That's interesting, as my understanding is that the stereotype of Scandinavians is quite the opposite regarding personal space.
Which would only render the absence of dirndls curiousr.
"curiousr" being of course some kind of web 2.0 thing.
"curiousr" being of course some kind of web 2.0 thing.
It's a site where people post pictures of monkeys killing cats.
I can't say I've ever noticed Germans being particularly space-invadey. Scandinavians, I think, are like Scots. That is, with a nice sensible sense of personal space, unlike those clingy too-close-fuck-off-further-away-or-I-will-cut-you southerners.
Scandinavians, I think, are like Scots. That is, with a nice sensible sense of personal space, unlike those clingy too-close-fuck-off-further-away-or-I-will-cut-you southerners.
That's why it's so entertaining to go to European conferences, because the coffee breaks always contain a few pairs of delegates who are essentially waltzing very slowly in circles, as the Italian chap unconsciously keeps moving closer to what he thinks is a comfortable distance, and the Swedish chap equally unconsciously backs away to what he thinks is a comfortable distance.
My (not very extensive) experience is that there was a somewhat greater prevalence of long, shared table eating/drinking establishments in Germany and Hungary than in the US (and less likely to automatically have an empty seat buffer between groups). A new, somewhat-upscale bar-b-q place here has long table with benches, and the parties on either side were clearly incredulous when they seated our party of 3 in the tailor-made 1 seat/2 seat gap between them (and I'll admit that I found myself a bit taken aback at first).
re: 8
Yeah. I was standing on the train the other day, and the (older, obviously foreign) woman beside me moved really close to let the drinks trolley go past, and then just stayed there. There was plenty of space , and yet she was there, almost touching, for ages. I couldn't shift as I was already up against the wall. I'm sure she didn't notice, but I was in mild 'fuck off out of my space' mode.
This is not based on experience with any actual Germans, it's second-hand stereotyping. But I do have a belief that they're thought of as tending toward physical contact that comes off as rude to Americans: not exactly close-talking like an Italian freaking out a Swede, but exactly what Stanley was talking about, being willing to elbow, lean on, or shove someone they're not otherwise socially interacting with.
I was shoved or bumped out of the way a lot in public places during my recent trip to Korea. It took a few times for me to learn to resist spinning around and glaring.
re 10: sitting down on the bus the other day, some fecker first almost shoved his old man crotch in my face, then stood next to me almost touching my knees. Hate hate hate.
re: 12
I'm reminded of that 'The Verve' video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyu1KKwC74
of which a comedian on telly remarked, 'if they'd filmed that in Glasgow it'd have been a fucking short video.'*
* national stereotypes being broadly true in this case.
I can't say I've ever noticed Germans being particularly space-invadey: lebensraum-hanging fruit here, before dsquared goes there!
Aye, my wife will be sending mental daggers my way for missing said fruit.
Noticed it and deliberately gave it a wide berth (being picky about personal space, myself.)
I don't think of most Germans as being particularly close talkers or space invadery. There is a lot more bumping and shoving in making your way around, but I have to say, I identify that much more with older Germans. There's a sense of entitlement that some old Germans have that has, at times, made me want to haul off and deck some old lady. Any old lady. Maybe the one casually butting in front of me in the grocery store line.
(Blume clears throat, angles her way back in front of the lady clutching two Schrippen and a cucumber.)
Old Lady: Oh, were you already there? [THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING OLD GERMAN LADIES SAY.]
(Blume decks the lady, pays for her yogurt, calmly leaves the store. Everyone else pretends not to notice anything has happened.)
I live in Berlin now, and have lived in Belgium, the UK, and USA previously. The only difference I notice re: space is between the USA and Europe, generally. Though I've never lived in a major urban area in America, and have only lived in urban areas in Europe, so I don't have a great deal of confidence in my generalisations.
In, say, NYC, on public transport, if you had to sit wedged in with people on a crowded train, and then later a bunch of people get off, but the person next to you doesn't, do either of you move in order to have more space? In Berlin you generally don't do that, as it implies that you find the other person gross or dangerous.
My Iranian chair is a pretty close-talker. We tend to edge slowly down the hallway during a conversation. Might be just him, though.
re: 18
Heh. I find that in London. Londoners [gross generalisation, but fuck it] being much more likely to do that sort of thing than in parts north, but yes. I've had that in Prague too, and I don't speak Czech well enough to BACAI.
I've experienced it both in Berlin and Hamburg. Not so much in Dresden; people seem chiller in Saxony in general. When I lived in Göttingen my German was too poor and I was too unfamiliar with the country to really assess what was going on.
