9 NYPD Officer Gets Pawned

I'm not crazy about critical mass. Infact, I don't even know the point of it all.

But by now, you must have all seen this, floating around the web on many sites.



My intuition is that the bicyclist, while out of the frame and riding towards the cop, must have yelled out some obscenity or even given the finger to the officer, Mr. Pogan.

I don't know.

The cyclist also rides a similar type of bike and come from the general direction as the other cyclists. So why was just he targeted?

Perhaps the answer is : The clip is too short and doesn't show other arrests, only one spectacular one.

While we don't quite know what may have been the real provoking element, it is quite obvious that Mr. Pogan's actions towards the cyclist was a little ridiculous and uncalled for.

A straight out, hard cold elbow at the cyclist, Chris Long, that eventually sent Long flying long over the curb at probably 10 or 15 mph.

Whack!

Not only must the rider have sustained a good amount of bruises, but the officer must have also gotten hurt since in the scuffle, it may have been hard to avoid the sharp components of the bicycle, like a pedal hitting the cop's urinary system or something...

The biggest surprise of the day though, was the officer's statement against the cyclist, produced in county court.

Check it out. I've circled some statements that may or will look pretty inconsistent to a viewer of the video above.

Arrest authorized? Third degree assault?

Being neutral, I certainly was surprised and slightly entertained by the punch but what I ended up enjoying on the other hand as well was the alleged prophetic message of the cyclist during arrest.

YOU ARE PAWNS IN THE GAME. I'M GONNA HAVE YOUR JOB.

Woo hooo...

That turned into humiliation over the weekend when the officer was stripped of his badge and gun on Monday.

Whether Mr. Long will be given the cop's badge and gun remains yet to be seen.

2 Meet USA Cycling President Mark Abramson

Picture courtesy : Cycling News

Now I've seen Mark Abramson a number of times in some of my collegiate Easterns. I was pretty surprised when I learnt that he took over the new role this March (Read this cyclingnews article). I think his personality and passion for the sport will fit very well for the governing body of cycling in this country. Congratulations!

I didn't tell many people this but I'll put it out here anyway. Funny resemblance, and sometimes a little scary - When Abramson puts on his sunglasses, he has this uncanny ability to look like Lance Armstrong. You won't tell the difference from the crowd. I've been fooled pretty well on a couple of occasions.

1 Sunday Shorts

1. While lightweight carbon frames have nothing to do with cycling performance, they are absolutely critical in this situation.



2. Continental borrows the condom vending idea for its "tubes".



3. This summer, just pull down someone's pants to know what sport they're into. Make friends!



4. The KING of all punctures. Bow down and pay your homages.



5. New meanings are added to the Lore of the Victory Salute post. Read if you haven't dared to.


6. I thought the dorkiest cycling commercial would be the "I am Tom Boonen I am Specialized" nonsense, but seems like Selle Italia has taken over. This video can happily kiss our bottoms.




7. While the spectators began leaving and the podium was taken down, an aero trike crossed the finish line in record time. Say, have you kept options open and ever explored walking.....




8. Last but not the least, on a more serious note, Dave Moulton highlights the colorful history behind the Paris Galibier frame design, legacy of the late London frame maker Harry Rensch. You can argue why or why not his design was superior to the traditional diamond truss by heading over to his blog.

Courtesy : Lightweights & Vicious Life Cycle

3 Dubai, Tire Tests and Tibetan Mountain Physiology

What do all three have in common, you ask? Nothing really, except for the fact that I am writing my first post from Dubai.

DUBAI

I managed to save a little time for some thoughts. Dubai is an extra ordinary city developing at a break neck speed. I have been here many times before, but the incredible night time urbanism couldn't be more rightly exposed to me on any other occasion than during the time I was on my aircraft bound to the Dubai International Airport.

With the airplane skimming the ground at roughly 7000 feet in the air, I could see the breathing life of the city in sparkling dots of electricity and power, most of them radiating from the multitude of roads, skyscrapers and other massive civil engineering projects many hundreds of square kilometers in area. Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower is hardly complete, but it has already made any other completed structure anywhere else in the world look like a joke.


I could see the tower, with its share of cranes and night time construction lights and it already looked like a mammoth in the sky , making the rest of the infrastructure around seem like small pieces from a child's Lego set. The new hub of the future of Dubai will be right here, at the Burj and commercial and high status residential life will radiate outwards from this central location. I amazed myself at the fact that this tower is more than 10 km tall, and grinned at the idea of jumping into a construction worker's uniform and illegally hopping onto a makeshift elevator to get some high altitude adaptation going into my cardiovascular system. (Just think of those numerous poor Indian and Pakistani workers making this dream come true for the Arabs, hundreds of storeys high in the air, putting one concrete block over another.)

