I do not write at Starbucks, or any other coffee shops, nor do I write under the influence of absinthe. As most writers do one or the other or both of these things, I feel it can only lead to conventional expression and I want no part of that for the obvious reason — it is always wrong. They, the conventional people, say we should never use absolute terms like “always” so, with that contradiction, you can see my motivation for leaning almost always perpendicular towards the unconventional.
I do not believe Aspen’s rush hours are caused by too many cars on the road. It is gravity that is the simple cause. Have any of the dozens of traffic consultants hired by the city and the county ever considered this? Yes, I know, that is a dumb question.
A simple geological survey of the Entrance to Aspen at the west edge of town will confirm that there exists a high point at the roundabout at the intersection of Maroon and Castle Creek roads with Highway 82. From roughly the airport to this point the grade is uphill, whereas from the traffic circle eastward to Paepcke Park there is a drop in altitude.
After noting this, I observed the daily traffic flows. In the mornings, heavy traffic chugalugs uphill from the airport until it gets to the roundabout. After it passes this landmark, aided by gravity, it begins to roll with less resistance into downtown. Of course, the reverse effect occurs during the evening rush hour. Cars labor up Main Street creating a traffic jam until about the Hickory House where things level out. After cars get to the roundabout, they begin to move easily downhill to the airport and beyond.
Understanding this, it is easy to see why buses can never solve our transportation “problem.” Buses weighed down with passengers perform terribly against the incessant force of gravity. The effect on bicycles is more pronounced. Not even pedestrians are immune. For these reasons, and since we can’t level the valley floor, there is no solution to our traffic problem. Looking at this positively, it is one less thing to worry about.
Even on the global level, things are not dire. As the global warming hoax unravels before our eyes, traffic can be seen in a new light: It cannot be a cause of an environmental crisis that doesn’t exist. At worst it is a time waster, but even that is ameliorated significantly when we are at least waiting it out behind the wheels of large, comfortable modern SUVs with premium sound systems.
It is a wonder that anyone ever worried about the effects of burning oil. A rudimentary understanding of science includes the principle of conservation of matter. What this basically says is that everything we have on Earth now will always be here, even if it changes form. We live in a closed system. Nothing can escape the boundary of our atmosphere. Oil is no exception.
It is of nothing that we have burned approximately 150 billion tons of oil throughout history. Obviously air can’t hold up exhaust smoke weighing that much. It all eventually settles back on the ground and seeps back into the Earth to eventually form new pools underground so that we can drill for it again and again. It is why the oft-predicted oil shortage has never materialized even though we are burning more oil than ever before. This process is precisely why real scientists coined the axiom, “Time heals all wounds.”
Interestingly enough, this is directly related to another hot topic of our times that people seem to be split on. Think about this: If microscopic smoke particles (i.e. carbon emissions) from your exhaust pipe cannot sneak past our exosphere, how could a spaceship, no matter how light, escape from this impenetrable cover? And, if it did, would everything else here, including our oxygen, be sucked into space out of the hole it makes? Thankfully, this is not possible. We need no further proof that man has never set foot on the moon.
Now consider that the only absolute “proof” we have that the world is a sphere is from pictures supposedly taken from the moon. But since, as we have just established, man could not possibly have ever been on the moon, the pictures we have all seen since grade school are obviously fake. Based on observing eclipses and such, the best we can say is that Earth is probably a disc.
The cool thing about this discussion is that it demonstrates just how intricately science links things together, from our local traffic jams to how we can get fooled if we do not educate ourselves about the reality of so-called “space travel.” All of this leaves little doubt that the world is flat. Some will believe and some won’t. This is what we are up against.
Roger Marolt knows that amidst billions of opinions there are still absolute truths. Email at roger@maroltllp.com.