Ask a pejorative question

In the past I've asked grown up pavement cyclists "Why are you riding your bike on the path?", in the foolish expectation of getting a straight answer. The politest response has been "get a life", I'll spare you some of the others. There are some questions that the very act of asking can't help but sound judgmental.

In the light of this experience I realised that in some contexts it just isn't worth asking the question. For example, a group I chaired once tried to conduct a survey among public sector employees about how they currently undertook short journeys. We tried to keep it as value neutral as possible but the simple act of asking meant that we were clearly coming from a particular perspective. Some of the group's members wanted to ask some direct questions about why people didn't use bikes for short journeys but I resisted this on the grounds that I knew what answers we'd get: It's too hilly, the weather's too bad, there aren't any changing rooms at work... All of these could be correct (i.e true) answers from someone who'd actually tried it for a month or so but, in the context of the rest of the questionnaire and its implied criticism of not walking or cycling, I knew that all we'd get were conventional excuses.

Now it turns out, from research done by people who are better at getting straight answers, that the initial barriers to getting more UK citizens on their bikes are social. When most people see a grown up on a bike it seems that their initial assumptions are that the person is a) too poor to drive , b) making a lycra bound statement about their athleticism or c) just plain eccentric. When I put these finding to fellow cyclists they were usually happiest with being just plain eccentric.

So, one of the challenges facing those of us who want to get more people on their bikes, for the sake of their own health as well as that of the wider environment, is to make it normal.

Now I've had a surprising number of dealings with fairly senior police officers in recent years and can honestly say that, for the most part and probably thanks to the Open University, they're a much more enlightened bunch than might be expected. Whether the same can be said for the ranks remains moot. So I was surprised to read that comments of the Chief of the Metropolitan Police in the light of the recent spate of cycle deaths in London.

As reported in The Guardian

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe initially told a radio show that while he understood why people cycled if they could not afford to drive or use public transport, it would not be his preference.

"Of course some people don't have the choice, economically it's not easy you know. If you've got someone who can't afford to take a car into the congestion zone – if they did, you can't park it anyway," he said.

"Some people, they've got limited money and they can't pay for public transport. I understand why they take the choice. It wouldn't be mine."

The comments were widely criticised, prompting the commissioner to release a statement later "clarifying his position". He said he had expressed his "personal view as a non-cyclist".

Meanwhile I shall continue to imagine asking my house mates "why don't you just put a bit of water in the greasy frying pan and then put it aside to soak rather than dunking it in with the rest of the washing up so that it can spread its grease more evenly over everything else?"

Boris and "people riding bikes"

During the past fortnight 6 cyclists have been killed on the streets of London. The growing popularity of cycling in the UK, particularly among the young and educated, has meant that this has prompted widespread public debate; notwithstanding the fact that during the same period 3 pedestrians have also died on the street.

30 years ago things were slightly different. I lived in London at the time and would commute by bike from Hackney to Maida Vale. Even though this was only a journey of about 10km I once counted that I went through 46 junctions. Those of us who cycled in those days were a far more marginalised bunch than they are now. We learnt that to be safe you needed to be assertive (not to be confused with being aggressive), not to get sucked into the gutter and to expect not to be given due consideration or attention. I'd wear a bright orange tabbard not because I necessarily thought it would get me noticed but so that in any post accident legal wranglings it would be harder for the motorist to claim not to have seen me. I soon realised that shouting at people who'd put my life in danger didn't actually do anything other than stress me out, so I began simply to mouth obscenities, without vocalising and usually in French, and let the miscreant's sense of  guilt make of it what they would; though I did end up being chased by a tipper truck all the way across Camden for something that I'd literally never said.

When the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, came to power he inherited a cycle hire scheme from the previous incumbent, Ken Livingstone. Since Boris rode a bike himself and cultivated an image of amiable eccentricity these bikes soon became known as Boris Bikes rather than Ken's Cycles. Now one of the few areas of public life where the Mayor of London actually has any power is over transport. He's the head of Transport for London. As well as the tube and the buses this also means that he has responsibility for facilities for pedestrians and cyclists and one of the things he established were a number of bicycle Super Highways. Being neither super nor highways, but mainly just strips of blue paint waiting to be ignored, these routes at least reflected a desire to make things better for people on bikes even if they are woefully inadequate.