For you engineering savvy folks, check out the wind engineering being done on the world's biggest concrete beast.

I will not talk more about Dubai but I simply want to add that the amount of development and the money going into these is just outrageously ridiculous. If you think that the reconstruction money for Iraq is a staggering amount, think again. Dubai is pouring more than 100 billion into its projects. Thats twice the foreign investment of China.

People who have been here will say that in a few years, post modern Dubai (which was simply a desert some 30-40 years ago) with its sprawling city life, massive skyscrapers and some of the biggest shopping complexes in the universe will easily put the best cities any where in the world to shame. Where in the world does all this money come from? Much of the answer probably lies in all the foreign investment and tourism money being poured into this strategically well placed region. The saying here is that if you pull the expatriates out of area (which should be more than the local population), the city's economy might probably collapse.

Dubai, as someone aptly put it, is really one vast construction site. And it just doesn't build. It builds world records. The costs are many. It is expanding so fast that increasing living costs, traffic jams, environmental damage and the rich-poor divide is the order of the day. Whether all this is leading somewhere worth it, or to complete collapse, I don't know. All I can say is that the story of Dubai will be a different one in your urban development case study class.



TIRE TESTS

Through a brief survey on the Internet, I somehow managed to jump onto a new updated co-efficient of rolling resistance study done on scores of leading racing tires. What I like about it are how they spell out the conditions of the tests, error analysis and other variables in question. Time to rethink tires and head to a bike store? Find out.

Bike Tech Review have been a decent party at testing bike products and you will come out more enlightened technically after reading some of their testing work.

I will add this link to the Honeycomb on the left.



TIBETAN MOUNTAIN PHYSIOLOGY

Tibetans, interestingly, are unlike other mountainous folks from around the world. As relevant an adaptation that increased red blood cell count is after living/training at high altitude, Tibetans, on the other hand, have an extra something others don't, according to this one article I read. Their bodies use twice the amount of natural made nitric oxide, a proven smooth muscle relaxation agent, to dilate blood vessels so that blood pressure decreases and the vessels can take an increased blood capacity to deliver more oxygen to muscles.



Thats a suitable body adaptation after hundreds of years in the mountains.

Quick side thought. That must be awesome for a cyclist from Tibet! And do Tour riders use Nitric Acid supplementation in any way or form? Is that considered illegal? I know many body builders swear by it.

I like to fantasize about putting people from different regions and races on bicycles. I'm certain of the fact that there are hundreds of people physiologically different and suited for endurance events like a pro level international stage race. In my last post, I hinted at my belief that with proper training, an East African could easily outwit someone like Tom Boonen at the line. Seriously, if I were the manager of a pro level team, I would choose my boys carefully from hitherto unknown parts of the world to make them champs. However, I don't believe in a vague term like genes. I like to use the term adaptation.

Happy holidays!

5 CSC bike on sale

Yes, on Ebay is Carlos Sastre's Tour ridden R3 for auction. All proceeds to CSC are supposedly going as charity to a South African cycling center. Save some of that Christmas money for this one.

Its raining and snowing out here in Buffalo. Seems like that misleading winter has finally kicked in. Its beautiful to watch. When I get cold, I hop on the trainer. Speaking of trainers, there isn't any in the market to which you can fix your fixie to, can you? I've a bunch of ideas..

0 Just in!

Just in, and late!

1. SRAM plans to acquire ZIPP.

2. Do you need a 1000 dollar rear derailler for your bike from Lightweight.de? Think about the weight reduction, better performance, "stiff yet complaint". Sell your HDTV and buy this today! Hurry!



3. Best of all. Just read that WALMART is selling a high end Italian bike, assembled in Italy. The Corsa FC! Atleast now you don't have to bow down your head in shame before purists who loathe walmart bikes!

0 Leo is online!

Here's some hot news on one of my favorite celebrties! Yes, Leonardo da Vinci! According to this news article on Wired News, hundreds of his original papers are being posted in an archive online maintained by The Leonardian Library in Vinci, Tuscany. Read it here.

0 Malware Outbreak

Impressive. An outbreak of a computer malware being shown graphically on F-Secure's WorldMap.

