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Thread Box:
ROTW = NathanSnider
Thread started by la duderina at 05.3.09 - 3:21 am

I searched high and low, and either I'm just trippin' or it is some monumental mistake that this cool cat has not ever been ROTW. Either way, he deserves it, whether this is his 1st nom or not!

So I hereby nominate the man, the myth, the legend, THE Mr. Nathan Snider for ROTW, and I'm pretty sure I don't have to explain why.



reply


pizza oven was epic.

In favor.



Candy Cane
05.3.09 - 3:23 am

reply


Another example of epicness.



la duderina
05.3.09 - 3:29 am

reply


What a guy!!






la duderina
05.3.09 - 3:33 am

reply


He has been Snider of the Week, but not yet Rider of the Week.

From Snider to Rider!



PC
05.3.09 - 3:48 am

reply


I don't know why that Salton Sea pizza oven didn't start a trend. By now, every back yard party should include makeshift pizza ovens.



PC
05.3.09 - 3:49 am

reply


Church of Snydazz.

ROTY



HANDBONE
05.3.09 - 3:50 am

reply


so its official. 3 votes, hes in



Candy Cane
05.3.09 - 4:11 am

reply


ahhh that would have been a much better picture for the top of the thread! darn.



la duderina
05.3.09 - 4:27 am

reply


Questions!!

1. What foreign countries (besides Argentina, of course) have you visited and how do they compare to the United States?

2. What were you doing in Santa Barbara that day you missed the train?

3. When you put on your pants in the morning, (or at whatever time you put them on) do you button first or zip first?

4. Do you like wearing ties?

5. What rides have you organized?

6. What do you do during the day, when you are not simply just being the MAN? (and I mean this in the good sense, as in, "you are the man!" ...not the "stick it to the Man" sense)

7. Are you interested in politics?



la duderina
05.3.09 - 4:35 am

reply


Ok, I'm really leaving until May 14 now...but I am looking forward to your answers upon my return!!! (unless I hit a snag and need PC's help again, in which case I will be back sooner)



la duderina
05.3.09 - 4:38 am

reply


this nomination is long overdue.

1) weirdest sex locale

la duderina, please, you will be back so soon :)



steph
05.3.09 - 5:30 am

reply


ah, you got me. but it was to get that link PC found and to post one last thread before my hiatus. i swear.



la duderina
05.3.09 - 7:14 am

reply


+666



Joe Borfo
05.3.09 - 7:41 am

reply


Here here! or is it hear hear? Here hear? Or hear here?





Roadblock
05.3.09 - 9:33 am

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He doesn't ride a fixie, either.

THIS WEEK is SNIDER WEEK.


sorry nixontwin.



onelessfixie
05.3.09 - 6:08 pm

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YAY NATHAN!!

NEVAAAA FORGET NY and TEXASSSS!!!



Delgado Blood
05.3.09 - 6:51 pm

reply


" This week was a return. It had to happen. Like an inherited memory of the primordial sea, we found ourselves carried by wave after wave of amazing people, amazing events and amazing times. We crawled out of the muck and proceeded to crawl right back in. We had to, because our annonymous friend was right; Beauty is a loud thing. Like a mosh pit, like the big bang, like the Midnight Ridass:noisy, thrilling, inconvieniant and impossible to ignore. We had to return. We are returning. We will return again." -Nathan Snider 03/23/09 returning from Austin, Texas.

<3 <3 <3



Delgado Blood
05.3.09 - 6:57 pm

reply






PC
05.3.09 - 9:50 pm

reply


OMG YES!!


ALL HAIL NATHAN SNIDAZZ





la duderina
05.4.09 - 12:02 am

reply


Nathan Snider, you're the Rider (OTW)!



kryxtanicole
05.4.09 - 12:08 am

reply


@La Duderina
GTFO



imachynna
05.4.09 - 12:10 am

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congrats nathan!!



widowmaker
05.4.09 - 9:06 am

reply


Nathan is awesome... (and I don't even really know him!) He's just one of those people you admire from a distance, and secrety wish was your BFF.



canadienne
05.4.09 - 9:25 am

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Congratulations Nathan!!!

You're an awesome dude and it's great to have known you all these years. Ever since the first time I met you, which was at a ride that never materialized during Bikesummer 2005, you've been very entertaining. The ride we met at was a weird time and event for Bikesummer, middle of a week day and the meeting place was off of Santa Fe Ave and the 10. Only Nathan, Thadus and me showed up for it. The leader was a no show. Strangely both of you guys ended up being pretty good friends of mine. I guess you were as drawn as I was to the ride idea.

Any ways you're a stand up dude and it's really great to have known you. Had fun helping you out with your oven in Salton Sea. Next time lets do a permanent one, yeah?



User1
05.4.09 - 11:47 am

reply


Bummmmp



Delgado Blood
05.4.09 - 5:15 pm

reply


Do you ever have re-occurring dreams? Can you talk about them in this forum?