There's also the positive flipside of the angering, entitled old people, which is that there are just more old people out and about in Germany than there are anywhere I've lived in the U.S. Part of that is the amazing bus system, but it's also just somehow more normal to see old people everywhere, and more expected that they might be moving more slowly.
23.2: Holy shit does the age distribution skew old on the Berlin buses. I suppose they don't want to deal with all the stairs on the S/U-bahn?
22: Old Russian ladies in the teeny ethnic markets on the north side of Chicago will just straight up get in front of you. I nearly fell over once, having run into a store just to grab cilantro, when one of the babushki told me to go ahead of her!
Were there any German porn stars at the bar?
I never did figure out why my DC commute would skew significantly (i) young and (ii) female if I took the bus rather than the Metro.
20 -- In DC you move.
Unless you're sitting next to a pretty young woman, in which case you can't be expected to notice that those other people got off.
This is a slightly different issue, but someone at church was commenting on the difference in how people in New York respond to people in distress.
He's from Virginia and was saying that people in Boston just ignore somebody who has fallen over or whatever. (I'm not sure that's always true, and I think that people are a bit different in the poorer African-American neighborhoods. This is the same with DC. A lot of the white people are kind of cold, but the older Black Ladies always say, "Have a Blessed Day." The overt Christianity can be annoying, but they're friendlier people.)
In New York, he said, he saw a woman fall when her heel got caught on the escalator. Instantly people helped. They offered her hand sanitizer and helped her stand up etc. Once it was clear that she was fine, they disappeared. That wouldn't happen in Boston.
27.2: In Soviet Russia the Metro moves you. Wait....
Speaking of Soviet Metro and babushkas, I assume everyone has seen Alexey Titarenko's 'City of Shadows' photos:
http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/city8.html
http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/city13.html
http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/city2.html
http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/city3.html
27: People in DC are also really good about standing on the right side on an escalator and leaving the left side for people who want to walk past.
In, say, NYC, on public transport, if you had to sit wedged in with people on a crowded train, and then later a bunch of people get off, but the person next to you doesn't, do either of you move in order to have more space? In Berlin you generally don't do that, as it implies that you find the other person gross or dangerous.
Oh I definitely move, because I'm a strong believer in maximal personal space on public transport, and I've seen plenty of other people move in similar circumstances. No idea if it's a faux pas, though.
I think everywhere in the US you move.
The more interesting question is at what density you'll stand rather than sit next to someone. Obviously if all but a few seats are taken you can sit, but in less dense configurations people may stand rather than sit between two people. One of my college friends was fond of pointing out that a pole between two seats counts as an empty seat when deciding whether to sit next to a strange man. It'd be slightly rude to sit next to someone on the non-pole side if the pole side was empty.
33: Sometimes. In some places. I've found other metros more nearly approximating the ideal behavior.
The more interesting question is at what density you'll stand rather than sit next to someone.
It's not a particularly tough question for me on the tube, except in terms of letting other people sit. If there's nobody else wanting a seat, and the empty seat isn't next to an obvious smelling -of-piss tramp, I always sit.
On a bus, I'm a bit more likely to stand even where there are empty seats, but that's because a) I tend to take shorter bus journeys, and b) usually sitting next to someone on a London bus means you have to stand up for them to get out (or vice versa).
35: For me the single heaviest term in that equation is how long I'll be on there. I'll sit next to someone who's self-evidently pissed themselves and shouting into the ether if the journey is long enough. On the other hand, if it's one stop, I may not bother sitting down even if the train's empty.
30 is right, New Yorkers are remarkably helpful to people who need help. This is most notably true in situations where lack of help will slow everyone down. For example strollers on stairs require two people or a traffic jam, so someone will quickly help carry the stroller. As you say they'll leave quickly when the helping is done, because the whole point was helping things along not helping you. By stopping a traffic jam on the stairs you've helped dozens of people not one.
The flip side is that since New Yorkers are such wonderful polite people willing to help, if a New Yorker is being rude to you, it's probably because you're (unknowingly) being an asshole. Here the quintessential example is stopping on the sidewalk without pulling over. You're causing a huge mess by being clueless and unaware of your impact on everyone else.
I am wondering if "exaggerated need for personal space" is another of those unfogged commonalities.
In, say, NYC, on public transport, if you had to sit wedged in with people on a crowded train, and then later a bunch of people get off, but the person next to you doesn't, do either of you move in order to have more space?
Oh, like when you're in the corner seat and they're in the middle seat and should scoot over to the now empty third seat? I generally don't move. I just sit there thinking "move move move move move move move move MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE" until I bust an artery in my head or something.