2 Around the World in 19 months, 20 days.. On a bicycle!

Here's an inspiring story of an Indian who rode over 37,000 miles around the world on a bicycle to raise awareness about the environment. Consequently, he also broke a Guiness Record.

0 At Instrumentation Lab

I'm working on an old double pipe heat exchanger, trying to establish proper parallel flow. Next year, the Engineering department will have most of these old setups replaced.

9 What Muscles Are You Using to Pedal?

Source

I also read the book Biomechanics of Sport, by Christopher L. Vaughan and obtained the following neat little table on page 312. EMG analysis of muscles were done in 5 different cycling scenarios and the results show which muscles are used predominantly when.

*  *  *

1 School closed for another day!

Our area is still in a state of emergency. Some parts have driving bans imposed due to last Thursday's record snow. I'm partly pissed off with the fact that what where the weather guys doing? It seems like no one predicted a record blizzard coming our way. This is the most powerful country in the world, but hey, how can we gage it? Last week, some Yankees pitcher accidently crashed his plane into a NYC multi-storey building and killed himself. No one saw that coming. What if he wasn't a Yankees guy. What if he was another fundamentalist martyr? My best friend was 2 blocks away from the crash site. What if that was a huge aircraft? How can we gage Anti-Terror? Because a 100 Taliban people were imprisoned in some remote facility? Or something else...?

No one saw a blizzard coming on Thursday in Buffalo,NY.

These events aren't large scale. Maybe they haven't caught the attention of a lot of people around. But here, the damage done by snow is huge. I went for a small bike ride in the area today and I could see the extent of damage due to broken trees, flooding etc. People's lives have been shut down literally. The town of Amherst is struggling to get power back to thousands of people.

Respecting the driving ban, the University will remain closed for another day.

0 A Holiday Tip

3 Snow Buries Buffalo!

Snowiest October Day in Pictures :





You'd think that a little bit of snow is beautiful and harmless.

Not when its here in Buffalo. Welcome to the snowiest October day in Buffalo's 137 year history!

Just when I imagined I'd have nothing to blog on this week, here comes 60 cms of snow from the sky, falling on Buffalo for over 6 hours. The day was looking good yesterday, when suddenly, flurries broke out. In no time, the area was having a snow storm and piles of 'those ugly things from the sky' were falling all over the place. Over the course of the evening and night, hundreds of people lost power and scores of trees and tree limbs were downed. The Detroit Free Press claims we have had 60 cms of snow, and its 2 feet thick. The international section of the Hindu says more than 220,000 people lost power at their homes. I can't imagine what most would do in a situation like that, when heating is a must.

Students were least prepared for this. The South Campus of the university has lost power, and some of north campus had too, but now things seem alright and back to normal at north. However, due to all the disruption the snow has done on campus, school was officially closed today till 5pm.

After a small brunch,I went out into the cold to get back some pictures. Literally, the clock of the university stopped running this morning. The wind and the squelch of my boots were the only things I could hear for a while. More pictures of today's turmoil at my Flickr Album here.

I hope I can go running or biking on Sunday, when the temperature is forecasted to shoot up slightly.

2 UB in Winter

Winter slowly slithers towards us. The chill hits you like a mountain, and the ugly things start falling from the sky. Pictures like these will send students away from here. But hey that's life. I've been through it for 3 years now.


This picture was from my dorm window during late November.

0 Dying

My dad forwarded this to me...

0 Who's UN's Next Top Man?

Behind the scenes, a crucial voting is going on at the United Nations to replace current Secretary General Kofi Annan for the Top Job. India's nominee, Shashi Tharoor was second in the race but after receiving a veto from one of the permanent members of the Security Council, he has pulled out. South Korea's 62 year old Ban Ki-Moon received 14 votes in favour against Tharoor's 10, but only received one no opinion vote and zero veto's, unlike Tharoor's 3 and 1. Which member vetoed Tharoor's vote is classified information, although there have been hints to which country would not favor an Indian Secretary General in the long run.

Final voting is due for October 9.

Is it going to be Ban Ki-Moon or someone else?

0 School Shootings Galore

This morning, my roommate alerted me to a school shooting in Amish County, Pennsylvania where apparently a truck driver entered a school house and shot six girl kids, execution style, in the head. Interestingly, male students were allowed to leave, and he only killed the girls. Due to something that happened in his childhood years ago, he sough to take out revenge on helpless schoolgirls. Thats pathetic.

