STUFFE

CYCLING HISTORY
Dave Moulton has another great historical piece on his blog, this time about the Campagnolo Cambio Corsa derailleur system. I really enjoy Dave's pieces on the history of bicycles, and this is another great example - look at the way the system solved the problem of tensioning the chain - fascinating stuff.

VISUALISATION
From Flowing Data, a real time visulaisation of Twitter conversation.

Add another piece to the ever-growing list of twitter visualisations. What makes Moritz Stefaner's Revisit different is that it focuses on the conversational threads between Twitter users over time. Tweets (symbolized by authors' avatars) are stacked vertically and organized by time horizontally. Tweets that have more attention via @mentions are closer to the middle.

It's a lovely piece of work.

MURDER MOST FOUL
Carlton Reid has put a copy of J.S. Dean's 1947 work on road safety, "Murder Most Foul" on Issuu. Dean argued that the responsibility for avoiding road "accidents" should lie largely with the motorist.

".... In the first place this "education" is the worst possible training for the children as the drivers of the future since it teaches them to believe that the driver is the master of the road and that the only role for the other road-users, including the youngest children and the oldest and most infirm persons, is to keep out of his way and that if they are killed or maimed through not doing so this is something they deserve..."

You only need to see the DoT's "Tales of the Road" campaigns to see that we're still following the same path Dean warned us about over 70 years ago.

ELECTION
Are you fed up of it yet?

If you're a cyclist, please consider joining CTC's "Vote Bike" campaign. This urges your political candidates to state clearly where they stand on six key cycling issues. If you're anything like most of us, this won't be the sole basis for awarding your vote, but you can help move cycling up the transport agenda, and hopefully have a clearer view of where your candidates stand.

The CTC "Vote Bike" page will provide a form letter to send/email to your candidates, which you can personalise. The letter asks them to state their position on the six issues. Once your candidate replies, CTC will tabulate their answers to help you, and other cyclists know where they stand on the issues.