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Your hight, as an advantage or disadvantage, must be relative also to the bike parts which you use; how well do they fit? I'm interested in the considerations involved when somebody goes to build a frame? What or whos bodyily structures do frame or even parts manufactures consider? Can anyone answer this for me? Would 28" wheels be better for larger individuals?

Because at the time I became a senior member there was a large thread entitled, "members that are really annoying" or something like that - it just seemed like a place to complain and put down all the "normal" members, some of whom were my friends. Fair enough if people want to put down others. Objectively nothing right or wrong in it but it just wasn't for me because I don't really like systematic put downs. I've given up or moved away from friends in my more immediate environment for the same reasons. It was a shame in a way because I found the SMs to be enjoyable individuals and I'm guessing a lot of them only, or mostly, post in their private forum, so in a sense I'm missing out. As are the rest of you, if in fact I'm actually correct about that?

I never noticed to be honest. Pink's not too bad. Isn't it the official gay colour? Is it a meterosexual fashion thing?

Pink? I don't get it?

6'5" Am I the best?

Looks very impressive Jonny. Loving some of your approaches. As somebody else said, where nick goes up a rail, and you're kind've filming through the rail was mint. Silky editing also. Look forward to the dvd.

I've done coke, not a hugh deal though as it's never really appealed. I prefer psychedelics. Especially though because of its cost in relation to the enjoymant factor. Its a drug I'm more than happy to turn down even when offered for free. It's very stimulating. You feel physically very nice, in your head too. Sex is better (some poor chap injected his penis with cocaine - no lie, it fell off). It makes you more social. You can think faster with more confidence. It can make you arrogant as it's made me on occasions; a quality I don't really appreciate and certainly regret the next day. It can make you aggresive. It's very mourish and until the next day, you're probably going to want more and more, even when its run out. I know people who've spent a lot of money in a night because they wanted or needed to keep going. All of this is relative to individual character and quantity comsumed of course. My friends have told me stories of friends who have themselves very unhappy on the stuff. Paranoia is a typical result of too much cocaine. Of course it can be very addictive if you do it lots of it.

I see what you're saying but I'd have to disagree. I don't think the part of the experience where you get mashed negates the other potential aspect of the drug. When I've ingested lsd, I have been able to think about and understand things both intellectualy and emotionally that before I could not get my head round. I see this as an improvement, in some sense, to my mind and it's abilities. This is of course in the seperate bits to when I'm giggling intensly and going round in loops. But even there, there's some insight to be found. A more complicated way of explaining this is to consider a theory regarding the way in which information increases in society from the interaction between individuals and individuals and their surroundings , and in extension, between individuals and individuals and their surroundings when one of them involved is using lsd. Information increases at its fastest rate when individuals are exposed to information that is new. Thus if somebody lives in a strict routine, say the same job, in the same town, for the entirety of their life, in some sense, they are going to be quite limited. Their nervous system will be quite limited. In contrast, somebody who moves around the place, chopping and changing jobs of different kind should have a broader nervous system in regards to information and experience. Imagine an extreme with someone who spends their life in a white room, and somebody who travels the world their entire life. You can extend this idea into everything; the type of tv you watch, the books you read, the people you spend time with, the music you listen to etc. etc. So when on acid, you are usually exposed to information of a VERY different kind; "information is difference, that makes a difference". This is a learning experience, even when in the throes of lsd confusion. If somebody goes to trek to the north pole, they expose themselves to extremely harsh conditions, regarding climate, solitude perhaps, lacking in food, frostbite etc. etc. This person after their experience will probably be quite different. They will have learnt something from putting themselves into such a different situation. This is one way that lsd can function. It is an exageration of the usual methods in which we learn through different experience of information. The only difficulty arises when you view the experience through fear tinted glasses. Can't say anymore I'm afraid. Girlfriend says "no forum".

It does totally depend on how you use it. It can be just a lot of fun, but additionally, it can be used to think about things from a different perspective. It's like the difference between doing it in the comfort of your living room, and doing it in the co-op; each one influences the experience. It's all relative, it's use is not limited to one thing, it's results are not one limited to one thing. It's all down to approach and circumstances. One of the results of certain approaches and circmstances is mind expansion. It also depends on what consider mind explansion to mean. I think being of a philosophical disposition is quite important, if you want to head in the directino of what most people would prbably consider a "good" trip.

