One small activity that has been shown to help stave off age-related dementia is to change up your normal driving routes regularly.
"Best" is ill-defined. Some prefer fastest, some prefer shortest, some prefer simplest, some prefer least-traveled.
Changing your route frequently also thwarts potential assassins. Assassination and dementia are not a laughing matter.
I was running on a treadmill once on like the 35th floor and watched 6 helicopters take off from the roof of the UN doing that crazy mix-em-up thing. It was a day Bush was speaking.
3: An assassin with dementia could be a laughing matter.
"Best" is ill-defined. Some prefer fastest, some prefer shortest, some prefer simplest, some prefer least-traveled.
From the OP:
You may choose a longer route because it skips a terrible left turn, or it's prettier, or whatever; that's fine. But I don't understand how you can never think about it.
I was running on a treadmill
Terrible for dementia.
Anyway, I used to think a great deal about finding the best route. Then I realized that I was driving myself nuts over saving 45 seconds. After that, I found wisdom in not giving a shit.
Fussing about routes is a leading indicator for dementia.
I may already be demented. There's a route I take once a week, not because it is shortest but because it is most reliably free of traffic jams (this is during the rush hour). If I start out along that route, but planning to go somewhere else, I often forget (don't think) where I'm going and take my Tuesday night turn-off. It's very annoying.
The route that I take anywhere has usually evolved via a series of accidents involving the most mentally lazy possible variation from some route that I already knew. I'm like those turtles that, in the face of the fact that the channel across which they used to swim to their hatching grounds has turned into the Atlantic Ocean (as Africa and South America have separated), continue to swim across the whole thing because it's easier than thinking about it.
I spend something like 95% of my life in a circle with a radius of maybe four miles. It's very pathetic efficient.
I wish I worked in the same town that I lived in. But there's no way in hell I'd ever want to live in Heebie U town. It's the saddest town I've ever seen.
I used to vary my walk to the office to pass different fancy stores on the Upper East Side because their displays of luxury and beauty made a nice contrast to the air-conditioned hell of the learned professions. Also because I didn't want Ron Perelman's many bodyguards getting the idea that I was casing the Revlon building for a break.
I commute 120 miles or so a day (60 each way), and yeah, my route whether I take the train or drive is fairly meticulously thought out/evolved for a combination of speed and likelihood of delays. Closer to home, or when I used to live in Glasgow, I was/am much more the flâneur; taking random variations just in case I see some interesting shit.
Is it okay just to haphazardly drive different routes on different days, to get a feel for which you like best? Or do you demand that drivers who are experimenting in order to optomize their commutes pay careful attention to the clock and the odometer? Because people who demand that annoy me. Routes that are produce travel times within a few minutes of one another usually seem basically indistinguishable to me (on that axis).
12 gets it right, although I could probably tighten the radius by about 50%
optomize their commutes
I don't even see my commute.
Each driver is allowed to earn experimental driving over time, much like accruing vacation time. In Europe, though, you're entitled to it by virtue of being a citizen.
Don't let Urple intimidate you, Heebie. Continue to demand.
19: I wanted to live on a leafy, quiet street.
Of course I meant to post that on this thread. What do you mean? Einstein himself lived on a quiet, leafy street.
I do not understand people who have something interesting to post, and they don't pay attention to determining the correct thread.
Nice preëmptive defense. My work here is done sucks.
Leading indicator of assassination.
The trailing indicator of assassination isn't something to get into this early.
I'm not so bothered about the quickest routes to places, but I hate sitting in traffic.
You aren't sitting in traffic. You are traffic.
I would prefer it if none of you traveled back in time to assassinate Einstein during his commute.
Unless one of you is circa-'91 Linda Hamilton. Then we'll talk.
Einstein mostly walked, I think. Would he have gone down Mercer all the way to Olden, or turned on Springdale and cut across on one of the side streets? Which one? Do I even know the streets were the same back then? I suppose not. Easiest to catch him at afternoon tea at Fuld Hall.
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RT @thinkprogress: BREAKING: Rand Paul is being detained by TSA in Nashville (via @moirabagley) // this could be interesting.
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Is it me or is this hilarious?
The best route is the route I have to think the least about. This principle is generalizable to appliances, computer equipment and children.
36: And software. I'd still be using Wordstar if that were allowed.
I am very interested in my fellow car commuters hand gestures and also their sense of privacy. That is, I like to watch. The gesticulating as people have animated phone conversations. Also makeup application. The windows are transparent, but drivers act invisible.
Many people are terrified of getting lost, steer by landmarks, basically can't read maps.
Commuting Tricks of Iranian Nuclear Chemists.
Many people are terrified of getting lost, steer by landmarks, basically can't read maps.
I'm not lost! I'm exploring!
I'm always curious about the music people are listening to. I'm quite prone to tapping along, or singing in the car, and don't really care that I probably look glaikit. But when you see others around you, I always wonder what it is they are listening to. I expect 99.999% of the time the answer will be disappointing.
I haven't had a car commute since high school. Our public transit, while lovely, is organized in such a way that there aren't multiple decent ways to go inbound towards the city, and our workplaces are close enough to the transit stops that there aren't meaningful options at either end.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd make an easy target.
