissions involved in making batteries.
A separate study from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that, depending on the type of plug-in being built, manufacturing a battery-powered car generates anywhere from 15% to 68% more CO2 emissions than a conventional gas-powered car. The reason is that producing the batteries is incredibly energy intensive.
Over the lifetime of a car, then, a plug-in could, depending on where one lives, contribute more to global warming than those nasty gasoline powered cars.
Whatever the case, it’s clear that labeling electric cars as “zero emission” is one of the biggest consumer scams going.
–Investor’s Business Daily
[page break]
ADDICTION II– I was actually inspired by a piece I had seen on CNN. They had done a piece on homeless/opioid people in New York and a family had seen their daughter on TV. The husband quit his job and had spent the month since living on the street with his daughter trying to get her clean. The mom was trying to sell their house to move to New York to help her as well. The daughter didn’t care. Having her father there just helped panhandling.—Uncle Monkey
HOLIDAY ALERT–
I have been informed that Christmas has been canceled. I told him that I had been good this year and apparently he died laughing.
–Sam Burns
The UN Admits That The Paris Climate Deal Was A Fraud
Global Hot Air: Here’s a United Nations climate report that environmentalists probably don’t want anybody to read. It says that even if every country abides by the grand promises they made last year in Paris to reduce greenhouse gases, the planet would still be “doomed.”
When President Obama hitched America to the Paris accords in 2016, he declared that it was “the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.” And when Trump pulled out of the deal this year, he was berated by legions of environmentalists for killing it.
But it turns out that the Paris accord was little more than a sham that will do nothing to “save the planet.”
According to the latest annual UN report on the “emissions gap,” the Paris agreement will provide only a third of the cuts in greenhouse gas that environmentalists claim is needed to prevent catastrophic warming. If every country involved in those accords abides by their pledges between now and 2030 — which is a dubious proposition — temperatures will still rise by 3 degrees C by 2100. The goal of the Paris agreement was to keep the global temperature increase to under 2 degrees.
Eric Solheim, head of the U.N. Environment Program, which produces the annual report, said this week that “One year after the Paris Agreement entered into force, we still find ourselves in a situation where we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future. Governments, the private sector and civil society must bridge this catastrophic climate gap.”
The report says unless global greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2020, the CO2 levels will be way above the goal set for 2030, which, it goes on, will make it “extremely unlikely that the goal of holding global warming to well below 2 degrees C can still be reached.”
Not to worry. The UN claims that closing this gap will be easy enough, if nations set their collective minds to it.
But this is a fantasy. The list of what would need to be done by 2020 — a little over two years from now — includes: Boosting renewable energy’s share to 30%. Pushing electric cars to 15% of new car sales, up from less than 1% today. Doubling mass transit use. Cutting air travel CO2 emissions by 20%. And coming up with $1 trillion for “climate action.”
Oh, and coal-fired power plants would have to be phased out worldwide, starting now.
According to the report, “phasing out coal consumption … is an indispensable condition for achieving international climate change targets.” That means putting a halt to any new coal plants while starting to phase out the ones currently in use.
Good luck with that. There are currently 273 gigawatts of coal capacity under construction around the world, and another 570 gigawatts in the pipeline, the UN says. That would represent a 42% increase in global energy production from coal. Does anyone really think developing countries who need coal as a cheap source of fuel to grow their economies will suddenly call it quits?
So, does this mean the planet is doomed? Hardly. As we have noted in this space many times, all those forecasts of global catastrophe are based on computer models that have been unreliable predictors of warming. And all of the horror stories assume the worst.
What the report does make clear, however, is that all the posturing by government leaders in Paris was just that. Posturing. None of these countries intended to take the drastic and economically catastrophic steps environmentalist claim are needed to prevent a climate change doomsday. As such, Trump was right to stop pretending.
Whether you believe in climate change or not, the Paris climate accord amounted to nothing, or pretty close to it. Even the UN admits that now.
–Investor’s Business Daily
NEW GIRL OF BIKERNET– Tracy, the Tattooed Goddess
Women are an anomaly to men. They should just be another person, but they are not. They are blossoms on two delicate feet, sex goddesses, play toys, objects of power and stature, and temptresses like a field of opium.
Some of them want to be all of the latter and some just want to be people. Take the sex thing and appearance bullshit and shove it up your ass. I just thought of an anology: the Chopper. A sleek, beautiful, flamed, chromed-out chopper began as a plain motorcycle. Maybe that’s the root of our problem as bikers, the chopper and the babe.
Don’t miss Tracy and the story in Girls of Bikernet.–Bandit
A Swarm Of Earthquakes Beneath The San Andreas Fault Is Making Scientists Nervous
by Tyler Durden
Warner Bros Pictures might want to rethink the shooting of San Andreas II – the sequel to the 2015 blockbuster about a massive earthquake striking the San Francisco Bay Area that starred the Rock, Paul Giamatti and a host of other A-list actors.
