A cobbler should stick to his last, they say. If only the lame duck Prez had stuck to mountain biking instead of politics, we wouldn’t have had to worry about what some waldo named Sadr was saying, or have had to find out what an MBS has to do with the fact that your 401k is now worthless.

Anyway, point of this rant is that at the fag end of his illustrious 8 years as the world’s most powerful man, the President is finally concentrating on what he knows best - Mountain biking. AP report says that the Bush Administration is taking steps to open up the National Parks and other public property for mountain bikers. Photo by Matthew Haggerty via flickr (creative commons). 

Basically, they ordered the National Park Service to issue a ruling which says that park managers can decide which of their trails to open to bikers. Right now, that power rests in the hands of federal regulators in Washington, and permission to open up a trail can take years to get through the red tape.

Regardless of whether you think National park trails should be opened to Mountain bikes or not, you have to admit its a good idea to vest this power locally. After all, the park manager is the one who knows the pros and cons better than anyone else.

The Prez’s addiction to fitness and Mountain Biking is fairly common knowledge. “It doesn’t take much time to stay fit — 30 minutes five days a week; 30 minutes of walking, 30 minutes of running, 30 minutes of biking, 30 minutes of swimming on a regular basis will help deal with a lot of health issues here in America,” said President Bush.

And if you think talking about President Bush and his mountain biking addiction is crap, then read this for a shitload of crap. Here in the industrialized world, where we happily flush it and forget it, it’s hard to imagine that literally billions of people elsewhere have no access to a toilet. It may also be difficult to believe that 90 percent of the world’s sewage ends up untreated in oceans, rivers and lakes, some of that filth burbling out of our supposedly sophisticated sewage systems. While the humble toilet has added decades to the lives of those of us lucky enough to have one, George reports, it’s also created a whole host of environmental problems.

All these things and a lot more are outlined in British journalist Rose George’s new book, “The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters.” So remember that. Everytime you use the toilet, you’re creating environmental problems.

Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by Thomas
Filed under: News