Besides, whats with all the school shootings going on in the past one-two weeks?

Bailey, Colorado - Platte Canyon High School.

Las Vegas - Elementary Schools : http://www.kxnt.com/pages/87241.php?contentType=4&contentId=210333
http://www.kxnt.com/pages/87056.php?contentType=4&contentId=210103

Montreal,CA - Dawson College: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dawson-college/

Cazenovia,Wisconsin (30sept)


Its crazy.

0 I Think of Africa Today..

Today is Yom Kippur.

Today is also Gandhi Jayanthi, the birthday of the great non-violent freedom father of India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Throughout my schooling life, we have been taught a great deal about this man, but never could we focus on the essence of his philosphy - the driving force of this man, his mind. In our country of over 1 billion today, where talk of bollywood films and songs are on everyone's lips, clash between mryaid political parties are numerous, elections are mundane, and communal violence is the talk of the day, it is easy to forget our roots and miss the memory of a man behind our very freedom from imperialistic rule.

I'm very proud of the fact that my country is part of the Non-Aligned Movement. We are living in an era of great Power conflicts where countries team up to war each other on the global battleground. A nuclear war is imminent. It is a question of when, not how. In such times, India is not talked about in conflicts in today's news. It is a big country, with great numbers of people, and with lots of responsibility. Due to the nature of her own freedom struggles, she recognizes the struggles of people fighting for independance all over the world. So, we do not side with team A or Team B in a global conflict. We are independant, non-violent. We carve a different path in World politics today.

In the online book 'The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi', there is a particular quote of Gandhi's that I really like :

On India rests the burden of pointing the way to all the exploited races of the earth. She won’t be able to bear that burden today if non-violence does not permeate her more than [it does] today. I have been trying to fit ourselves for that mission by giving a wider bend to our struggle. India will become a torch-bearer to the oppressed and exploited races only if she can vindicate the principle of non-violence in her own case, not jettison it as soon as independence of foreign control is achieved.

A truly independent Free India is bound to run to the help of its neighbours in distress, for instance, Afghanistan, Ceylon and Burma. The rule also applies to the neighbours of these three and thus by implication they become India’s neighbours too. And thus, if individual sacrifice is a living sacrifice, it embraces the whole of humanity.

If India fails, Asia dies. It has been aptly called the nursery of many blended cultures and civilizations. Let India be and remain the hope of all the exploited race of the world.

Gandhi having said that years ago, I hope we as a nation, whose freedom was carved out by the great ideas of a great man, transcends selfish struggles on its own soils and looks forward to the struggles of its own people, and others internationally,say in Africa, particularly Sudan (visit the Darfur genocide page and you'll be shocked), Rwanda, Congo etc, where thousands of people are murdered horribly,economies are in shambles and people die of malnutrition everyday.

Africa is the face of flora, fauna, landscapes, species and sheer beauty of nature unlike anywhere else, but it is sadly, also the face of misery. People equivalent to the populations of Ireland are losing their lives every year. These are among the poorest of the poor.

The future of Africa can be a nightmare if the world doesn't shoulder its struggles and help them unconditionally. Its easy for me to sit here and rant about such things, but I guess you're not human enough if you aren't disturbed by the images on T.V or articles from top correspondents in magazines, where pictures of poverty,destruction and death litter pages.

Let's all wake up.

6 How Will a Mechanical Engineer Write a Love Letter?

I got this in a forwarded mail. Its pretty hilarious.

How will a Mechanical Engg write a love letter?

My Dear Love

From the day you entered in the control volume of my mind my heart has become a closed system and its entropy is increasing according to the 3rd
law of loveodynamics.......

The events and activities are so complex that i cannot find the optimum path after n number of iterations......

My heart is unable to sustain the cyclic load of your frequent smiles and is near to endurance limit failure.....

I am quenched in your thoughts and no heat treatment can save my heart from decrystalisation now........

Please do not test the bearing capacity of my heart valves and lower your yield strength.........

Please do not increase the compression ratio of my heart so much because it is not designed to bear so much thermal stress.....

Please lower the octane number of your temper as my little heart is not accustomed to so much undesired Knocking.......

I'm sure that you would also be experiencing some residual stress, and will someday show a proportionate straining of your heart according to hooks law..........

..........and as a Mechi I firmly belive in this theory.....so i will
wait

........ till my little heart crosess its ultimate tensile stress and
fractures.

Your Hardened lover,

Mechanical Engineer...