Dear Mineshaft, I desire heebie's approval, but fear that I do not always plan my driving in a way that would receive that approval. Am I doing something wrong?
99% of people in cars in Britain listen to local radio/radio 2. Boring and predictable. But traffic updates. Bet it's the same mutatis mutandis over there.
12 is me too right now! Except make that a radius of 1.5 mi. It's a small town and I don't have a car. You might think this would make me claustrophobic, but instead I kind of love it.
35: One imagines he was just doing his own bit of theater back to the security theater. "You have no right to see my identification!" or some shit. But I haven't any real clue.
Some dude I know on FB said that if an airline opted out of all the airport security measures (like making you show ID or having you walk through a metal detector) , he would only ever fly that airline, even if it meant they lost 2 or 3 planes a year. I truly, truly don't understand this at all. (And I don't believe him anyway, but.)
I was out with my kid the other day getting frozen yogurt, completely pointless pleasant pop in the background. Which music was suddenly transformed by the only other customer, a hot mom with her younger kid, singing along expressively in perfect harmony. So nice.
think the least
I claim this is exactly wrong. The physical appearance of much of the US is a blight because nobody looks around, and doesn't respond to visual cues when they do look around. Looking at the other drivers or the state of the road or the sky is feeble, but it's a step towards rather than away from remaining connected with the surrounding physical world.
46: I'm with your friend. Fuck the TSA.
...even if it meant they lost 2 or 3 planes a year.
Statistically speaking, I think you could fly Iran Air in a yarmulke and a Mossad badge for ID and be safer.
Of course, nobody is ever fooled by my Mossad ID badge. I forgot that Hebrew is written backward.
One imagines he was just doing his own bit of theater back to the security theater. "You have no right to see my identification!" or some shit.
"These aren't the Randroids you're looking for."
40, 44 - Radio 4. I had the kids convinced for years that the radio in the car could only get R4. My Tuesday evening drive is for most of the 6.30 comedy slot, so I'm either rolling my eyes at the unfunniness of it (Bleak Expectations? That thing about the newsagents?) or laughing dangerously.
I love the concept of libertarian death airways for so many reasons. Among them, news reports of another bomb explowing on LDA would be met with a collective, eh. Only the lowest grade of terrorist would even bother to take them on. You'd have bored high school kids from the suburbs forcing planes to land in North Korea.
Other reasons to love it: (a) fewer libertarians; (b) juicy tort lawsuits. This is such a great idea.
53. But, as we all know, you are part of the 1%.
46: Allowing for hyperbole, I'm down with this. I'd say, rather, that I'd be willing to give up TSA-style screening if we had to return to pre-TSA levels of airline crime.
48: Fuck the TSA, how many division do they have?
even if it meant they lost 2 or 3 planes a year.
If United lost 2-3 planes a year, then flying on United would be roughly as likely to kill you as driving the same distance, and rather less likely to leave you maimed but alive.
It was, maybe, six years or so after 9/11 before I took my first airline flight. I was astonished at what sheep Americans had turned into. I suddenly understood a lot about politics that had previously been opaque to me.
Politics is a small bag of peanuts?
The TSA is stupid, but the pre-TSA airline security system in the US was a poorly regulated joke. The most feasible better option to annoying lines and screening is an Israel style intense intelligence and profiling system, which would create a feeling of much greater freedom for most while being incredibly oppressive and rights-violative for a few. Such is the tradeoff.
The great thing is that IMX of the past ten years, once the sheepification passes a certain threshold, the lines move a lot faster despite all the rigmarole.
I think the conceit that they would lose 2-3 planes a year is excessive. Firstly, its simply not true that security theater adds any meaningful level of airline safety. Second, even in the 1970s, the golden age of airplane based terrorism, losses weren't that high.
If Bruce Schneier is right, even if there were no weapon-detection security, there would be no hijackings because (a) locked reinforced cockpit doors and (b) passengers now resist hijackers. I'm not sure what his prescriptions are on bomb-detection, though.
It was, maybe, six years or so after 9/11 before I took my first airline flight. I was astonished at what sheep Americans had turned into.
What are you going to do? Most people don't have the option to boycott airlines in protest; most air travel is for business.* And you obviously can't reason with the TSA on a case-by-case basis. And it's not as if either major party is willing to make a campaign issue out of this.
*I know plenty of people who've boycotted (or at least dramatically curtailed) recreational air travel in 'protest'. (I've cut back plenty myself. I'll gladly drive 15 hours before I'll get on a plane, if given the choice. And I like flying and hate driving. But I can't stand the TSA.)
Honestly, I'm always baffled as to why we and the terrorists all agree that they should only stick to airplanes.
I don't understand why they don't attack the huge lines of people waiting to get through security.
but the pre-TSA airline security system in the US was a poorly regulated joke.
Right. Just like the subway systems. And shopping malls.
You had to stand in lineand empty your pockets to get into a mall?
On the OP, you'd think a bicycle commute going diagonally across a grid would be a great way to explore the city, but this is made difficult by (a) highway-underpass choke points and to a lesser extent (b) one-way streets.
Weirdly, I am never in a security line for very long, and I fly in and out of Laguardia twice a month, minimum.
