Infinite Monkeys And Bicycles

Folks in midlife--like yours truly (!)--understand that computers and the Internet can't cause anything that hasn't happened before.  All they can do is to make something happen faster and spread wider.

That means all manner of crackpot notions from the tinfoil hat crowd were circulating well before the Altair came along.  One I recall from my tender young years goes something like this:  Give an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of typewriters and, eventually, Hamlet or Macbeth or the complete works of Shakespeare (depending on who was telling the story) would emerge.

Hmm...If we put an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of bicycles....

From Trademark Art

He Scored And Made It To 100...Almost

As you've heard by now, the Duke of Edinburgh, a.k.a. Prince Philip, died yesterday.  He was two months and a day shy of 100 years old.

The world knows him mainly because he was the queen's husband.  Also remembered are his often-unfiltered comments, which rubbed more than a few people the wrong way.  I had to chuckle, however, about his retort to a man whose wife had a PhD.  "She's much more important than I am," the man said.  To which Philip replied, "We have the same problem in my family."

He also earned a reputation a sportsman.  He raced boats, yachts, horses and race cars; piloted planes and played games I probably never will be able to afford.  I give him "props," though, for participating in one of the few forms of cycling I've never tried:

Prince Philip at Windsor, 1967.  UPI Photo

I'm told he was a pretty good bicycle polo player.  The polo field was, if nothing else, one place where he didn't have to walk two paces behind Elizabeth. I wonder whether that was part of the sport's appeal to him.

(It occurs to me now that I've mentioned bicycles and royals in the same post twice this week.  That could make for an interesting, but strange, genre, couln't it?)  

Why Don't They Protect Us?

 Helmets are for sissies.

I actually said that once.  Of course, that meant I would soon don the best head protection available at the time:  the Bell "turtleshell."  At that time, I told myself that a real man can indeed wear something more substantial than a Team Peugeot cap on his head.  But, of course, that wasn't the real reason why I--a manque transgender woman--wore a cranial shield.

In time, most cyclists I'd ride with in clubs, training or races would wear them, too.  Women, it seemed, were more willing, even if they were worried about messing up their hair.

Well, I just learned something I never expected:  Women may have less reason to wear helmets.  Now, I'd like to think because we're tougher and more resilient, or because we have so much more brain matter that we can afford to lose a little.  

From Femmecyclist

The real reason, though, is that helmets may do less for us than they do for men.  According to a recent study, although we're more likely than men to wear helmets, we have higher rates of serious head injury (in spite of less head injury overall).

What accounts for this difference? The study posits that it can be one of two things:  sex disparity in helmet-testing standards or "intrinsic incompatiblity between available helmets and female anatomy."  

This reminds me of the "female problem" in medicine:  Most of what doctors and other medical professionals learn is based on studies done on males.  So the data is biased; so is the perspective of doctors. Most standards for everything from blood pressure readings to medication dosages are thus based on data gleaned from studies done on men.

I know that many women have difficulty finding helmets (and other apparel and equipment) that fit them.  I wonder whether the helmet issue has to do, not only with the differences in size and shape between women's and men's craniums, but also in the ways our heads move and balance on our bodies.