Can you tell us one thing you never thought you'd tell anyone in public, and dont talk about that thing we've been talking about (or I'm coming for you)?

Would you consider taking over Conan O'Brien's show?

Can you talk about your plans for your bicycle compound in New England?



SKIDMARCUS
05.4.09 - 6:01 pm

reply


Whoa! Thanks, everybody. I'm in the library right now, grinning like an idiot. I'll have to write up answers to your questions when I'm offline, but seriously, thanks. The bike love, I am feeling it.



nathansnider
05.4.09 - 7:39 pm

reply


MIDNIGHT
SINDAZZ





Graham
05.4.09 - 7:42 pm

reply


UGH
SNI
DAZZ





Graham
05.4.09 - 7:43 pm

reply


Nathan,

- When did you start riding with the LA?
- Where did you grow up?
- You like exploring abandon buildings?
- What's the best place you explored?
- Any plans you looking forward to?



User1
05.4.09 - 9:45 pm

reply


My favorite thing about Nathan is the fact that he is so unexpected. I haven't known him long, but he seems like a quiet guy until you get him talking. And once you get him talking, he will completely

blow your mind




totally blow it! and your mind will be blown, and you will have a blown mind.


I seriously cannot wait for these answers.

oh, and thanks for letting me borrow the Buenos Aires travel guide!!!!

Midnight Snidaaaaaazzzzz!!!! 4 life.



la duderina
05.5.09 - 12:19 pm

reply






theroyalacademy
05.5.09 - 1:29 pm

reply


I don't know it this will be sufficiently mind-blowing to live up to expectations, but here goes...

@la duderina

GTFO!

1. What foreign countries (besides Argentina, of course) have you visited and how do they compare to the United States?

Not that many, actually. Altogether, I've spent six weeks in Spain, six weeks in Peru, a week in Bolivia (just La Paz, really) and about a month in Canada.

Spain's a distant memory at this point. I recall lots of cathedrals and plazas, which I guess makes it sufficiently different from the US to be noteworthy: everything was more walkable, pretty, historic. The culture was more, um, European, I guess? Bread and wine always on the table. It felt more conservative than the U.S. in some ways too, but maybe that was just because I was lodging with this lady who thought everything was better under Franco.

Peru was great. I miss Peru. In the community where we were working, everybody was incredibly welcoming, which I'm sure had a lot to do with the fact that we were helping them out, but even in neighboring communities, people were really nice. Nicer than in the U.S.? Hey, sure, why not? I'm not going to fall into the whole "but they're so happy in their poverty" thing because there was no shortage of alcoholism and what-not, but it's amazing how well people can make do when there's not a lot to go around. The cities were a little depressing, I thought, but maybe I just wasn't in the touristy mood. Peru has some amazingly diverse geography, what with all those deserts and mountains and jungles. I really wish I could find the music they played on the radio there, because it gives me these pangs of nostalgia for crammed bus rides through the mountains. Seriously. Also, they eat guinea pig. Cutest delicacy ever.

La Paz was beautiful, in all its sprawling glory. You can practically watch the red brick buildings growing up over the hillside. I mean, they were kind of ugly, but just by virtue of being so ubiquitous, they were beautiful. Sprawl in the U.S. is never so pretty. The traditional aspects of the culture seemed way more vibrant, or maybe just more exotic, than in Peru. The folklore dances/parades in the streets, the dried llama fetuses for sale in the market, the coked-up Chilean tourist falling to his death in front of 2,000 onlookers... Oh, um, yeah, there were some profoundly fucked up moments in La Paz. I mean, when things are bright, they're bright, and when they're dark, they're dark. That's La Paz.

People in Peru and Bolivia were generally more religious and socially conservative and also more attached to family than we are in the U.S. Basically no one whom I talked to there could imagine how people could commonly move to live hundreds or thousands of miles away from their parents. It was just a completely foreign concept. I guess that in the U.S., we're brought up to follow the opportunity and the money, caught somewhere between frontier individualism and economic necessity. Or maybe we just don't like our parents as much.

Canada... was like the U.S. but with more snow, better roads and nicer people. I mean, I grew up right across the border in Idaho, so in the parts that I visited most often, everything was more similar than different. Now there's a weird Mormon community that straddles the Idaho/Canada border with all sorts of sketchy polygamist child-bride shit going on, so we've even got that in common. We are the world!