If you look at the sorts of accidents that get people on bikes the pattern is glaringly obvious. It isn't the young reckless males taking their lives in their own hands, it's older people and women who find themselves stuck up the inside of lorries and buses that are turning left. 

Of course, the mainstream motoring population has gripes about the behaviour of cyclists and readily fall into an in-group out-group mentality. These bloody cyclists, always going through red lights, never using lights at night, riding on the footpaths, not paying road tax... This is all to be expected.. What's surprising has been Boris's response to the recent deaths. Instead of talking about the actual causes of the accidents that have actually happened he's gone on the offensive against the victims. Paraphrasing "Cyclists need to obey the rules of the road and they should be banned from wearing head phones ...." This has been followed up by a Police response not of targetting truck drivers but of pulling over people on bikes and strongly suggesting that they wear high visibility clothing and helmets.

Now we've become used to our Government blaming the poor for their poverty. They're lazy, feckless and lack aspiration. The other side of the coin to blaming the poor for their poverty is to see your own wealth and success as a result of your own virtue and certainly not as a matter of simple good luck. So what's clear here is that whilst Boris is prepared to have his bike riding seen as a loveable eccentricity, he's not at all inclined to be identified with cyclists or, as we prefer to call them, "people who happen to be riding bikes"

A pissing while

A few years ago I watched a documentary by Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame. He was looking at how lives were actually led in medieval England and recalled research that they'd done for the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". As well as avoiding the cliche of showing peasants with blackened teeth, which in the days before the widespread use of refined sugar simply wasn't the case, he also looked at our changed relationship to time. In the pre-industrial era jobs simply had to be done when they had to be done. Fields ploughed, weeds weeded, cows milked, sheep sheared and crops harvested. The rhythms of life were simply set by the daily movement of the sun across the sky and the annual progression from one season to another. This meant that for good chunks of the year there wasn't actually that much that needed to be done and there were far more "holy days" then than there are now; including the ad hoc St Swithin's Mondays that would follow overindulgent weekends. Whilst the days, months and years were natural units of time for longer intervals there were also ways of talking about shorter periods such as "a pissing while", which I hope is self explanatory.

The demands of industry and, in particular, of industrial machinery put paid to this lacadaisical attitude. The machines demanded that the people who'd operate them turn up on time. The bells that had previously rung to draw people to prayer now turned into the factory hooters that marked the changing of shifts. It's no accident that the working class version of rugby football, Rugby League, still uses a hooter to mark the end of a match and also no accident that the traditional gift on retirement was a clock; the worker was being given his time back.

Much more recently my attention was drawn to a kettle that can be switched on over the internet. Predictably named the i-kettle, its inventor makes extravagant claims about the amount of extra work that could be done by remaining at work just that few minutes longer. Given that the times when I feel like a cup of tea are precisely those when I need to get away from my desk for a moment and that we're I to switch on the kettle remotely I'd doubtless find myself dragged back into whatever it was I was doing  for just about long enough for the kettle to boil and then cool down again, I shan't be ordering one soon. Indeed, there are good health and social reasons to suppose that the overworked mouse jockey, click worker, whatever, might well be better of getting up and moving around for a bit and maybe even thinking a bit about what it was they were doing.

However, it did remind me of what I actually do during "a kettle boiling while". In the morning I put on the kettle and then go to the bathroom; one of the benefits of a diet rich in fibre being predictable bowel movements. At other times I use it either to get some washing up done, clean up the dogs bowl, or even practice a few scales on the piano. It never feels like wasted time, more an opportunity to think and get some domestic shit out of the way.

A "kettle boiling while" is inevitably followed by a "tea brewing while" where I might sit down and read an article from one of the many bits of print that hang around the kitchen table or wander up the garden with some scraps for the hens. You get the idea.

It's an empirical observation that most animals, small or large, tend to take about the same amount of time to empty their bladders. Recent mathematical modelling has shown that larger bladders are compensated for by larger urethras and, in the case of some larger animals such as elephants, by a bit of extra gravitational assistance. So we now know what a pissing while  is; 21 seconds. 

Unless, of course, you're like me and in the prostate club in which case there always seems to be just a little bit more and you're never quite sure when you've finished.