Dear Mineshaft, the woman in the next cubicle seems to be getting divorced, and is always having private conversations with the women in the office. Nothing has been officially said to me or the other man in the office. Should I keep acting as if everything is normal? Does that mean I should remain sitting in the next cubicle as she has these impassioned conversations with female co-workers and cries on the phone, or should I go find something to do somewhere else until she's done?
TSA rules led to the expensive step of X-raying checked baggage, which is a good idea.
The shoe removal and small volumes of liquid rules, which are the biggest irritants, are idiotic.
66. Spanish, British, and Indonesian travelers would disagree.
What fraction of Americans fly in a given year? There's a link here claiming 48% in 2009. Economy's gotten worse since then. For people who fly 0-1 times per year, all of these are basically symbolic nonissues.
I think that generally the move to the TSA from the pre-9/11 system was a good idea, which only makes sense if you take a close look at how bad the pre-9/11 system was (worst combination of regulation by panic and implementation by cost-cutting airlines). I do think that some of the promise of the TSA was that you'd get better regulation, and that's proven not to be the case -- the persistence of the insane liquids rule is proof enough.
67 I don't understand why they don't attack the huge lines of people waiting to get through security.
If they were going to, they should have done it in 2002 or 2003, when the huge lines were actually huge.
Its hard to match the body-count terrorists can achieve by taking down an airplane. In the London subway bombings, the highest number of people killed on any one train was 28. That's an order of magnitude lower than then number that can be killed on an airplane.
Should I keep acting as if everything is normal? Does that mean I should remain sitting in the next cubicle as she has these impassioned conversations with female co-workers and cries on the phone, or should I go find something to do somewhere else until she's done?
Keep acting as if everything is normal, but cut her some slack if she's otherwise generally a responsible cow-orker.
You get to stay in your cubicle.
Honestly, I'm always baffled as to why we and the terrorists all agree that they should only stick to airplanes.
One muses that the London and Madrid bombings, and other events in the history of college-educated sociopaths living out their fantasies of belonging to the wretched of the earth something redemptive violence something, demonstrated, if anybody was wondering, that it is difficult to get three-figure body counts in attacks on the ground, even in densely-populated places. The ratios of explosives-by-weight or simple numbers of willing terrorists to probable casualties are very different when the act occurs at 20,000 feet.
72. Headphones and kindly smiles.
My cubicle neighbor has inept college-aged children who apparently cannot make even very small decisions without lengthy telephone conversations.
If we're mentioning inane chatter at work, I'm listening to a coworker's enthusiastic and insulting questioning of a Chinese-born college. The start of the questioning was her surprise on being told that Christmas wasn't a very big holiday in China.
And it's not as if either major party is willing to make a campaign issue out of this.
Yes, this is my point. It can't become any kind of campaign issue because we are sheep.
Pre-flying, I had thought that a lot of the stupid things that Americans allowed were permitted solely by a majority that didn't care if policy choices killed/maimed/inconvenienced other people. I still think that, of course, but what I learned from flying is that Americans really are also scared shitless, and are willing to personally endure all kinds of foolishness if it helps assuage that fear.
72: If Finder can be taken as a source on this, on the veldtamong Native Americans it was easy to overhear conversations through tepees, but you were expected to act as if you hadn't.
In the London subway bombings, the highest number of people killed on any one train was 28.
Genuine question: were those bombings conducted with the same level of planning, coordination and teamwork as a typical (successful) airline bombing?
84: You should Google how to say "Happy New Year!" in Chinese to look smart.
Maybe I'll go join in by asking if China still has an Avatar.
86: If only his neighbors had listened when that guy mumbled "Those white people are going to be trouble."
69. no, but you do for NHL hockey games.
78: Stadiums.
Has there ever been a stadium based terrorist attack? I don't think they are as good targets as one would think. For one thing, they aren't enclosed metal tubes that contain an explosion and focus its damage onto the victims.
There was that one on Caprica with the Cylons.
87: One might argue that they required more, because on the ground, the operation continues to be vulnerable to contingencies and imponderables, in-team and out, before, during and after what might be euphemized "action phase." After the cabin doors are sealed, an airplane is a different environment, although not frictionless (e.g., the passengers on United 93).
And that's enough cold-blooded analysis for me today.
93: I hadn't thought about that.
There must be tons of relevant data from, say, the Iraq war, though. Or a dozen other places.
My coworker sucks at trolling people. He's way too much of a straight man. I'd try to fix him, but I'm afraid it might mean more work for me.
81. Unlikely. 1/(R^2) means that nothing that fits in a backpack and that can be made in an apartment is going to have much effect 5 meters away.
Spain is the really interesting one to me, since it affected the outcome of an election and yet has not been repeated. Schneier is better with technical issues than political ones, but this is interesting reading.
The other big change has been the Arab insurrections. Egypt is 80M people who now have better things to think about.
38: I may have told this story before, but so what? Also persons of a delicate disposition should not read this: My ex worked as a paramedic for a while, and one call she went on was for a woman who'd been using an mascara brush while in her car (stopped, I think) and got rear-ended, pushing her into the car in front. The airbag went off and shoved the brush between her eyeball and the socket, bending the bristles back so as to make removal impossible. Every time she (the ex) told the story she'd get a faraway look in her eyes and say "and she just wouldn't stop screaming..."