The most jarring culture shock I had while traveling was actually arriving back in LAX to the realization that my cell phone had been lost/stolen somewhere in South America, my bank account had been overdrawn (by me) the day before, and the currency exchange was closed for the night, so I couldn't convert my last remaining bits of Peruvian and Argentinian cash to dollars. I was asking people in the terminal for change to make a phone call or get a bus ticket, but nobody would help. Meanwhile, on the airport PA, they were playing that message: Please do not give money to solicitors, and I was realizing that... Wait, have I told this story before? I probably have, but whatever, I'm ROTW, motherfuckers, so you have to listen to me ramble. Anyway, after several failed attempts to get cash and make phone calls, I decided to give up and wandered around until I found a bench in the food court of Tom Bradley International Terminal to sleep on for the night. So, already begging for change and sleeping on a park bench, I was tempted to open one of the bottles of Pisco that I'd brought back from Peru, just to make this picture of destitution complete. I kind of regret that I didn't go full-on bum for the night. There was nothing more that I wanted at that moment than to be back in South America, where phone booths and internet cafes were on every block, and people were at least willing to entertain the idea of helping out a fellow traveler. After a night of pretty terrible sleep, the currency exchange did finally open, and with my remaining $8.17 in hand, I was no longer a second-class citizen in the eyes of the developed world. Huzzah!

2. What were you doing in Santa Barbara that day you missed the train?

I was meeting with some professors at UCSB to plan a new project. We're looking at the potential effects of different renewable energy sources on biodiversity. I'm working on the computer model, and I ended up giving some wildly optimistic estimates of how much work it would take to get everything working (which is why I'm taking so long to answer all these questions).

3. When you put on your pants in the morning, (or at whatever time you put them on) do you button first or zip first?

Some people actually zip first? That just seems counterintuitive, like it would require some extra steps to get everything completely fastened... Yeah, I tried just now [not here in the library; at home where I originally typed my answers], and the order is all wrong. If you're pulling your pants on, your hands are already going to be on the waistband, so why would you take the extra time to remove your hands (or at least one hand) from the waistband to tug at the zipper pull, then back to the waistband? Plus, if the zipper sticks, you'll need two hands to apply tension and straighten the zipper out, so why not just button first and ensure that you'll have two free hands? This is some sort of weird Seinfeld question. Am I missing a TV reference here? Does zipping first make more sense if you have tight hipster pants or shapely lady hips? For reference, I have neither of these.

4. Do you like wearing ties?

Ties actually come dangerously close to violating my one Rule of Fashion: If you can't scale a chain-link fence while wearing it, it's not everyday clothing. Surely you can see the danger here. But for dressing up, or as a costume, hey sure, why not? Also, what's with these clothing questions?

5. What rides have you organized?

During Bikesummer, I organized the Tour de Graf and a couple "photo rides" where only one or two people actually took any photos. I haven't organized any rides in the year I've been "back," but I have a few ideas. They're huge and totally impractical, which is the reason they have to Happen, but it's also the reason that they haven't Happened yet.

6. What do you do during the day, when you are not simply just being the MAN? (and I mean this in the good sense, as in, "you are the man!" ...not the "stick it to the Man" sense)

I am the Man. I keep the people down. Actually, during the day, I'm sitting in front of a computer wading through big data sets and writing computer models to make sense of those data sets. Pretty much everything I've been doing relates to climate change and ecology, both of which I find really interesting. And it's good to find one's work interesting. The work hasn't been very consistent lately, owing to some unfortunately timed grants, but at least I get to set my own schedule when I am working. Depending on the degree to which I am "setting my own schedule," I may also be sleeping during the day. I actually like working at night since there are fewer distractions.

7. Are you interested in politics?

In what respect, Charlie? Like running for office? I think I would be totally unelectable.

@steph
1) weirdest sex locale

Yo momma's house.

@SKIDMARCUS
Do you ever have re-occurring dreams? Can you talk about them in this forum?

I think I've mentioned this dream before. I've had several versions of it now. It's about bikes. How... nerdy of me. It's unusually coherent as my dreams go. Usually, they'll bounce all over the place, never sticking to a theme long enough to resolve any questions that arise, but this one always seems to follow through. I'll have to wait for user Sigmund Freud to tell me what that means, but anyway, here goes:

In my dream, there is a network of tunnels under Hollywood - proper catacombs actually, though this is not immediately apparent. The walls are lined with bikes. Frames, forks, wheels and handlebars are sticking out every which way. They're dense and entangled like a thicket, so deep that you can't see any walls behind them. At intervals, there are lights embedded within the mass of bikes, casting shadows on the floor. One image that sticks in my head is the shadow of a chainring spinning slowly. The shadow is huge, and I look down to admire the detail as I walk around the edges of it.

I pass a few people carrying bikes - not riding or rolling them, carrying them - on their shoulders, in their hands, balanced on their heads... They remind me of leafcutter ants in a nature documentary. They're moving in different directions, but they all clearly have somewhere to go, and each one is wearing a uniform jumpsuit. Naturally, I'm thinking that I've finally stumbled upon the den of thieves that have been taking all of our bikes. As I walk on, there is more and more activity, and soon I have to start stepping off to the side to avoid being trampled.

