The Tricycle MOVED June 1, 2006March 4, 2017 WE’RE NUMBER ONE! Michael Rutkaus: ‘Consumer Reports has Honest Tea Highest Rated of all teas for Lemon iced tea and second after Arizona for green iced tea (July, pages 18-19). I always get it when it is available, love the low calories.’ ☞ My current favorite is the Mint White Tea. But the whole line seems to be taking off. In the New York market, for example, sales are up more than 100% over last year. Full disclosure to newcomers: Honest Tea is a private company, founded by a Yale B-School Professor and one of his former students. If you drink enough of it, I will get rich and, by reducing your antioxidants, you will live forever. (Or at least have a nice light caffeine buzz.) Mint White Tea – grown from the same plant as black and green tea, but picked at a “youthful” stage. White tea delivers the same potent antioxidants, but less caffeine than other teas. This season, white is the new black and green. Our Mint White Tea is a delicate organic white tea blended with organic spearmint and a touch of organic vanilla. Certified organic by Pennsylvania Certified Organic. DO CHICKENS HAVE EAR DRUMS? Dan Nachbar: ‘I think you’ve missed the point on the whole chicken/egg thing. It is not actually a question at all, but rather a pithy way to capture the difference in beliefs held by creationists and evolutionists. Creationists will answer ‘chicken’; evolutionist will answer ‘egg.’ Other seeming ‘odd’ questions are also terse statements of much deeper issues. For instance, ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ poses the question of whether God (and Heaven) have a physical manifestation measurable in our universe. As for trees falling in the woods, the deeper issue is whether one can/must consider things in the universe that are completely outside of human perception and knowledge. If you are a believer in the modern scientific method, then the ‘answer,’ painful as it may seem at first, has been pretty well established as ‘The tree makes no noise.” Joel Grow: ‘I read some physicist a while back who opined that a tree disturbs the air if it falls, but that this disturbance only registers as noise when and if it strikes an eardrum. So, if no body, and no eardrum, is present, it isn’t noise.’ ☞ Oh, my. I guess it depends on how you define noise. Or light. Or smell. If noise is something that is heard, then: no ears, no hears. If noise is something you’d hear if you were there, then falling trees make noise. Or are there two kinds of falling trees: the ones that fall silently and the ones that fall with a crash? Two kinds of roses? The ones you can smell and the ones that (because you’ve run inside to get a beer) you can’t? THE REPUBLICAN COURT From the Associated Press: WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote. In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs. Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers. The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court’s shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the arrival of Alito. . . . THE TRICYCLE MOVED Paul: ‘Here’s a motor I can imagine on three-wheeled bikes in retirement villages all over Florida. It won’t pull an airplane, but it will help Mom and Pop get the groceries when they don’t have a car.’ ☞ Cool! It’s apparently a front wheel that you can retrofit to your existing bike. Go 20 mph, 200-mile range, low emissions, $399 when it starts shipping (they say) next year.