Manufacturers of cheap bikes have long tried to make their bikes look like pricer stuff--at least, to those who aren't so knowledgeable or discerning. That's why about half of the new bikes you see today are finished in some combination of black, white and red geometric whooshes and slashes.
But how do you make a cheap bike sound like a high-quality velocipede--especially when said HQV is named for a racing legend?
It seems that the company behind this bicycle-shaped object did just that.
Or am I the only one who thinks the name is intended to rhyme with Mercx?
You have to just love what's on the bike's top tube:
I saw the Meirx parked on Broadway yesterday morning during a pre-work bagel run.
Hey, I found it! The miracle cure!
For what?, you ask.
Cravings for drugs, alcohol, sex and Friends.
The cure is really, really simple--and you might even have it on your iPhone.
All right, I'll tell you what it is: playing Tetris.
I'm not kidding: that is the conclusion of a research team. According to their findings, "cognitive interference" can be used to reduce cravings for substances and addictive behaviors.
Of course, a term like "cognitive interference" could only be coined by someone trying to get or keep a research grant (or by someone paid to explain how a celebrity ran over some unfortunate soul). In plain English, it means "distraction": Playing Tetris deflects your attention away from eating pizzas, drinking beer, making love or the "He's her lobster!" episode.
Believe it or not, greater minds than the ones who discovered "cognitive interference" have come up with even more ludicrous conclusions from funded research.
As an example, the esteemed fellows at the National Highway Traffic Administration have figured out how to prevent 90 percent of all bicycle accidents. Their conclusion is so simple, and so commonsensical that I wondered how I didn't come up with it myself.
According to lead researcher Dr. Laura Gafferty, "Our data confirm that the vast majority of cyclist injuries can be avoided by driving an automobile instead of biking around like some weirdo." She added that while bicycle riding is perfectly acceptable for children under 12, it isn't recommended for any adult who isn't competing in the Tour de France. "Regular people drive cars because it's the normal and not the abnormal thing to do," she explained. If every cyclist drove a car "like you're supposed to as an adult", cycling-related fatalities would "drop by 40 percent in the first six months alone," she claimed.
Her team's study was published in that most respected of all journals: The Onion.
Whenever someone mentions "suburban family", my mind still conjures an image of a mother driving a station wagon full of kids.
At least, that was the sort of suburban family I saw--and my Brooklyn family became--when we moved to New Jersey right about the time I was hitting puberty (my first).
These days, it seems that suburban families don't have as many kids. (Actually, that's the case for families in most places in the US.) Paradoxically, as family size has shrunk, motor vehicles have gotten larger: Families that used to shuttle between school, the mall, kids' practices and home in station wagons are now getting around in SUVs.
Well, maybe not all of them.
You can see more families like them on the Madsen Bike blog.
I'm told those kids eat healthy snacks:
Note: This is not an endorsement of Madsen bikes, as I know almost nothing about them. I like the idea behind them, though!