So drugs are cheating? Can you point me in the direction of the rules of life then? It would seem I've lived an unfortunate existence, as I've never come across any. Might make things a bit easier I practise buddhism and I have read the precept on not doing drugs. This is only advice however, although I guess that depends somewhat on the school of buddhism. I'm also generally not willing to give myself completely to idea without working it out for myself. Not that I'm saying you are. Buddhism also suggests thinking for yourself, something I think, or hope that I am doing, at least to some degree in deciding not to rigidly follow buddhist ideas. I do find the practise of buddhism to be excellent though. It makes a lot of sense to me. Buddhism is not infallible though, it can get it wrong. I have used psychedelic drugs that can give, and have given me mini satori experiences. This in a world that seeminlgy tries to supress my wonder can be an amazing reminder of how intersting existence is. However, it doesn't seem to be as sustainable as regular slow developing, sitting, yoga or tantra. This is why I practise those alongside my drug use. Other people though have had experiences using drugs like lsd, only once, with life long changes that they consider to be extremely positive. Psychedelic means mind expanding or mind manifesting. It's applied to drugs such as mushrooms, lsd and peyote. Originally it was thought that such drugs mimicked psychosis, but through experimentation, such ideas were dropped. Instead of inhibiting perception or confusing it, they actually increased it in some form. People through the use of psychedelics, especially lsd the most potent of all, have been able to alter their nervous systems for the better (for the worse if not used in a certain way). It was used effectively, before it was irrationally (my opinion) criminalised for even scientific usage, on treating depressives, schizophrenics, neurotics and other mental health condintions. So in actual fact, you can end up a stronger person because are offered an alternative perception that elightens you to a different way of viewing things. The surprise of a wildly different, expanded perception, that is far more positive, to you, than your general perception can have a powerful sticking effect, whereas slow affecting therapies may not. And wouldn't you want to escape that was highly displeasing to you? It was also used on prisoners in america which altered, in the experiment group, a usual reoffending rate from 90 something % (if i remember correctly; something anyway) to something well into the other end of the spectrum. Does that not say something positive to you? It does to me. Also lsd was used to alter the sexuality of a man, whom wanted his sexuality altered. It is believed that lsd can reproduce imprint vulnerability (that which probably, at the very least influences sexualiy). This means we can probably alter the fundamental characterstics of ourselves. Imprint systems or models at a deeper point in our understanding. In other words, make ourselves more intelligent. We coule reimprint a nervous system that better understans maths, or art, or whatever. I suspect this will scare people though. Depends if you see yourself as a static thing or a process. I suspect the latter. When I smoke weed or do lsd, although there are some intelligence decreases in regads to memory and accuracy, there are increases in understanding, creativity, approach. Sometimes, i'll undersatnd something in a book in an instant whilst stoned that I couldn't comprehend whilst soba. The best analogy I can think of in regards to smoking or lsd is that, being soba is like a sharp triangle with a thin base (very pointy and skinny), but being stoned is a wide based triangle that's not so sharp (not so pointy and fat). The wider base represents an increase in ability types(creativity etc.), whereas the point represents the a decreased ability in the application of those ablities. Pros and cons, relative to how the individual percieves certain values. I highly value the character improvements from smoking and lsd. I need to stop typing I do agree with you on the power of the nervous system to affect health. I suspect that a good deal of that is related to mental health and perception. I read about a chap who got an incurrable disease. He was the first to survive it, without medical help. just lots of Vit C and the complete confidence that he could overcome it. I think we have so much more potential than we are aware of. You seem like an interesting individual to me. If you're the reading type, check out some Robert Anton Wilson. He will expand your mind, but just with his words

I was refering to general semantics, or eastern philosophy. A point worth mentioning with all these words flying around, especially in regards to the relativity that most people in this post seem to be ignorant to. "the menu is not the food" The word is not the thing it points to, it only points to the thing it points to. Basically try looking at these words whilst ignoring their meaning and just seeing shapes. Or listen to someone speaking your own language and only hear sounds. It's very difficult to seperate the shared and subjective associations you attach to your surroundings and hear or see things as they are. I'm not stoned at this point, nor was I yesterday However, as today is my day off college I plan to have a smoke, then indulge in some hedonistic massage and sex with my girlfriend. The latter two being quite a bit better under the influence of cannabis This is my strange attempt to antagonise you anti-druggies. You're potentially missing a lot of fun. I'm feeling a bit frustrated with people basically saying that, what I know to be good for me, is not. That the drugs I choose to do, I should risk imprisonment for, even though, at present, they enrich my life. Maybe though, I've got it wrong, and I'm just like you lot? that I should follow your ideas of good and bad, right and wrong? Is that what you all think? And that you can't see the paralells between trials and drugs and makes me think you are suffering from the type of denial that we all do in various palces of our lifes. Props to support our perceptions. Enjoy your seriousness you squares

That image is quite amusing. I suspect you're going to be policed though

Both very good. Music selection, riding and editing all good in my eyes. Well done

That's not impartial drug advice, that's drug spin.

