Progress should have stopped

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments.  Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man.  And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became.  Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others.  Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. 

Elizabeth West

From today’s news

If a proposed bill becomes law in New Jersey, bicyclists will have to pay to register bikes or face a fine.

The bill, introduced by … New Jersey assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker, requires owners to register bikes with the Motor Vehicle Commission for $10 dollars a piece or face fines up to $100.

John Boyle with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia is against the proposed bill.

CBS Philadelphia

Any guesses as to the party affiliation of Cleopatra Tucker?

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. 

Christopher Morley

Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion.  Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers.  Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville.  Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.

P.J. O'Rourke