SHARE STORY A 1962 356 B 2000 GS Carrera 2 Cabriolet and a 1958 356 A 1600 Super Speedster in Switzerland. Porsche
“What Jesus blatantly fails to appreciate is that it’s the meek who are the problem.” John Cleese, in
Life of Brian
I have no idea why I like to drive. Or, more passionately, ride motorcycles. Oh, I get the whole freedom thing, the ability to go where I want when I want. But why cars and motorcycles? Why not bicycles or airplanes?
Both would seem to offer just as much freedom, more than enough adventure and, for those who think the love of motorcycling is all adrenaline rush and cheating of death, the last time I looked, mountain biking seems to offer its fair share of spills and broken limbs.
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By early 1967, just months after Ronald Reagan’s election as governor, James Q. Wilson had already tired of East-Coasters’ new favorite pastime, “Explaining California.” So the California-born Harvard professor penned a firsthand account of growing up in Long Beach, “to try to explain what it was like at least in general terms, and how what it was like is relevant to what is happening there today.” As Wilson explained in “A Guide to Reagan Country,” Reaganism reflected a southern Californian individualism focused not on changing the world but on improving your own small part of it your home, your yard, and, before you were old enough for any of that, your car.
Moving to the rhythm: Classical music and how we drive to it
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Moving to the rhythm: Classical music and how we drive to itBy Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times
Last Updated: Jan 14, 2021, 07:15 PM IST
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For a series of conversations about classical music with non musicians, I am swapping songs: exchanging pieces with my interlocutors to spark ideas about how their areas of expertise might relate to organized sound.
Matthew Crawford is a writer, philosopher and mechanic. His latest book, Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road , examines the social dimension of driving. For our chat, I chose the third movement of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. Crawford selected a recording of the great guitarist Andrés Segovia playing the Allemande from Bach’s Lute Suite in E minor. These are edited excerpts from the interview.
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The pandemic lockdowns have reduced CO2 emissions and given us more room to walk, bike, and for those of us able to go outdoors breathe. For speed freaks, though, this morbidly idyllic state of affairs immediately presented a different kind of open space. Almost as soon as California issued the first stay-at-home order in the country on March 19, super speeders took to the roads. The Highway Patrol issued 87 percent more citations for triple-digit speeds in the thirty days following the order. The same insanity followed lockdowns across the country. Overall, traffic fatalities jumped 75 percent per mile driven. Somewhat unbelievably to those who have reacted to Covid with panic, anguish, depression, and anger, three new cross-country records known colloquially as Cannonball Runs have been set in quick succession since March. A team of three drivers holds the current record: twenty-five hours and thirty-nine minutes from Manhattan to LA at an average speed of 110 miles