Has there ever been a stadium based terrorist attack?
Not a proper stadium-attack, but setting off bombs in large crowds in public spaces is a fairly common tactic in various parts of the world that aren't near me.
Update:
Passport fedexed: check
New flight obtained: check
Schedule/agenda reworked: check
Locked self out of apartment: check.
Whatever the opposite of Reaganing is, I am very doing it.
Three of four isn't bad. Pretend you're a baseball player.
I guess that question was easy to answer.
What about the Norway shootings? It's not like it's hard to obtain guns in America.
Not a proper stadium-attack, but setting off bombs in large crowds in public spaces is a fairly common tactic in various parts of the world that aren't near me.
And not a terribly effective one. There are some occasional high numbers, but the median number of people killed in this kind of attack is like 3.
I'd actually be curios to know if this follows a power rule.
What about launching a decade long, unprovoked poorly-planned war of aggression, de-stabilizing precarious ethnic tensions?
Has there ever been a stadium based terrorist attack?
108 was me.
The Mumbai shootings were also effective. I think, on the ground, its a lot more effective to go after people with automatic weapons than it is to get them with explosives.
108: I'd think an occasional high number is all you'd need if there are enough opportunities.
109 is a pretty tendentious description of the struggle for the Malvinas.
101: When people mention "Reaganing," it reminds me of Travis McGee's "John Wayne day" against the terrorists in The Green Ripper, which a worse, or less sensitive, writer available at your local airport/train station Hudson News might have rendered in rah-rah-I'm-King-Asskicker terms but John D. MacDonald makes, like a lot of his action sequences, quite melancholy and muted, in keeping with McGee's emotion about his lover's murder.
And last January: "Israel has foiled a Hamas plot to fire a rocket into Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium during a Premier League soccer match that could have caused mass casualties."
Terrorism is all about terror, and there's something uniquely horrifying about being knocked out of the sky. Hence fear of flying, even among people who happily zoom along highways at death-defying (and, frequently, death-not-defying) speeds.
I gotta tell you, though, as someone who lived in the neighborhood while this was going on, it was scary as shit. And easily accomplished on a budget, too.
No question that a group could try something like the Mumbai attacks with automatic weapons in the US, but way less likely to be "effective" (where "effective" means killing more than 30 or so people). Policing resources are very different.
For one thing, they aren't enclosed metal tubes that contain an explosion and focus its damage onto the victims.
Not really how aircraft bombings work. Much of the blast goes out through the skin. But it's difficult for aircraft to stay up with a big hole in their skins, so they fall out of the sky and everyone dies.
109: What about launching a decade long, unprovoked poorly-planned war of aggression, de-stabilizing precarious ethnic tensions?
Per 96.2, you mean the Middle East Explosion Testing Research Consortium's Fieldwork Laboratory?
108: I'd think an occasional high number is all you'd need if there are enough opportunities.
As a general rule, every suicide bomber gets 1 opportunity.
When I was in middle school, this guy murdered five college students in the span of about a week. They were exceedingly grisly, too. To the point where, when I met a therapist once and said I grew up in Gainesville, he asked if I had issues as an adult from the Danny Rolling murders.
(No, I don't. In fact, I was hyper-logical about it at the time. We were all told not to go outside, walk home from school, etc, and I was like "Well, that's silly. That doesn't fit his pattern whatsoever.")
Terrorism is all about terror,
The link in 98 suggests not.
Hey, let's talk about something cheerful. Did everyone see the picture of the surprised koala on my FB? That koala is obviously hopped up on eucalyptus. He has the strength of ten koalas.
Wow, I hadn't known this gory detail:
He would mutilate his victim's bodies, decapitating one. He then would pose them, sometimes even using mirrors, to intensify the carnage in the rooms.
124: There's a very small intersection between serial killing and interior design.
123: That koala probably has the clap and his species is going extinct because of it.
117: You think? Two or three people with machine guns and a synchronized attack on Times Square from different directions, so each was herding victims toward the other(s)? I bet it'd be fairly easy to get fifty or more. Any public place with a couple of thousand people in an area the size of a few football fields or smaller, I'd think would be very vulnerable to that kind of attack. (Once you get out of NY/Chicago and similar, I admit there aren't many such public places, but high school football games or something?)
Not really how aircraft bombings work. Much of the blast goes out through the skin.
This is true, its a better description of train bombings - and an illustration of why aircraft bombings can be effective in a way that other bombings are not.
Timothy McVeigh's bombing was very effective, but he had to use an entire truckload of explosives.
I bet it'd be fairly easy to get fifty or more.
Not the sort of proposition I'd like to see rigorously tested.
There, investigators discovered recordings Rolling had made of him singing folk songs he had composed.
Charlie Manson and Phil Spector were also songwriters. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the others were too. Police often miss the most important clue.
126: You are suspiciously well-informed about koala social diseases, Moby.
Joe Hill. Jim Jones. Ted Kaczynski. All songwriters.
133: Bach. Schubert. History's greatest monster, Stephen Sondheim.
127 -- for just that reason, places like Times Square are heavily policed by agencies that have been planning for that kind of thing for years. Your best bet for a high casualty automatic weapons attack would be something like a rural high school football game, and even there it would be hard to replicate the "chaos on all fronts/no one know where they are" aspect of the Mumbai attacks.