There's a middle-aged fellow walking slowly through the crowd, looking sad and wearing black. He approaches me and I ask him where all of these bikes have come from, and he tells me simply that they are "dead." This is puzzling because while some of them are clearly mangled, most of them look fine. Still, it's clear enough what he'd means. These bikes are irreparably "broken," if not physically then somehow spiritually. As I walked on, the tunnels became wider, the rooms larger, and the bicycles more elaborate. Penny farthings, ornate brass tricycles, freakbikes of all kinds.

In the first version of the dream, this actually is a den of thieves, run by a charismatic cult leader who is sacrificing them for some reason I don't understand. He's sort of a megalomaniac without a cause. I set out to save my bike, because this dream happened sometime back in December, soon after my bike got stolen. I don't remember the details of the rest of the dream, but somehow LA gets flooded, and the Hollywood hills become beachfront property, and it becomes apparent that someone was plotting this all along as a means to raise real-estate values, and the cult leader was merely being used. If you're thinking (???), well yeah, so am I. It kind of devolves into a lousy action movie just as things are getting interesting. The last image I remember from the dream is floating in an orange life raft somewhere over what used to be Koreatown, watching the sun rise on Hollywood Bay. It's kind of beautiful, in the dream - no bodies or debris anywhere - just clear ocean and a brand new beach.

In the second version of the dream, I find that an old artist friend, K, from St. Louis has taken up residence in the tunnels and is in the process of building this pagoda-like thing out of bicycle frames in the middle of an enormous chamber. The bicycles, this time, are all the unloved and abandoned rides of LA, which the jumpsuited undertakers in the tunnels have been collecting for years, and now K is using them to create a temple that will somehow vindicate them in death. So anyway, she's building this pagoda thing entirely out of blue frames and she needs a specific blue Nishiki frame, from a bike that was once named (I think, though I may be embellishing) Thelma. I set out with a party of undertakers, and after much searching and many false starts we finally find Thelma. The undertakers solemnly remove Thelma's parts and wrap them in a blanket, then carry her frame back to the pagoda. K climbs up the structure and places the frame at the pinnacle of the roof, then comes down, pulls a rope that closes the front door, then says "we're done; let's go." So we all return to the surface, crawling out of a manhole in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. The undertakers shed their jumpsuits in a pile and walk away in normal street clothes. Bicycles pass. They seem happier than usual, shinier in the morning sun. I ask K whether these are the bicycles freed by the pagoda, and she just says "maybe." I mean, it's my dream, so of course I know that's what they are, but I'm obligated to ask. Anyway, that's the last image of the dream, watching shiny bikes pass on Hollywood Boulevard.

The most recent version of the dream relates to that thing we've been talking about, which I can't talk about, so I won't.

Dude, that was way longer than it ought to have been, but you did ask. Am I indulging you by writing all this out, or are you indulging me by reading the whole thing?

Can you tell us one thing you never thought you'd tell anyone in public, and dont talk about that thing we've been talking about (or I'm coming for you)?

Oh, wow, here's the one thing that I'd rather people in the bike community not associate me with. It's the worst thing I've ever done on a bicycle (maybe the worst thing I've done ever), and I'll always feel terrible about it. On the Tron Ride in 2005, Gina from Eagle Rock crashed in front of me, and I ran over her face. This, by itself, is a pretty terrible accident, but it's what I did after that that makes me a douchebag's douchebag.

I left.

The mitigating circumstances - that I initially thought, hopefully, that maybe I hadn't actually hit her, but only her bike; that she already had four people gathered around helping her out when I turned back around; that my friend, on his first and only MR ride, was saying "come on, let's go, it was her fault, let's go" - don't even begin to excuse just up-and-leaving. But that's what I did. At the end of the ride in Echo Park, she and a friend came up to me with a video camera and were asking me questions about the accident, and somewhere there's a video of me being less than gracious about the whole thing: "I don't know. I guess I may have... run over... your face?" Like I said, a douchebag's douchebag. I apologized, and we smoothed things over as much as possible. I saw her again on the LA Gears ride a few times before I left LA, and I kept apologizing profusely, and she seemed OK with that. But seriously, ugh, I was such a terrible person. I'll never live it down.

So that's probably the last thing I'd want anybody to remember about me - that I was the asshole who ran over Gina's face and didn't stay to help. And now the whole internet knows. Dear God, I hope the video's not on YouTube, at least.

Would you consider taking over Conan O'Brien's show?

Only if I can bring my own fat sidekick.

Can you talk about your plans for your bicycle compound in New England?

Can you?

@User1
- When did you start riding with the LA?

In late 2004, when I still lived in Studio City, I finally got a bike and rode it around the Valley. I still hated LA, but the bike was a start. I went on CM in December and my first MR in January, 2005. The ET ride, it was. Then I moved to Echo Park and realized that there was a whole city to explore, so that was the point at which I'd say I really started "riding." I mean, I still drove to Pasadena for work, but I got to spend my free time on a bike. Then Bikesummer happened, and like whoa. I'm positive that I wouldn't have liked LA enough to move back after grad school had it not been for bikes.