Nothing is ever bad in itself. The word "bad" is an abstract concept. There is no objective place for such a word. Can you see the word "bad" anywhere? I certainly can't. It's meaning is always relative to the serperate individual/s using it. Thus you cannot say cannabis is bad, per se. Cannabis is cannabis, although it's not even cannabis, if you understand what I mean by that; "the map is not the territory". Science can never objectively say anything is "bad". All it can do is record something and on the basis of that recording make predictions. So it can say "if you smoke cannabis, based on our recordings, we predict that you are likely (you might not regarding certain things) to suffer from shortness of breath, lung cancer, depression or whatever". It cannot say that because of such a prediction, smoking is competely bad for you. When something can be said to be bad is when an individual subjectively decides that such a thing, whatever that thing may be, is "bad" for them. Paradoxically, regarding aristitilion logic, this means something can be bad and not bad at the same time, relative to the individuals who are deciding their value placements on that something. Any sociologist that decides through studying certain trends of society that something is bad, is refering to some general time/place, relativistic, probably socially conditioned, idea on what constitutes as bad. Just as general perceptual norms regarding, say, capital punishment one hundred years ago were different to now, so is exactly what you consider bad, in regards to drug use, different from the past and will be different from the future. Objectively speaking, drugs are neither good nor bad. They are quite simply what we make of them. I find them to be a positive thing for myself, relative to approaches in usage. I can class them as bad at times. They may make me slightly less fit, but relative to their advantages that is not a bad thing, in my opinion. Especially seeing as it motivates me to exercise. I may be risking cancer, I may not. I think the risk is worth it, thus, weed is good for me. I wonder if those of you that are saying about health and the future are driving cars around? That's ceratinly not good for our future. As in, potentially, the entirety of our human future. And also, laws don't balance anything in my experience. I don't know anyone who hasn't done a drug purely based on the law. I know people that won't do drugs based on the scare mungering, ignorance and lies that revolve around drug use. But when peeople are arrested because they made a choice that really, in most cases, only affects them, that's when I percieve a problem. The majority of people i know would have, in regards to what they consider, a lot more difficulty with prison or a criminal record than they do using drugs that the enjoy using; that they consider "good". I'm about to break the law, in about 10 minutes when I consume some peyote. Would you like me to go to prison? Will that balance things out for you? I can tell you now that would mess me up, my mum and my friends a whole lot more than the subjective, positive spiritual experience, i'm about to go through.

You can't really say smoking weed is bad in itself. You forget relativity. You can say, smoking CAN be bad for you, if perhaps, you have a gentic or developed disposition that might cause mental problems or unhappiness through becoming lazy or whatever. If you as an indivudal even care about that. Personally I think the bad can be good in regards to learning. I don't want a cotton wool existence. However, being that the vast majority of people that smoke don't have a problem with the effects upon themselves, which can actually be very positive - cannabis to me, is a mind expanding substance, in stark contrast to the mind contraction of alcohol, our blessed legal substance - you can also say it's good. Cannabis should be the choice of the individual to mess up their life if in fact it even does? After all, what affects somebody more, when cannabis has no negative effects upon them; having no negative effects, or being given a criminal record? Hmmm. Also, I could say that hurting yourself physically is ABSOLUTELY bad for you, and thus create a law stopping you from riding trials because of the inherent dangers. Isn't that your choice to make, not somebody elses? Isn't the risk of hurt in the sense it makes the sport exciting? Isn't not knowing what's going to happen in your life what massively contributes to making it interesting? Anyway, I think laws about drugs should be extended to include the legalising of all. Imprinsoning people has a far worse effect on their being then letting them do drugs, in general, and in my opinion. If I were to try and ride my bike for 12 hours a day that would f**k me up. Yes I do smoke cannabis, and yes I thuroughly enjoy it. Yes it has f**ked me up in a way i disliked, but that was because i was already depressed and I did it too much. Relativity of the individual! Different circumstances mean different things to different behaviours. Cannabis can be bad (regarding to someones unhappiness - surely thats what we need to consider in "good/bad" designation?), statistically, for the minority, but the mnjority do it with no issue. In charateristic fashion, I just burnt my pizza whilst responding to this post. One annoyingly funny trait of smoking weed. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to ingest some peyote for a native american-esque psychedelic spiritual experience. Squares.

To paraphrase Mark - oh, the irony.