I'm half-enjoying, half-totally-squicked out by this conversation.
I believe "the clap" refers to gonorrhea, while the koalas are suffering from chlamydia.
138: Again, suspiciously well-informed.
"Koala Chlamydia" was the name of my garage band's hit single, back in high school
116 -- Sometimes it's about terror, and sometimes it's about impressing friends and recruits. I've never thought AQ (esp 9/11) was about body count, but about a big splashy headline w photos that would make the front page of every paper in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, wherever. Killing a bunch of nobodies in some suburban airport, or a high school football game in the Midwest, wouldn't do that at all. Scare the absolute shit out of us, sure, but it was never really about us. For these people anyway.
I've probably said before that I spent some time during Gulf War I musing about (a) the huge disruption one guy with one stick of dynamite at Metro Center might cause and (b) the apparent inability of Iraq to get one guy with one stick of dynamite into Metro Center.
141: I don't think "attention" and "body count" are at odds, though.
I fear we're on the threshold of an era of catastrophic terrorism in which four-figure body counts will be, if not common, not unfamiliar; even if we have only one such attack every decade in this century, 2100 will see a very different world than the one we might wish for.
Ko-walla-walla-walla-walla Koala Chlam-ID-eeee-ya.... you come and goooo, you come and goooooo-oooo....
I was the one dressed like Boy George.
143 -- If you care about who's attention you're getting, and it's not that of people who might be next, they are fairly independent variables.
Wow, I hadn't known this gory detail:
I remember the early reporting, where a cop wanted to describe to a reporter how grisly it was without giving away too many details. He said that on the macabre scale, it was only a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-to-10. Some posing, but nothing too far out there.
87 -- yes. If not more so.
Differentiate the Spanish attack - extremely well planned and executed with comparatively sophisticated equipment from the London one, which was very low-fi. The people who did the London job wouldn't have got within 100 metres of an aircraft in any country on earth; the Madrid gang probably would have if anybody could.
Yeah, the focus on planes can't be about the sheer numbers of deaths. But, fwiw, non-plane bombings, have killed a lot of people in the past. So many in Iraq that googling them is hard, but, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Iraq_Ashura_bombings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_April_2004_Basra_bombings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_June_2004_Mosul_bombings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14_September_2004_Baghdad_bombing
I could go on. And on. And on.
In the UK [to take a very small sample]:
Various pub bombings (Guildford, Birmingham, etc)
M62 Coach bombing
UVF Dublin/Monaghan bombing
Warrenpoint
Enniskillen
Omah
All had relatively large death tolls, and didn't involve planes.
Ladies and gentleman, we are now accepting wagers on when and in how many words (in 10-word increments) bob will show up and allude incoherently to Mike Davis' book about car bombs. Line forms to the left, please.
- for just that reason, places like Times Square are heavily policed by agencies that have been planning for that kind of thing for years
I walk through Times Square fairly often, and there's no security at all in terms of what you're carrying through. It's possible, I suppose, that there are snipers ready to take a shooter or group of shooters down (although I'd be surprised if that were the case), but there's nothing at all that would stop people from starting to shoot.
The TKTS booth is just for cover.
It's possible, I suppose, that there are snipers ready to take a shooter or group of shooters down
Just sitting there, all day, every day, waiting for a potential terrorist or other lunatic? Not only in Times Square but also in other "places like Times Square"?
That doesn't strike me as even possibility.
150. A shooter in Times Square would be pure theatre. Assuming they had to carry their gun into the square concealed they'd be dropped by the time they'd picked a target. However, a tourist with a wheelie suitcase packed with HE...
I do wonder when we'll see our first drone attack in the US.
153: The old New York knew how to how handle that. They'd have mugged the tourist.
To be fair, the visible NYPD presence in TS is pretty heavy and includes dogs whose duties presumably comprise more than just being good doggies. I've seen the odd unmarked but obvious police vehicle/earphone-wearing hard case as well, on occasion.
they'd be dropped by the time they'd picked a target.
By who? There are cops, but there aren't cops who can see everywhere all the time (barring the hypothetical snipers on rooftops, which are possible, but like Urple, I don't believe in them): it's crowded. Picking targets might take awhile: spraying a crowd with bullets, on the other hand, would be pretty quick, don't you think?
To cover an area like TS, you'd need quite a few sniper/spotter teams, presumably assisted by surveillance technologies to pinpoint sound/movement. A very expensive setup, probably deployed only for New Year's Eve and similar events.
157: I bet you tell they're good doggies, too, huh, flip?
Either police can do magical things that Halford understands and I don't (possible, I guess?), or I have to wonder if Halford has ever been to Times Square.
160: They're working. I just nod.
I don't know why I'm arguing about this, I'm just puzzled by the assertions that it it couldn't happen. I may be completely wrong about what a police presence can do in terms of preventing attacks, but I don't see how it would work.
The crowd density in Times Square is probably quite a bit lower than in Mumbai or whatnot.
I don't know why I'm arguing about this....
Sure, racist.
Following on 35, Rand Paul claims he was "detained indefinitely" by the TSA for refusing to consent to a patdown and otherwise defending his liberty. (Our liberty.)
