Comment 6340

By seancb (registered) - website | Posted April 12, 2007 at 16:01:09

I forgot to mention this collection of facts and figures by Ivan Illich. It's quite fun to read, and a bit lighter than these others.

Among other things, It takes an interesting stance of calculating the amount of time a person spends earning money to pay for a car, then incorporates that into the distance travelled to come up with a true "speed":

"The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. ... The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour." http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ira/illich/f...

I vote down for offensiveness and up for humour. I cast no votes based on my level of agreement.

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