But the "civilised" world as you put it, did not go to war with iraq in regards to sadams human rights abuses. As I previously said, the UK and US supported Sadam quite happily whilst he was harming his own people and others as long as he did what he was told, in what mattered to us, or more accurately, our government. Fuss was made about the human rights aspect of sadam, only when he no longer comformed to our wishes. Fuss did not arise because of human rights abuses in themselves; they are just a convenient excuse for something else. Have you forgotten the wars pretext? That Sadam apparantly had weapons of mass destruction. Human rights absuses were at the very most, an adjunct; by themselves they would not have moved the "coalition" into the action they took. Also it appears that WMDs, the main reason for an iraqi invasion, were a complete fabrication. An additional consideration was the massive amounts of clandestine US and UK air bombings in the no fly zone in Iraq before the invasion. Something which was, I think, illegal but more importantly a blatant provocation looking for a reaction from sadam for the reasons of helping justify a future invasion. Is it civilized, in consideration to your meaning of the word, for countries to fake a reason for invading a country, until that reason is found to be fraudulant, only for them to replace that reason, falsely, with a humanitarian one? Do you find it difficult to acccept an idea that our country, our government might actually be concerned with very different things to that which they claim to be?

I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic?

Well, that's relative. I obviously thought there was a need. I also don't find the comparism boring, quite the opposite. Superb counter arguement though You nearly made me change my mind.

The point is, we never see the roles reversed, and everyone seems to hold the impression, that blair and bush mean well even if they do something "bad", but if saddam does something along the same lines, he's evil. There's a hugh amount of blindsightedness that arrives from a biased media that claim to be impartial and people relying on perceptual props for a type of security. Why is it in a system that espouses and is proud of its version of justice we don't see everybody suffering to that justice in the same way? Why are blair and bush not on trial for war crimes if Sadam is? Why is everyone quick to demonise sadam and his motivations (not just his actions) but not blair and bush? I'm not saying how we should react to someone for doing something that we consider bad, all I'm trying to point out is the difference in reaction that arises in most people in regards to two actions, of the same kind, done by two people, seperated only by constructed labels. Why are we not talking about all the things that america is upto? It's plans of hegemony which are even evident in declassified america government documents. I'll even copy one down for you. This is by George Kennan, ironically a "left wing" or "dove" head of the state department in the late 40's. You only have to look at alternative sources of media, past or present, or a bit more deeply into the mainstream media to know this is still the case in some sense; "we have about 50% of the worlds wealth but only about 6.3% of its population... in this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimenality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immeadiate national objectives... We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, tha raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better" This sort of infomation spun my head a fair bit , when I used to view the world from a position that we (the west, that typical division we use to consciencely or unconsciencely seperate the "good" or "better" from the "bad" or "worse") were always intending to be good even if our actions were seeminly bad. The greater good and all that. I don't really think that anymore.

I really don't believe that. But you never know I guess.

Also. I think the hanging does nothing to change what has happened. The application of "justice" and it's meaning in the present context seems a bit warped to me. What the hanging really does, to the benefit of western hegemony, is to make the statement, "do what we want or suffer the consequences". Sadam rebelled, his people got screwed, he got screwed.

Apart from, mostly american, but additionally european governments like the uks and frances, regarding their actions in latin america, aisa, the midle east, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Sadam isn't a nice person but his actions, in comparism to governments of other countries, like our own, are not so bad. We go in for weapons sales in support of genocide, destabilisation of other countries, to the detrament of the majority of those countries, for our own economic benefit, the installation of dictatorship under the guise of democracy etc. etc. etc. etc. Did you know that america gave the impression to Sadam, that they would back his actions in Kuwait? That it was a setup, a precursor for the justification of an invasion, regarding the control of oil. And also, America and the UK used to be best of pals with Sadam, using him as an arms sales man to other midle eastern countries? Even whilst he was involved in the activities that he's now being held accountable for. It was only after he became a bit rougish, and not so submissive to external control that he became demonised, through a subservient western media. There's also the UN security council sactions of iraq after the gulf war, that stopped vital supplies such as food and medicene getting into the country. This resulted in the deaths of about 100 000 children between 1992-98 according to UNICEF. These sactions caused two high UN officials to resign. An irish chap called Dennis Halliday and some other person with a name i forget. This was, of course, just after the invading forces had wiped out the Iraqi infrastructure. Desptie the picture that ws painted of Iraq, they were doing pretty well, in regards to such things as health. education and standard of living before the gulf war. There's a completely different picture of the world away from the corporate driven mainstream medias drawing. I wouldn't personally be so trusting of somebodies world perception when they have something to gain or maintain from the status quo, as the media, and government do.