Month: February 2004

I completed the 2004 Chilly Hilly Classic this morning: 33 miles of scenic Bainbridge Island. It was both chilly and hilly, though less of the former and more of the latter than I expected.
(I borrowed this graphic from the page linked above.)

It was really well organized, as anything with 3000 attendees has to be. I took the first ferry (the 7:45 sailing) and came back on the 12:20, finishing about 11:30. Given the number of people and the terrain, it took about 3 hours. I ended up walking part of a couple of the steeper grades (on the elevation graphic, the two climbs before the midway rest stop defeated me, and I hoofed it for the middle third of the Baker Hill Rd ascent).

It was a great look at Bainbridge, though I’m sure we saw very little of it. The riding was a little hairy at times (my top speed on a downhill was 36 mph, but there were always others pedalling into it and hugging the drops for every bit of speed, some uneasy riders and a lot of unannounced passing, no “on your left”), so it wasn’t always possible to look around.

My first club/group ride and I learned a few things: enough to want to do more.

<update> The Times has a story with pictures:

The Seattle Times: Local News: Cycle season wheels in at Chilly Hilly.

I just heard part of a review of the new Mel Gibson movie that brought out a viewpoint I hadn’t yet heard. The fact that the reviewer had 12 years of Catholic education helped inform his experience, I think. He knew the story, in other words.

Rather than get into the whole notion of guilt or who did what and why, the reviewer (Robert Horton on KUOW) saw this new movie as a continuation of Gibson’s work portraying anti-authority figures (Mad Max, the Lethal Weapon series).

The presence of a charismatic rebel threatened the two competing power elites — the high priests and the Roman governor — and I’m sure they didn’t care who got rid of him or how (shades of Thomas á Becket’s martyrdom)[1]. Seen that way, it seems like an interesting concept.

The reviewer also pointed out/warned about the intensity and upfront presence of the violence: he saw it as senseless in that it didn’t further the story. Isn’t the senselessness of torturing and crucifying a political dissident part of the story? Other than some silliness with a fall from a bridge, broken only by the chains binding the hero, it seems to follow the written book(s) pretty closely.

fn1. As pointed out here, there’s no real chance of determining who bears responsibility for a 2000 year old crime. It seems we’ve had enough trouble in recent years sorting out the Holocaust, and we have living witnesses in that one.

All are equal before God. On Earth….
Wages of hate – anti-gay attitudes damage the economy – conversely, Gay-tolerant societies prosper. Will GOP anti-elitism and the US religious right make the U.S. a 3rd world country? Paul Craig Roberts argues that we’re on the fast track, and a Carnegie Mellon study (title link) shows that culturally repressive attitudes in America are driving away the "Creative" class. Virginia Postrel defines this class differently (manicurists and stone cutters) but in Richard Florida’s "Creative Class War" (recently on Metafilter), "America is no long attracting creative workers from abroad because it is seen as an intolerant society". More than artists and programmers are shunning the US – scientists are staying away too. In the US, meanwhile, a bifurcation – Americans are geographically self-segregating, choosing to live with those who hold similar beliefs and values. [metafilter.com]

DenverPost.com – LOCAL NEWS:

“We never intended to hurt any people,” he said. “I never dreamed we would be inciting hatred for Jews.” The message “spun out of control,” he added.

How did Pastor Maurice Gordon think that putting “Jews Killed the Lord Jesus” on a reader board outside his church would be viewed as “intended only to instigate discussion and debate?”

EmptyBottle.org: Compare and Contrast:

Here’s George Bush’s recent speech.

Here’s the same speech, with the following substitutions :

* “Marriage” becomes “whiteness”
* “the same gender” becomes “a brownish color”
* “the union of a man and a woman” or “the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” or “a union of a man and woman as husband and wife” becomes “racially superior”
* “a husband and wife” becomes “white people”

This trumps any of my half-baked commentary . . .

Read it to get the full effect.