We certainly have it better than our ancestors of just two or three millenia ago.

Really.

They lived under governments which were poorly organized and given to inconsistent policies and illogical action. We have ... wait a minute. Let me start again.

They lived at the mercy of the elements, risking disaster and death as a result of uncaring nature. We ... um ... let me try this one more time.

When they were ill and needed a cure, they had to consult with an oracle. We have have doctors. You see, I was right. Things really are better.....

The U.S government has announced the date for doomsday. It's February 17, 2009. That's the day that your old TV -- bringer of entertainment and enlightenment -- switches from planned programming to endless static. No more talk shows where the on-stage guests have IQs resembling shoe sizes; no more shows with three-letter acronyms like CSI, SVU, PSI, or QVC; no more product commercials in which people discuss their disgusting personal problems over lunch with friends; no more political commercials in which candidates discuss their opponent’s disgusting personal problems over a microphone with America; no more ... well, anything. Just static.

Which, might not be so bad. Except that the point of this essay is that it will be bad, so let me return to my point....

People don't like to change. They don't want to change their religion, political party, or (in the case of adolescent males) their T-shirts. They'll cling to their beliefs (or their ratty, stained eighties-vintage T-shirts) until their dying day.

Much of human history is really about the struggle to get people to change; whether it was the Conquistadors trying to get the natives of the Americas to change from being gold hoarders to being dead people, the American Revolutionaries trying to get the British to change from being soldiers to being dead people, or the owners of the Titanic trying to get people to change from being passengers to being dead people. With survival at stake so often, it's no surprise people resist change.

Which is why I reacted so strongly when I had to pick a new breakfast cereal....

Pop quiz, hotshot. Gas costs a little more than four dollars a gallon. Kevin's rattletrap minivan gets a little less than twenty miles to the gallon. The drive to work is exactly nine-point-nine miles each way. What do you do?

That’s the question I've been wrestling with. I pay four dollars a day for the round-trip to my place of semi-involuntary-servitude. The most tempting response is to quit work, but my wife has a violent emotional reaction every time I broach the subject of an income-free lifestyle. The less tempting responses include public transit or bicycling.

I'm in favor of public transit in theory, but opposed to it in practice. Like most people, I believe that public transit is a good idea for the public which is a term applied to anyone who isn't me.

No car? No bus? That leaves bicycling.........