"The passenger was not detained at any point. The passenger triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process in order to resolve the issue. Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. He was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.
The passenger was screened by millimeter wave imaging technology using automated target recognition. This technology uses the same generic image for all passengers to further protect passengers privacy. When an alarm occurs a yellow box indicates where an anomaly is. A targeted pat down is used to resolve the alarm."
I'm not sure I consider either side to be a reliable narrator, but Paul may just be grandstanding.
156: If this was to 154, I wasn't just referring to drones operated by the US government.
That doesn't strike me as even possibility.
For the last several months - really starting before the 10th Anniversary - there have frequently been cops, with lights flashing, stationed on roads leading to Times Square. I don't think it's too strong to say that it's been the case almost every day during evening rush hour.
That ain't snipers on the rooftops, but it's something. Of course, cops have always been commonplace within Times Square.
Although, as generally terrible as Rand Paul is, I have to give him credit for at least being openly critical of the TSA. (Hostile, even.)
167 Yes it was. Unlikely, since much more modest technology has not been used for crime inside the US.
The level of paranoia among this group of people who apparently enjoy reason is giving me an idea: an app that will suggest the commute routes most likely to be free of terrorist attack, using geolocation of tweets including "inshallah." I'll need menacing images, but that's what clip art is for, right?
Here's a couple for Heebie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHNEalChxs8
http://www.myspace.com/lionelhampton-47651527/music/songs/the-heebie-jeebies-are-rockin-the-town-44419785
[Unfortunately the Hampton track is only on youtube in really poor recordings]
The best combination of low security and high body count is in lecture courses at large colleges. Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 25 more at Virginia Rech, and he didn't even hit a large lecture class. He also killed himself before police arrived.
The WTC attack involved 19 or 20 motivated terrorists. If they have been in 20 of the largest lecture halls on several different campuses with automatic weapons they could have reached a comparable body count with much less planning and expense.
Somebody tried to shoot up an actuary class in the building next door to my Spanish class. Fortunately, he was an idiot on multiple levels. He managed to put two rounds in the chamber and jammed the gun. Everybody took the opportunity to run and then he crashed his getaway car into a tree.
OT: It's okay to do a really shitty job on things that Do Not Matter, right? Or is that unprofessional?
I'm writing materials for a CLE I'm giving. For reasons I don't need to go into now, let's stipulate that absolutely no one involved will give a shit about the content of these materials. The participants are most there to collect an hour of CLE and then be done. I know they'd prefer I'm entertaining for an hour instead of boring, but that has nothing to do with the written materials I'm required to prepare. Which won't be read, either before or after, by anyone. Irrespective of what the materials say, I'll be ad-libbing for an hour.)
Writing these all day long would actually be much more fun that doing any of the other things I need to be doing, but I really do need to be doing those other things. As is, however, these materials are abysmal. Should I care?
Should I care?
Will there ever be a situation in the future in which you'll think, "oh, wait, I already did course materials for [x] I can go back and crib from those" and be frustrated to (Re-)discover that they're unusable?
If it isn't something that you will want to refer back to than I would say no, there isn't much reason to care.
Gswift can speak more to this, but urban counterterrorism measures for crowded places are impressive. There are both plainclothed policemen in TS and a permanent police station, plus a permanent surveillance system, plus a system that's designed to respond immediately to that kind of alarm. A shooter could take out a few people but would not be able to get far or last long.
As is, however, these materials are abysmal. Should I care?
No. If you feel like doing it to procrastinate, you can feel virtuous, but don't feel obligated.
174: I insist that you do a shitty job.
176 seems to assume teleporting police. It still takes armed response teams minutes to get somewhere, not seconds.
If a job's worth doing, Urple.
179: All police are armed in this county. I think these days, most of them have heavy weapons in the trunk.
My only worry is that these will be at least sort of semi-public, and they'll have my name on them. I'd feel fine if I could include a footnote on the first page saying: "Disclaimer: Yes, I know these materials are shitty. It's not that I'm stupid and lazy, I was just being efficient with my time--I recognized these didn't matter and I had other, more important things to do. The talk itself wasn't so bad--you should have been there!" But I don't think I could get away with that.
(a) there are policemen there (more than you can see); (b) a shooter might have "seconds" but how many people do you think could be taken out by a gunman in "seconds"? The Mumbai train station attack lasted more than an hour.
Will there ever be a situation in the future in which you'll think, "oh, wait, I already did course materials for [x] I can go back and crib from those" and be frustrated to (Re-)discover that they're unusable?
Unlikely. I'm more worried that someone else will pull them out and think, "These are terrible."
176: There's also been a shift in attitudes towards attack, hide, or flee. The police have changed tactics from waiting to figure out what's happening to going in after an "active shooter" and many in the public are, I think, more likely to jump someone with a gun (or a drunk freaking out on a plane.)
how many people do you think could be taken out by a gunman in "seconds"?
This seems like the key variable, and I don't have a good intuitive sense of that one. Judging from the various campus shootings it seems like it's somewhat time consuming to fire into a crowd but I'm not sure what the important limiting factors are.
Unlikely. I'm more worried that someone else will pull them out and think, "These are terrible."
How long would it take to make them so that they weren't obviously terrible if someone was just skimming them?
