Naked Bike Ride (St. Louis) 2009: to protest dependency on oil and to celebrate our bodies

Last year, I reported on the 2008 Naked Bike Ride in St. Louis, the first ever in my home town. The official purposes are twofold: to protest dependency on oil and to celebrate our bodies. It's also a blast riding through town without having to worry about motor vehicles and without having to wonder what one's fellow travelers look like naked (or almost naked). cool-waving-shot This year's St. Louis Naked Bike Ride occurred tonight, with perfect temperatures for not wearing much of anything or not wearing anything at all. I'd make a wild guess and say that there were about 1,000 bike riders tonight, 70% of them male. I'd also guess that about 20 of them were riding completely naked. I saw people from 16 to 70 years of age. Lots of camaraderie--the riders were warning each other of potholes and other road hazards. I only saw a few spills--luckily, those falls involved people with some clothing to protect them. total-nakedness The genius of this event's marketing is that every local media outlet was out there reporting on the event. Imagine having a clothed bike ride to protest oil dependency. You would probably only have the attention of a few eccentric bloggers like me. Speaking of which, I was there tonight (wearing boxers), riding a course that was modified (shortened to about 7 miles) at the last minute, apparently to avoid the outflow of a huge crowd from a Cardinal Baseball game downtown. We wouldn't want those people to be embarrassed were we to ride by and see them dropping exorbitant amounts to amuse themselves--$50 for tickets and $7 for hot dogs. Not while we--the naked and almost naked riders--were out there protesting oil and admiring and celebrating each others' nakedness, all for free. I would like to point out that the aim of this bicycle ride to celebrate our bodies is not a trivial issue. Refusing to celebrate the human body is closely related to our refusal to consider that humans are animals. These two dyfunctions are the cause of constant needless and useless human suffering. See this earlier post on terror management theory and this post on the dysfunction that stems from our failure to accept that humans are animals.

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Another ill-informed conservative argument on health care reform

Caroline Baum, a columnist for Bloomberg News, had this to say in an August 12 column about health care reform:

Take the issue of a public option. How can the private insurance industry survive with a not-for-profit government plan charging a pittance?
Ms. Baum has overlooked some basic facts that would undermine this claim. Namely, in America, there are public universities competing with private universities, public hospitals competing with private hospitals, public libraries competing with private bookstores, and a public post office competing with private package delivery companies. To cite an even more obvious example, there are already public, not-for-profit government plans like Medicare competing with private insurers. Even in Europe, where most countries already offer universal public health coverage, private insurers still operate. In none of these instances has the public alternative put private competitors out of business. Why on earth would this suddenly change if the U.S. Congress created a public health insurance option?

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Yes, Dangerous Intersection is under contruction . . .

Dangerous Intersection is undergoing yet another face lift. I think I'll have most of the bugs worked out within a few days, but the site is mostly functional already. I really liked the ability to feature some of our articles (at the top section), but I didn't like the sliding display. This new design by the same company (Solostream) uses a crossfade, which is much easier on the eyes. There are lots of other features as well, most of which will be invisible to readers but will make my life easier. Anyway, thank you for your patience while we finish up implementing this new design, which is called "Prolific."

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Brownshirt guards prevent free-wheeling discussion at the Creation Museum

It's almost unbelievable. I suppose that too many thinking people were wandering in and criticizing the faux-science exhibits at the "evolution science" museum in Kentucky. Apparently, Ken Ham and his Creation Museum team simply can't stand it when people talk real science in their "museum." They'll shut you up and kick you out. PZ Myers gives a detailed description of his visit, and it's well worth reading the entire thing. It's pretty amazing that a "museum" would so unabashedly attempt to stifle all thinking. Myers almost can't believe his own eyes and ears. Stifling thinking? But that's how it is in most fundamentalist churches too. Fall in line or else. Pretend you know things you don't really know. Pretend that you don't know things that you do know. This is the foundation for an incredibly screwed up community, and the fundamentalists want to export it to the public schools too.

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