- Where did you grow up?

I was born in Boise, but we moved north to Bonners Ferry when I was two months old. Northern Idaho ("North Idaho" to the locals) is a weird and beautiful place. All sorts of weirdos seemed to flock to it, mostly to get away from the rest of society. My parents were convinced that the economy was going to collapse and that they'd best get to somewhere where they could be self-sufficient when it all came down. (Were the late 70s really that bad?) My dad built an underground house out in the country, and we had a garden and pigs and chickens and lots of trees. The self-sufficiency thing never quite panned out, but we hung around anyway. We opened up a pizza restaurant in town, and I spent a good part of my growing-up years living above it.

- You like exploring abandon buildings?

Don't spread rumors. I have a political career to think about here.

- What's the best place you explored?

The Armour, absolutely. There have been some more "exciting" explorations, for sure, but what the Armour lacked in machete-wielding caretakers, it made up for in vast, jaw-dropping awesomeness. I still dream of doing something as amazing as this or this, but then, doesn't everyone?

- Any plans you looking forward to?

Healing my re-broken collarbone would be a start. Oh, right, I haven't mentioned that yet. For anybody who didn't know, I re-broke my collarbone at the last Swap Meet. I was a bit too enthusiastic in my rendering of Search and Destroy, and I did a kind of backwards somersault thing in which I put all my weight on my left shoulder, which is apparently a bad idea when you've recently broken said shoulder? It's not the first thing that I've messed up in my enthusiasm for that song. The irony of being unable to ride a bike during the Week of which you are the nominal Rider is, of course, not lost on me.

Also, I'm looking forward to some things that I am not allowed to talk about.

This is a lot of work, by the way, answering all these questions. Don't say I never did anything for y'all.



nathansnider
05.6.09 - 4:55 pm

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How was the USC/County ER after karaoke?



zombiefiesta
05.6.09 - 6:38 pm

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Wow, I just read a long detailed description of somebody else's dream and it didn't bore the piss out of me. Snider, you're superhuman or something.

P.S. Can you give some more detail about alt energy / biodiversity thing you're studying (or doing models for)? Are you talking about the effects of an installation on the local ecosystem, or something else entirely?



PC
05.7.09 - 4:01 am

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"I ran over her face." HAHAHHA



SKIDMARCUS
05.7.09 - 10:07 am

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Wow... I actually read that whole thing WHILE at work... AND loved every word. That dream imagery.... WOWZERS.



canadienne
05.7.09 - 10:34 am

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Nathan Snider will BLOW YOUR MINDER!!!!!!!!



onelessfixie
05.7.09 - 11:36 am

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Awesome post Nathan!

Those two links to the abandon places gave me a boner. You have details on that rocket testing site in TX? Where is that?



User1
05.7.09 - 3:40 pm

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Woohoo! I'm writing things that don't bore the piss out of PC and linking to things that give User1 a boner. I view these as major accomplishments.

@zombiefiesta
How was the USC/County ER after karaoke?

15 hours of paradise! It was the first wave of the bird flu media blitz, so it was a great time to being among the sick and injured, with the TV telling us we were all doomed. When I cleared my throat, I sort of looked around nervously to make sure nobody scooted away.

The attending doctor in the orthopedic eval area greeted me like this: "So you have a broken collarbone... Oh, dude, you can totally see it. On one side, your shoulder is straight across [holds his hand flat and level] and on the other, it's all off at an angle. [makes drastic saw-like motion with his hand, about 15 degrees from vertical] Have you seen it in a mirror yet? Dude." I liked that guy. I'm not being sarcastic; I kind of wish there were more people like him around.

After they gave me lunch, I fell asleep in the bed with the food tray in front of me, wearing my ugly-ass powder blue blazer with no shirt on underneath. Shoulder pads soak up drool pretty gracefully, it turns out. I'll have to remember that for my wardrobe when I'm older.

@PC
P.S. Can you give some more detail about alt energy / biodiversity thing you're studying (or doing models for)? Are you talking about the effects of an installation on the local ecosystem, or something else entirely?

It's a global model, actually. I sort of wish it were something with more concrete local applications, but it's kind of a neat "big idea" question we're asking. Basically, if you were to meet all future increases in energy demand using renewable (or at least non-emitting) sources, how much area would that impact, and where would those impacts be? There's a relationship between the area of a habitat and how many species it can support, so if you know how much area of a given habitat patch is being lost, you can calculate how many species are likely to go extinct. This description is kind of a simplification, since we're only really able to calculate the probability of extinction for species that are endemic to one of our analysis units, but that's the gist of it.

The point of doing this is to look at what happens when you vary the mixture of energy sources, so you can quantify the relative impacts on biodiversity that you would get from relying more on one technology over another.