I was once at Zabar's and saw an old lady probably heedlessly jump the line in front of an old gentleman. He started muttering unpleasantries but she wasn't responding so he got louder and nastier. The last I saw/heard was the cashier scanning a bottle of olive oil for the old lady and the old gentleman saying quite loudly "I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT."
It's really true, though, that New Yorkers are decent to each other until they're not. Once there's conflict, it's almost always ugly. When I moved here I wasn't convincingly able to yell "fuck you!" at another human being. Now I am.
The last I saw/heard was the cashier scanning a bottle of olive oil for the old lady and the old gentleman saying quite loudly "I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT."
xox.
I find my 'move when space opens up' trigger is whether I can slide/shuffle into open space, or whether I'd have to stand up. If I'm in the middle of three seats, and one of the end seats opens, I'm over so fast that that the seat is still warm. If I'm jammed in next to someone, though, and a bank of seats opens on the other side of the car, I'd feel rude fleeing: I'd do it if I could either frame it to myself as "the person next to me needs the extra space" because they had a big bag or something, or if I really wanted to (gross/scary person next to me, or I want to spread out for some particular reason). It doesn't feel very very rude, but enough that I'd need a reason to do it.
Chinese subways are vicious. Before the train comes, everyone positions themselves in front of the door like a rugby line out, then elbows and body checks their way to a seat. After which they eagerly surrender their seats to the parents and elderly they'd just shoved aside.
Chinese queues in general are vicious. And the elderly are the worst. They have this head-down-elbows-out posture that they adopt before barging in wherever they feel like.
I usually stand unless the bus or car is so empty that I feel self-conscious. I also don't hold on to anything so it feels like I'm surfing.
Related: if you shared an office and had an annoying alpenhorn (or something) text alert tone and got about fifteen texts an hour, wouldn't you put your fucking phone on vibrate? I actually feel stupid asking owner of phone, as it seems so obvious and basic that I'm sure it's not and I'm being uptight.
20
on public transport, if you had to sit wedged in with people on a crowded train, and then later a bunch of people get off, but the person next to you doesn't, do either of you move in order to have more space?
I move. In DC, like Charlie was talking about. As for when to sit vs. stand, my girlfriend sits whenever there's a free seat, and I do the same on the bus, but I usually only sit on the metro if it's a long trip or there's two free seats side by side.
33
27: People in DC are also really good about standing on the right side on an escalator and leaving the left side for people who want to walk past.
Really good compared to what? It's true that there is a norm like you describe, and I guess I can imagine a place that doesn't even have one, but I get annoyed by people not following it fairly often. Varies greatly depending on where, I think. 90 percent of the time it seems to be either tourists or teens talking with friends, but who knows.
47: after receiving an indignant denial from his colleague, Smearcase was immensely embarrassed when he glanced idly out of his office window and saw a street musician playing an alpenhorn.
9: Once, about 9 or 10 years ago, I and significant other and my parents went out to eat at parents' favorite tiny hole-in-the-wall neighborhood restaurant. We were seated in a smaller-than-normal booth space with two small tables, 4 chairs and a long bench, the space was tucked into a corner, with a half wall separating the far table from the rest of the dining room. Then, a few minutes later, in comes a friend from work, with HIS date and HIS parents, and of course they get seated right next to us with about 7 inches of clearance between the two tables. It was an extremely bizarre personal-space/social etiquette problem. I felt kind of weird talking about anything, as did everyone else. And it TOTALLY violated every Minnesotan norm of personal space conservation. We all bolted our food and left as quickly as possible.
Since I've been hobbling around with crutches or cane for the past month, it has been interesting to see the response of people on the bus. Most people are pretty cool about it, but there are more assholes who don't seem to care that I would have though.
The escalators on the DC Metro actually work? (Hi, I make tired jokes about the Beltway.)
An alpenhorn ringtone sounds like fun. Better than driod's faux Zep.
Better than driod's faux Zep.
Speaking of Zep, one of the items I came across searching for Linda Lovelace/Al Goldstein material was Lovelace "introducing" them onstage at a concert in Los Angeles in '75 or '76.
driod's faux Zep
in flernin Braum
did foogle imper Zod.
Yet Oople Braak
Could krong and flon
In clowper'd fubble bleez.
Italians at a stand-up buffet during aperitivo at a wine bar: cracked rib territory.
33: Good compared to Boston, where it's not really a norm.
I thought Driod faux Zep was one of those Iain M. Banks nymphomaniac-scientist-aristocrat-warrior heroines.
I do usually move once there's space (on bus or rail), and that is standard here in the Bay, I think, but I'm more likely to do so in the side-facing seats than in the front-facing, for some reason, possibly worry about the perception in 20, considering in front-facing seats you're less likely to be pressed into each other as the bus starts and stops.