Major loss of life in terrorist attacks is almost always caused by bombs (large scale hostage situations are the other one, but rare). One or two gunmen can cause a lot of disruption and injury, and yes they may well kill some people, but not on the scale of a Baghdad market bomb or anywhere close. The shooters who kill lots of people are snipers, and I'm betting Times Square is well insulated against those.
Especially if I spend most of the day commenting here.
I'd feel fine if I could include a footnote on the first page saying: "Disclaimer: Yes, I know these materials are shitty. It's not that I'm stupid and lazy, I was just being efficient with my time--I recognized these didn't matter and I had other, more important things to do. The talk itself wasn't so bad--you should have been there!"
Could you do some sort of Bush v. Gore disclaimer -- "These materials specific to the 1/23/2012 class, and shouldn't be used in other circumstances"?
185: Could you just not have a handout? Or have one written in Urdu.
OK,I think that we have established that we shouldn't attack Times Square. Perhaps we should go for one of those things with all the stoned naked hippies and "rock" music.
If you are willing to be unprofessional , you might as well put someone else's name on the materials. Like "Art Vandelay."
Can't urple just print out the Wikipedia page on whatever he is talking about?
Last time I was in Battery Park, there were massive numbers of people in like to go through the "airport style" security checkpoint for the Statue of Liberty cruise. They would be sitting ducks because they are penned in by fencing, and right up against the water, too. And, symbolically, they would make for a pretty good target.
"Airport style" security to get on a boat strikes me as dumb.
I am surprised that Urple's continuing legal education hasn't involved learning that most CLE consists of terrible half assed presentations. Did that qualify for ethics credit?
198: of course they do. But these materials, right now, are genuinely subpar.
197.2: Somebody hasn't seen Speed II often enough.
Here's the issue: they were due over a week ago. I promised them last Friday. I thought I had materials from a similar presentation I gave last year that I could use, with only minor touchups. But, having pulled those materials out this morning (for the first time), I see that my memory was bad, and those were on topics different enough that they're not really useable. At least not mostly. So I'm trying to hack together something brand new, very quickly, starting with the few useable scraps I had. And it's not going well. My options are basically to: (1) turn in something just terrible, (2) work the rest of the day and turn in something bad, but perhaps not abysmally so [this would be my preferred solution, except that I really do have other things I need to do today], or (3) just throw in the towel for the day and make them even later than they already are. The problem is I really don't see a good time to spend a lot of time on them in the near future, so, this may do nothing but push the dilemma of choosing between (1) and (2) back a few days.
Seems like you need two things:
-sufficient talent at bullshitting and
-lots of time to waste
Unfogged commenters, more or less by definition, have these qualities in abundance. Surely you can just subcontract the job out to a dozen of us. If you can phrase the work in terms of questions to the Mineshaft, nobody will even notice that they're doing your job for you.
CLE stands for Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, right?
As I see it, whichever solution you choose will require frequent Unfogged posting.
Can you make the nature of the materials radically less ambitious? Like, an outline with no more than section headings and no actual substance? I've certainly been given CLE materials like that, and they don't look incompetent. Useless but not incompetent.
201-- realistically, staging a fake terrorist attack is your only hope. I'd leave the computer and start looking for a pay phone to use to call in the bomb threat.
No, I already have an outline, and I'm supposed to be generating substantive written materials for it. Part of the problem--in terms of why it will take longer than it should--is that whoever came up with the outline obviously didn't put much thought into it (or maybe didn't know what they were doing), and it's basically incoherent. I can easily give a talk that ignores the outline entirely but covers all the substantive points that I think the outline was intending to cover, but trying to organize those points into the framework of the outline, which is what I have to do for the written materials, will be a real chore.
The TSA is stupid, but the pre-TSA airline security system in the US was a poorly regulated joke. The most feasible better option to annoying lines and screening is an Israel style intense intelligence and profiling system, which would create a feeling of much greater freedom for most while being incredibly oppressive and rights-violative for a few. Such is the tradeoff.
Indeed, this is exactly what Rand Paul (who has been picking fights with the TSA for a while now) wants. Not less security, or even necessarily less security theater, but a security system that doesn't inconvenience white people:
Paul said the situation reflects his long-standing concern that the TSA shouldn't be "spending so much time with people who wouldn't attack us."
I don't know about Rand, but nearly everybody who wants to attack me is white.
206: You're stuck with that outline?
I was hoping for far more consensus that doing a shitty job is perfectly okay.
208 is exactly right. This is also the fellow who wants to interfere with the right to peaceable assembly if those assembled might be browns who aren't fans of the government. Honestly the whole "libertarian" schtick is such a con.
211: Using a one-off pseudonym is the best suggestion.
I'm not sure that everyone here is sincerely trying to help. I'm not, for one. I'm just killing time in a semi-amusing way.
208 is exactly right.
Indeed. PGD likes to make a lot out of the fact that Papa Ron has spoken out against bombing brown-skinned folks, but the only thing Paul really objects to is the expense.
Urple:
get a bunch of forms and attach them.
|?
Papa Ron has spoken out against bombing brown-skinned folks
*Shrug*
But this is like, an event. Bank frozen, no gold or silver sales. (Greece is further fucked) Something is gonna happen soon. Ayatollahs all come to DC and go on one knee to Obama, kissing his ring. Unconditional surrender. Could be.