For instance, since the cheapest sources of carbon-neutral transportation fuel are (currently) ethanol and biodiesel, both of which require either the clearing of new cropland or the reappropriation of existing cropland, there's potential to do a lot of damage to some really diverse ecosystems. The fact that the most productive areas for some biofuel crops (oil palm in particular has gotten a lot of attention lately) happen to be in the rainforest doesn't really help, either.

@User1
You have details on that rocket testing site in TX? Where is that?
Sadly, no. They talk about it a little in the comments on that site, but they don't give away any information.

Keep the questions coming! If you want to feed my ego, you can go ahead and do that, too. I usually don't like people feeding my ego, since it gets all gassy, but I'll make an exception this week.



nathansnider
05.7.09 - 10:25 pm

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1. What is the longest you have ever gone without a shower?

2. Who is your all-time favorite Midnight Rida?

3. Besides riding a bicycle on the streets of LA, what is the closest you have ever come to death?

4. Are we going to run out of oil and all die???!!?!?!??!

5. How do you feel about RFID chips and nanotechnologies?

6. What is your most embarrassing moment?

7. Most interesting food you have ever tried?

8. RE: self-sustaining lifestyle in Idaho....Can you milk a cow?

9. Do you believe in aliens?

10. Do you watch TV? If so, what is your favorite show?




la duderina
05.8.09 - 1:10 pm

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Question:
What advise do you have for somebody who's wasted all of their potential in a line of work that means absolutely nothing to anyone... and is doomed to idolize scientists and engineers?

Ego Feed:
You've built up such a good rapport that you can run over somebody's face and not have anyone think any less of you. In fact, you're almost MORE likable... like when people get all OMG! when their favorite celebrity stumbles and makes a goofy face.



canadienne
05.8.09 - 2:27 pm

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Liz... please, save the work woes for twitter.... hahahaha


hey Nathan check your email loco.



Roadblock
05.8.09 - 3:49 pm

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bump. CUZ NATHAN is TOPS!



la duderina
05.8.09 - 6:50 pm

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la duderina
05.8.09 - 11:17 pm

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my vote.



Moriarty
05.8.09 - 11:53 pm

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Paging Nathan Snider.... paging Nathan Snider...

Email meeeee pleeeee

Roadblock at midnightridazz dot calm



Roadblock
05.9.09 - 1:00 am

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Nathan,

In regards to the urban explorers, looks like those guys are from the UK. Pretty freaking impressive getting info to some of the places they've been. They do give people an option to submit a request for info to the places they've been.

In regards to sustainable energy, have you've been following anything on generating biodiesel from algae? Algae will save the world! Don't you read?

Moor questions!

If you could have another sign in name, what would it be? Nathan the face destroyer sounds cool! I'd be scared of you!

Speaking of scared, are you going to follow PC's footsteps and develop a scary attitude too? Are you going to crash after this high like he did?

Have you gotten over getting your bike jacked yet? I know I would be bitter towards peeps for years to come!

And what is your favorite color?




User1
05.9.09 - 2:46 pm

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Can you break dance?

If you could have been born in another time period, which would you choose?

Can you play any instruments?

How do you rock that blazer so well?



la duderina
05.10.09 - 1:37 am

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I suppose I'd better answer some of these questions before my week is up.

@la duderina

GTFO!

1. What is the longest you have ever gone without a shower?

When we lived above the restaurant, we had a bathtub, but no shower, so I guess that technically, I might have gone a couple years without a shower. But the longest time without bathing of any sort would be 12 days. It stops feeling gross after about day 3, and if no one else is showering either, it's not such a big deal.

2. Who is your all-time favorite Midnight Rida?

This question is so unfair. I can't decide.

Is it:
ChickenLeatheroyalacademeandmybluebike?
SKIDMARCUsexityHobgobLehtonen?
richtotheReverendDakatiepoche?
JenDiamixtemuser1?
RoadbLanceKABorforanz?
robertstANDBONewarkhouse?
alecoeCoeButThompsonPC-Rad?

I dream of going on a ride with all of these Ridazz in attendance. Somebody Photoshop this.

3. Besides riding a bicycle on the streets of LA, what is the closest you have ever come to death?

Maybe I've just gone through life Magoo-like, blissfully unaware of the dangers that surround me, but I can't actually think of many occasions where I was seriously close to death. There are only three likely candidates that I can think of. When I was three years old, I drank some diesel fuel, but I don't think anybody knows how much I swallowed. Apparently, it's a pretty painful irritant, so unless I failed to notice that fact, it couldn't have been very much. They pumped my stomach pretty quickly though, and I'm glad about that.