Ayrton and the vacuum cleaner

A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to seeing the documentary "Senna" about the life of the late Ayrton Senna. Three things really stood out for me. The first was the tremendous on board footage, something we're used to now but which at the time was only rarely seen. The second was  the fly on the wall coverage of the pre-race drivers meetings which revealed their anxious anticipation of what, certainly to them, was a matter of life or death. The third was that there still didn't seem to be a clear explanation of why Senna's car left the track when it did; though no doubt that he probably would have walked away from the accident if the cockpit had been strong enough to prevent a piece of the front suspension from spearing him through the helmet.

One of the changes that were introduced after his death was the introduction of a much tougher cockpit with raised sides to prevent precisely this type of injury. I can remember being taken to the races and from trackside being able to see not only the driver's head but also his shoulders and arms as they worked at the wheel. Whereas Jackie Stewart would go through a series of bends with just a couple of flicks from one side to another other great drivers, such as the late Jochen Rindt, would look like they were in a permanent battle with the wheel. Nowadays we can get some sense of these different styles from the on board cameras but with nothing like the immediacy of the older more dangerous days.

But even though the sport is much safer the same laws of physics apply. In order to go around bends very quickly you need to apply a tremendous sideways force and the only place this can come from is from friction between the tyres and the road surface and this depends on just three things, the tyres, the track surface and how hard the two are pushed together.

If you look at the Formula 1 cars from the Fangio era you'll see that the cars were streamlined so that they would pass through the air as easily as possible. But, in the 1960s designers began to incorporate wings into their designs. Unlike the wings on an aeroplane these were designed to push the car down rather than lift it up. By doing this the maximum frictional force between the tyres and the track  was increased and they could go round corners much more quickly, albeit at the expense of some speed on the straights.

In the 1970s engineers at Lotus began to treat the entire car as an inverted wing and, in particular, exploited what's known as the ground effect. By getting air to travel smoothly and quickly underneath the car you could lower its pressure. This allowed the higher atmospheric pressure on the upper surfaces to push the car down onto the track. Some teams even experimented with fans, to actively suck air out from under the car, and with skirts along the edges to stop the lowered pressure simply pulling air in from the sides.

Some of these experiments turned out to be dangerous, but danger was then part of the appeal and it tended to take serious accidents before regulations were changed. For example, in the 1993 season Williams, the team that Senna was later to join, exploited advances in computing to run a car with active suspension. What this meant was that a computer controlled the suspension so that the ride height remained constant no matter what the driver was doing. This meant that the airflow under the car was smooth and stable and that they could corner at very high speeds without risk of coming unstuck. Partly because of its expense, which the smaller teams couldn't afford, this system was outlawed just before Senna joined the team and Williams had to retrofit the car with conventional suspension.

In the build up to the fateful Grand Prix Senna was concerned about the unpredictable way in which the car was handling on its conventional springs. And when I say concerned I mean really worried. As it was the worst actually did happen and whether a broken steering column caused the accident or was caused by it has never been fully established. What is known, however, is that rapid changes in the ride height, for example caused by bumps, could dramatically alter the downforce and hence the grip and ability to go round corners.

Meanwhile, in a future world, I've been doing my roughly once weekly vacuuming. Paying a little more attention to this task than is usual I noticed that if I did the job more slowly there was greater resistance to motion. Presumably by sucking air out form under the head of the vacuum cleaner is generating groundforce and pushing the rim that surrounds the head of the cleaner more firmly into the carpet thereby making it harder to move. Pushing the vacuum cleaner faster tends to make it bump over the surface and allows air to leak in at the sides. This reduces the groundforce and makes it easier to push. However, it also means that the cleaner isn't doing the job as well as it might and so I've now quite consciously slowed down so that I can, as it were, feel the suck. In this case slower definitely means better.

So, while I don't know for sure why Senna's crash occurred there may be clues to be found in such a humble act as vacuuming a carpet. If education, and in particular scientific education, is about anything at all its about making connections between what might otherwise seem to be disparate phenomena. 

Note to Mr Gove (current UK minister in charge of education) facts have their place as weapons in an argument not just as things to be regurgitated on request.

+ My perhaps surprising interest in motor racing is partially explained in the Big Prize