Because if the US Geological Survey’s worst fears are confirmed, the seismic devastation depicted in the film might hit a little too close to home. According to the Daily Mail, 134 earthquakes have hammered a three-mile stretch around Monterey County on the San Andreas fault over the last week – a pace that’s making seismologists nervous.
The San Andreas fault stretches 750 miles north to south across coastal California, forming the boundary of the Pacific plate and North American plate.
Of those earthquakes, 17 were stronger than 2.5 magnitude and 6 of them were stronger than 3.0. And experts at the USGS warn that more tremors are expected in the coming weeks.
The rumblings are amplifying fears raised last week that the ‘Big One’ – the mythical quake depicted in the movie ‘San Andreas’ – could be about to hit. In another sign of impending disaster, ten ‘mini quakes’ struck the same area last week. That swarm included one 4.6-magnitude quake that was felt in San Francisco more than 90 miles away.
“This one has been a quite productive aftershock sequence,” said Ole Kaven, a US Geological Survey seismologist.
“We suspect there will be aftershocks in the 2 to 3 [magnitude] range for at least a few more weeks,” he said.
Fortunately, nobody was injured in the quake storm.
Last week’s swarm hit California’s Monterey County on Monday at 11:31 am ET about 13 miles northeast of Gonzales, near Salinas.
It dramatically increases the likelihood of a major quake in California, at least temporarily, experts claimed.
The initial 4.6-magnitude quake was followed by nine smaller aftershocks.
The largest of the tremors measured magnitude 2.8, according to Annemarie Baltay, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park.
The quake happened at a depth of around 4 miles directly on top of the fault, close to a region where the Calaveras Fault branches off.
Experts have previously warned that any activity on the fault line is cause for concern.
“Any time there is significant seismic activity in the vicinity of the San Andreas fault, we seismologists get nervous,” Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Centre, said, according to the Mail.
–Tony C.
Once a Marine… …Always a Marine OOORAHHH !!!!!
From: Dave Hollenbeck
Looked a both guys presentations. My take away is that ridership is way down. The Polaris guy’s solution is to design products which appeal to young people’s computer/tech fascination, but the Harley CEO’s solution is to instill the passion that older riders have for riding into potential younger riders. But neither of these guys address what I think is the root cause of the downturn: young people don’t have enough expendable income to buy motorcycles.
To get a good job these days a young person must go to college, but higher education is super expensive. Consequently when most young people graduate, they’re in debt…student loans plus 8 % interest (BTW most of these loans are held by Bank Of America).
So the first thing a young good-job holder must do with his paycheck is repay a student loan. Then to get to this wonderful job a young person must have a car because motorcycling to work is dangerous in states with shitty weather. An auto, car insurance etc. costs a lot.
Third…today’s rents and food prices are extraordinarily high. So most young people don’t have money left to buy a second vehicle AND new Harleys, for example, are VERY PRICEY.
So, I don’t think it’s because the motorcycle/off road industry isn’t putting enough software into its products or because young people would rather play computer games than ride free or because young people are loath to pollute the environment with internal combustion engines that the market is half of what it was in 2004.
It’s the fact that young people don’t have enough money to buy a Harley or a Polaris pure and simple.
Just some thoughts oh Trenchant One.
–Hugh King
I’m working with Hugh, who worked for Discovery on the Biker Build-off series. We are trying to kick off another series called Steel Dreams on a transformation series. Bring us your old bike and we will transform it into something cool with builders all over the world.
I agree, our problems are economic and fear-mongering with the climate threat. I still believe someone needs to go after the concept directly. It may not be fossil fuels but over population and livestock. But someone needs to take the concept to the next level.
And generating motorcycle excitement nationwide often comes from the next film like Easy Rider or the Bike build-offs. That’s why I’m trying to help Hugh with this new concept. We will keep you posted. –Bandit
HOLIDAYS ARE HAPPENING— And so are we regarding next year. The action is hot and heavy in Bikernet Baggers with a new Reader’s Rides series. We are going to change the name and feature reader’s road-worthy touring bikes. Feel free to send a couple of images of your bagger to Rogue@bikernet.com. Rogue will help you get your touring bike featured.
We are working on more special reports for you, more features, more girls of Bikernet and more action. We might have a report on Charlie’s new movie next week.
Hang in there for the holidays. Have a great time. The earth has been around for 3 Billion years and man roamed and partied on the planet for 2.5 million years. Chances are, if we can control our governments we can ride free for another million years or so. Fuck ‘em.
Let’s Ride Free Forever,
–Bandit