Then I had the biggest bolt bomb ever (made from 1" thick ralroad bolts) go off in my hands when I was twelve, but fortunately it wasn't tightened enough to go "boom" (it just sort of made a loud pop and shot flames out the sides). Though it could have taken some fingers off had it really exploded, I doubt it would have killed me. Mind you, this was in the basement of our restaurant during business hours, so everyone upstairs heard, and when my mom called down to ask if everything was alright, my brother and I (fanning smoke out the back door as we yelled) called back up that some boards had just fallen over and everything was fine. Maybe my parents would have killed us if the thing had exploded.

Also, I once slipped while climbing down a scaffold at a construction site wearing wet shoes. I caught myself with one arm and a knee. That was... freaky, but again, I probably would have just landed on the platform that was eight feet down, not slipped through the gap all the way to the ground. Nevertheless, I now associate the smell of fresh concrete with danger. I also wipe my shoes more often.

4. Are we going to run out of oil and all die???!!?!?!??!

I don't really buy the Julian Simon-style arguments that the market will always save us from scarcity, because it's obvious that the resources of the earth are limited, even if we haven't reached those limits yet. I mean, duh. But I think that at least in the case of oil, any declines in production will probably be gradual enough that we can find cheap replacements before the shit hits the fan (though I would hope for other reasons that we find the replacements sooner rather than later). It isn't going to kill us if oil gets scarce and expensive; I mean, we don't drink the stuff, do we?

And are we all going to die???!!?!?!??! Well, sure, but that's just kinda the lot we drew, innit? Makes life more precious or something?

5. How do you feel about RFID chips and nanotechnologies?

I don't know enough about nanotechnology to have an intelligent opinion. About RFID, I'm torn. Half of me is thinking "fuck that invasive technology and all the authoritarian bullshit that it represents," while the other half is thinking "imagine all the cool stuff you could do with this." Tracking materials = good; tracking people = bad.

6. What is your most embarrassing moment?

Somewhere there's this video of me saying "I don't know. I guess I may have... run over... your face?"

7. Most interesting food you have ever tried?

If by "interesting," you mean "gross," then century eggs would have to top that list. It was a dare, you see. If you mean something strange that I'd actually try again, I thought squid in its own ink was surprisingly tasty.

8. RE: self-sustaining lifestyle in Idaho....Can you milk a cow?.

If we'd had cows, I'm sure it would have been one of the first things I learned. My dad knows how. He grew up on a farm and sometimes talks about having to "get up before dawn to milk the fucking cows." So, come to think of it, maybe that's why we didn't have any cows.

9. Do you believe in aliens?

The universe is big. There's life out there somewhere. Whether that life has managed to make it to Earth any time in the 4.5 billion years that it's been around, I don't know. But so far as the whole popular conception of aliens as these little gray men who travel across vast stretches of space just to abduct us and probe our nether regions? I'm skeptical. It would be flattering if we were really so important, but I don't think that it's a coincidence that the "night visitor" type of alien abduction experience bears a striking similarity to sleep paralysis. Rather than an old hag or a demon sitting on your chest or an incubus/succubus, we have a new mythology to impose upon this quirk of human biology. The other type of abduction story, the "strange lights on the lonely highway" kind, bears a striking similarity to the stories that I would make up as a kid to get attention. There's always one guy at the bar who has a ton of those.

10. Do you watch TV? If so, what is your favorite show?

I don't have a TV, but I'll occasionally get shows from Netflix or the internet. I haven't seen many new shows, but I still think that Twin Peaks has yet to be matched.

@canadienne
What advise do you have for somebody who's wasted all of their potential in a line of work that means absolutely nothing to anyone... and is doomed to idolize scientists and engineers?

So "advise" is some sort of wacky Canadian spelling of advice, right? I remember this...

But seriously, I mean seriously seriously? You're never locked into anything. If you feel like you've wasted your potential in one line of work, find another one. Easy for me to say, I suppose. But seriously, don't underestimate your potential. On the other hand, you can just embrace the irrelevance of your job and put your energies into other things. When i was your age (jesus, am I really old enough to say that?), I spent a year basically not caring (and not stressing) about my job because it was pretty apparent that no one else really cared about the project that I was working on anyway. And it was really liberating. It was one of the most interesting and creative years of my life. I made music. I took lots of photos. I painted things. I applied to grad school. And all of this was fueled by the realization that my job wasn't nearly as important to my life as I'd once thought it was. Maybe this is a pretty terrible plan to recommend, but it worked for me. If your job is a bad thing, find a way to make it a good thing.

You've built up such a good rapport that you can run over somebody's face and not have anyone think any less of you. In fact, you're almost MORE likable... like when people get all OMG! when their favorite celebrity stumbles and makes a goofy face.

Wow - maybe my political career's not doomed after all!

@User1
In regards to the urban explorers, looks like those guys are from the UK. Pretty freaking impressive getting info to some of the places they've been. They do give people an option to submit a request for info to the places they've been.

Stoop is from the UK, but dsankt is an Aussie, I think. They both get around all over the place. That sounds like an amazing life, being the globe-trotting urban infiltrator. On the other hand, I think that the most interesting exploration is the kind you do in a place you think you already know, making the familiar unfamiliar once again. There's something pretty profound about the experience of revealing what's always been there, just beneath the surface.