But always remember, we started this war. All casualties are the Great One's responsibility.
|>
But there's no way in hell I'd ever want to live in Heebie U town. It's the saddest town I've ever seen.
Losing "World's Largest P&c@n" status will do that to a town.
The police officer who originally investigated the matter, according to Burris, said he wasn't sure whether the cat's killing could be construed as a threat.
Yeah, it's a puzzle.
It might have just had something to do with Liberal, Kansas, which is only 598 miles from there.
This election season is going to be just lovely.
If that cat had access to a handgun, things might have ended differently.
The campaign manager for the Republican opponent says: "The thought of brutalizing any animal to make a political statement, no matter what that statement is, is beyond any standard of decency."
Is it just me or does the middle clause really grate? The statement would be fine without the middle clause. It adds nothing at all... unless, it's meant to be read as something like "The thought of brutalizing any animal to make a political statement, [no matter how good or noble the sentiment behind the statement], is beyond any standard of decency." Which, AFAICT, the only sentiment here seems to be that liberals are scum who deserve to die, or something roughly along those lines. Which makes that clause grate.
I think the guy was just a bit wordy is all.
Anyway, I didn't read "no matter how good" into "no matter what". I do think that he lead with the lesser charge (animal cruelty) instead of the big problem (the obvious threat).
230: on any other reading, the words are superfluous.
205 Happened a couple times back in high school. One time the cops found a backpack in a trash can and we had to wait while they took it out to the soccer field and put it out of its misery.
I'm not sure that everyone here is sincerely trying to help. I'm not, for one. I'm just killing time in a semi-amusing way.
Surely this is the ur-mouseover?
231: Yep. Of the other two sentences, one is about half superfluous words.
What's he supposed to say? "Death to liberal cats. If you dump the Koran, you could get a dog."
Cats are about the least liberal creatures out there. "I've got mine, fuck you, oh, and gimme some of yours" is pretty much the default cat sentiment.
But they're effete and finicky. What's more liberal than that?
Those dead birds were gifts, not that you ever seemed to appreciate them properly.
Sometimes you don't need to hover the mouse over the name to know who wrote the comment.
No, I meant that I go and spy on all of you via your IP addresses.
re: 232
We had one [fake] bomb scare at our high school. Taken quite seriously, though. It did turn out there was an IRA active service unit in a safe house about 10 miles away, but they got rolled up by the security services once they actually started their proposed atack.*
* attack was for London, obviously. IRA bombing central Scotland would have been very silly.
So sorry I missed the early thread on commuting. I strongly believe most people undersample potential routes. I like to explore lots of them, even seemingly bizarre round-about ones. I try them at different times of day since the traffic is surprisingly different on various routes. And I change it up a lot. It gives me pleasure. Or did when I drove. Now I have a two block commute and no car. Sometimes I get lost in the fog, though.
When I was in Brooklyn, I lived about equidistant from a couple of subway stops and those trains ran to three stations near where I was working, intersecting in Manhattan at 34th.
I ruled out the F quickly because it was by far the busiest route on the morning commute. Also, no bridge view.
The B seemed to be the quickest ride to 34th, and I could shorten the walk to the office a bit by transferring to a local train and getting off at 23rd. It still meant a walk of 5 or 6 blocks, which was about the same as from 34th, so unless I saw a train right on the platform at 4th, I didn't make the transfer. Otherwise the wait time canceled out the time saved by not riding all the way to 34th.
The Q was about the same to 34th, except I could transfer to a local train at Union Square and then only had to walk 1 block to work. Otherwise I'd have that same walk down from 34th.
I eventually settled on catching whatever train came first of the B or Q when I was in a hurry, but when I had a bit of time, I took the Q. Between Canal and 14th I'd watch the platforms very carefully: if I saw groupings of people, I figured the local hadn't come by yet and I'd get off and wait to transfer; if the platforms were almost completely empty, I figured I missed the local and I rode all the way up to 34th.
Surprisingly, I don't remember putting all that much thought into this. It just kind of worked out over a series of days until I moved to Astoria and the commute got less various, but shorter.
Lately, I've been doing some real commuting - sadly, not for a real (i.e. money instead of credits) job - and I've found that I kind of miss the subway for some reason. It's very unlikely that I'll go back to NY anytime soon.
IRA bombing central Scotland would have been very silly.
WE WOULD CHIB THEM.
re: 248
Heh. Like the attempt to car bomb Glasgow airport, in which passers-by were queuing up to beat up the would be terrorists?
I was thinking more of (part of) central-belt Scotland being i) a source of logistical/ideological support for them qua IRA, ii) a potential source of moderate political support in parliament for them, qua moderate nationalism.
245: Hmm, so "simulated annealing" was not a one-time pseud related to your commute-optimization strategy.
Interesting fact about the Troubles: thanks to its traditional recruiting grounds in the Midland cities and Glasgow, the most Catholic regiment in the British Army was and probably still is - the Parachute Regiment.
250: well, it was, but I think I'm sticking with it. I've also posted around here as spaz, seedub, maybe cw.
As somebody with CP, I regard it as a great improvement over spaz. Stay with it.
The search described in 245 is neither simulated, nor annealing.