We're just way off-topic from noise now. But yeah, I was waiting for this. The inevitable "prejudice comment" against evil motorcycle riders! People who ride motorcycles are inconsiderate jerks who have a death wish. Why, motorcycles ought to be banned outright! Their riders should be shot!

Riiiight.

It's ironic to me that many of the people who make these kinds of statements see nothing wrong with people who own guns.

As a teenager we lived in a little town of maybe 200 people which was generally very quiet except for one young man on a dirt bike who would tear up and down our gravel road in the middle of the night. One moonless night, my father pulled a long piece of wood from the woodpile and placed it just beyond a small rise in the road. The bike races were truncated that evening, and did not return again afterwards.

Gosh, wasn't your father clever, endangering the life and safety of a person he considered a noise nuisance? I guess since turnabout's fair play, it'd be okay to take a landmine and put it under your father's car as retribution for his funny little good-humored prank on that barely-human motorcycle-ridin' sumbitch. God knows, a simple conversation with the kid or his parents to request that he not tear up and down the street in the middle of the night should always be the last resort, not the first.

I'd never argue that loud pipes = safety. I'm just pointing out a justification used within the motorcycle community by certain people for why they use aftermarket pipes. I also distanced myself from that, because I agree with you--I think it's false. It's yet another case of "truthiness," though. As Farhad Manjoo and Stephen Colbert would put it, we find ways to support our belief framework. There's no end to rationalization.

@jslong5:

"I thought of a third issue. The biggest issue for motorcyclist safety is car driver awareness. Most people don't want to take steps to save a group of people they can't stand. Not saying it's right, but people would be more inclined to look out for bikers if, as a group, they didn't inflict a big noise burden on the rest of us."

I understand that you're not saying this directly, so I'm not addressing you directly, either. I'm going to speak generally, as well, because I've heard this time and again myself. But it pisses me the hell off.

I'm going to bet that someone you know and like pretty well actually owns a motorcycle and rides it. Owning a motorcycle is not a personality trait, nor does it infer or imply any. Or should we use the same brush and paint all car drivers as stupid, self-involved, and oblivious to anything around them?

Obviously, you see the fallaciousness of this argument.

A person's like or dislike of a group based on nothing more than a general impression you get from behavior at a distance is not justification for anything. You look out for bikers, pedestrians, and bicycle-riders because YOU'RE IN A CAR AND COULD KILL THEM IF YOU DON'T PAY ATTENTION.

It shouldn't matter if pedestrians wore stupid clown shoes and honked air-horns all day long, or if bicyclists left a trail of sulfurous farts in their wake--you'd still need to pay attention to them and give them a certain amount of leeway. Yes, some motorcycles are loud and their riders inconsiderate, but that doesn't therefore imply that no motorcyclists deserve consideration on the streets.

As a motorcycle rider, I try my best to be responsible and safety conscious. I also take care to make sure that the people I ride with follow the same guidelines: proper gear, bike checks, riding formations, and situational awareness all come into play for even casual romps in the countryside.

please to read the comments.

...more on the "motorcycle noise" topic.

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/05/19/harley_noise/index.html

(or click sig for linky to article)

I don't think Nader is "losing it," nor did he ever. He makes some salient points, although he definitely could use some education in word choice.

I'd agree that Obama has shied away from "black" causes in general, but I think that's yet another calculated political move. Nader wants to criticize Obama on it, but it's put him out in front. Anecdotally, the way it seems to be playing out among my friends is something like this:

- non-Black friends don't even notice that he's not talking about "black" issues.

- Black friends notice, but have faith that this is just how he has to run his campaign to get elected, and that once he's in office, he'll begin dealing with those issues. As one friend of mine put it, "If Obama started talking about working on ghettos and fighting crime and all that b.s, he'd be just another black politician. He'd lose ground all across the board."

I'm not sure that he really has a point or not; this is getting into the very hypothetical. But I can agree that so far, not addressing "black" issues hasn't really hurt him much.

And I still give props to Nader for his work pre-2000. We remember him for "costing us the election," but the truth is that before Nader, there was no such option. Dems pay a lot more attention to progressives now, because while they can't exactly win, they can help make sure Dems lose.

(As if Democrats ever needed help in that way. I will never underestimate our ability to lose an election).