In regards to sustainable energy, have you've been following anything on generating biodiesel from algae? Algae will save the world! Don't you read?

I sure hope so. I mean, It sounds exciting, but until they've got a working algae farm, it's just another press release. The project that I'm working on only deals with land-based sources, because impacts on marine ecosystems are much harder to predict, but I'm sure algae farms are going to have some unintended consequences of their own.

If you could have another sign in name, what would it be? Nathan the face destroyer sounds cool! I'd be scared of you!

PAM

Speaking of scared, are you going to follow PC's footsteps and develop a scary attitude too? Are you going to crash after this high like he did?

Oh, come on, he pushed gangsta haiku to the limits of the art form. Given how much I've been writing here, maybe I should just start working on a goddamned novel.

Have you gotten over getting your bike jacked yet? I know I would be bitter towards peeps for years to come!

I'm more careful about locking up, but I mean, these counterfactual questions are pretty silly. If my bike hadn't been jacked, my life would be completely different now, and none on the good or bad things that have happened to me since then would have happened. So do I take what I've got, or go with door number 2? I think I'll make do with the Centurion until I can afford another fancy bike.

And what is your favorite color?

invisible

@la duderina

GTFO!

Can you break dance?

No, but I can break bones. While dancing.

If you could have been born in another time period, which would you choose?

The one where humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time.

Can you play any instruments?

I'm a nerd; I play the laptop, which is to say I kinda make music on the computer every once in a while.

I also took West African drumming lessons for a year, but it's been a long time since I hung out at a drum circle.

How do you rock that blazer so well?

I think I must have some kind of old man gene.



nathansnider
05.10.09 - 10:59 pm

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It isn't going to kill us if oil gets scarce and expensive; I mean, we don't drink the stuff, do we?

No, but how do you think we get the stuff we DO drink?

Oil gets us everything we have. If we run out of oil abruptly, a vast majority of our population WILL die, if you ask me, simply because they won't have access to food and water.

The only people who will survive are the Amish.

I think that nanotechnologies are going to fix everything though. Apparently they will eat up all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere AND you can make anything out of nothing with them.

Star Trek IS the future my friends!


p.s. I love your answers! they are awesome and fun to read.



la duderina
05.10.09 - 11:35 pm

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Ah, now that my week is finally over, we can get back to the business at hand: arguing about non bike-related things.

No, but how do you think we get the stuff we DO drink?

Like diesel fuel?

So sure, for example, the State Water Project is the largest single consumer of electricity in California (because it takes a lot of energy to make rivers flow uphill), but most of that electricity comes from coal, which we're not going to run out of any time soon. (Of course, if we want a snowpack that will keep delivering reliable water supplies throughout the year, we and the rest of the world will have to replace those coal-burning plants with carbon-neutral sources long before coal gets scarce, but that's a separate issue.) Anyway, the point is, we don't necessarily rely on oil to get our water to us. Our Tecate and our Joose, yes; our water, no.

Oil gets us everything we have. If we run out of oil abruptly, a vast majority of our population WILL die, if you ask me, simply because they won't have access to food and water.

But I don't think that we are going to run out of oil abruptly. We may have stopped discovering new sources at a rate that will keep up with increasing demand, but that's a different kind of "running out" than just waking up one day and finding that there's no more oil. As oil supplies dwindle, it's gradually going to get more expensive. Meanwhile, renewable energy sources are getting cheaper. At some point, oil will be more expensive than the competing options, and it will make sense to switch.

The questions are how quickly that "switch" can happen, what the price will be when it finally does, and how much of a crunch that will put on the world's poor. I don't know the answers to those questions, but there's so much work going into alternative energies right now that I doubt we'll be seeing widespread war, famine, pestilence etc. on account of peak oil.

I think that nanotechnologies are going to fix everything though. Apparently they will eat up all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere AND you can make anything out of nothing with them.

But the grey goo! The grey goo will get us all!

p.s. I love your answers! they are awesome and fun to read.

Thanks! I wonder how many people actually had the patience to read them all. I think I need this tiny little reply box to keep my posts down to a reasonable length. Typing stuff up offline in Notepad is a great way to lose all sense of proportion.

Also: GTFO!
(how long do we have to keep telling you that, anyway?)



nathansnider
05.12.09 - 6:30 pm

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Just wanted to say thanks for your response!
I do try to keep that mentality... since I'm a little bit stuck in terms of employment options (work visa technicalities, shitty economy, etc.). I think that my life outside of work is pretty damn awesome, and I feel lucky. So yeah! I guess I should keep doing what I can in my spare time, and stop stressing about underachieving at the moment. Thanks for the words of inspiration. You're tops.



canadienne
05.12.09 - 10:56 pm

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