People in DC are also really good about standing on the right side on an escalator and leaving the left side for people who want to walk past.
I think this is observed 100% in London. There would be a serious rumble if anybody tried to stand on the left.
It's observed by Londoners, but there are plenty of tourists on the tube.
Tourists are also the ones who stop dead right when they step off the escalator.
63: And they walk backwards away from store windows. And they stop dead to fuck around with their phones/cameras/dicks/whatevers.
Masturbate and walk is the new chew gum and walk.
No more chewing gum to the Unfoggedtariat?
I mean, hello? It's Friday, and I have important deadlines, goddammit.
the new chew gum and walk.
LBJ actually said, "scratch his ass and walk." It was bowdlerised by the press.
41: I cringe to recall, but I once remarked that shopping at Fairway on a weekend afternoon was an outstanding introduction to the arguments for ice-floe euthanasia of the elderly.
69: Flip, as someone rapidly approaching (if not already there) elderly, I'd fully support the establishment of conveniently located euthanasia centers. They could be something like those elaborately automated public toilets some cities have. IMO, they'd be a blessed alternative to getting cedarsinaied to a slow , nasty death.
Gratuitous standing on public transit is one of my insanity triggers. Yes, I know none of you young men wants to sit down and then possibly have trouble reaching the door or get touched by another passenger, but if you all stand in the middle of the goddamn bus rather than sitting in the empty seats, NO ONE CAN GET ON OR OFF THE BUS, and then you make ME, an irascible fucking person, take the inconvenient, frightening, claustrophobia-inducing seats. Shameless gallantry!
I usually prefer to stand on transit in principle, but it takes a lot to make me stand in what might conceivably be anyone's way. I wasn't completely kidding about "insanity": I think I have a real phobia about interfering with foot or vehicle traffic.
Also: any idea why the news has been so full of nauseating stories of cruelty lately? No? No sunspots or anything? No global spike in overconsumption of carbohydrates?
They could be something like secretly replace those elaborately automated public toilets some cities have.
Tee hee!
72: Even better! Get rid of old people AND clean the the dirty gene pool of people with GI problems.
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I will be very curious to see if Ezra Klein responds to Brad DeLong's question for Ezra Klein.
|>
Gratuitous standing on public transit is one of my insanity triggers.
If I am not going far, I will often stand on the bus, though it certainly puts me more in the way of other passengers. But something about the construction of the MBTA buses makes the seats in the front of the bus vibrate in a rather nausea-inducing manner, and riding in the back is an invitation to puking for me to start with.
In some Asian countries, they sell the same seat on long distance buses twice, so that if you only pay for one seat you end up sitting on someone's lap or having someone sit on your lap. I found this out to my detriment, but at least I can say 100% accurately that an 11 year old Vietnamese boy rode me all night long.
75: yeah, it's possible that motion sickness is a significant factor. I'm sure people have their reasons, and of course I should get over it.
and of course I should get over it intermittently whine about it in a self-deprecating way until I get euthanized.
That's my general plan for most everything.
67: I'm here for you, JP.
Your mission, teo, if you decide to accept it, is to figure out if Alaskan airports use magnetic or true north runway designations and look at some motherfucking wind roses for Alaska--which I predict will interestingly unpredictable--and report back with your findings.
delurking for a rare chance to be useful...
All US runways (FAA-controlled ones, anyway) are named for their magnetic heading, divided by 10 and rounded to nearest integer. In fact, the parallel runways at Fairbanks were recently renamed from 01/19 to 02/20 due to a change in measured local magnetic deviation.
Why are there pairs of numbers? It's entirely possible I know nothing about how magnetic heading is reported.
81: I think it's one number for one direction, and the other number for the other direction. But that's possibly completely wrong, and yet I click "Post".
Airports have two directions? Wait, I have an idea. Why don't they always make runways so that airplanes land going uphill and takeoff going downhill?
Each end of each strip of concrete is a named runway (and runways are always straight lines, so the numbers are always 18 (180 degrees) apart). With parallel runways, an L(eft), R(ight), C(enter), or W(ater - for seaplanes) is appended. At Fairbanks, the runways are 02L/20R, 02R/20L, and 02W/20W.
In response to the other part of JP's assignment, the wind rose site he linked earlier has some interesting data on Alaska. Anchorage seems to have prevailing winds from the south in the summer and in the north in the winter, and one of the runways at Series of Tubes Memorial Airport is indeed aligned roughly north-south. (The other two appear to be east-west for reasons that are unclear to me.) Fairbanks has a similar bimodal pattern, but the summer winds are more southwesterly than southerly.
The most striking pattern (though not really surprising) I see in some of the other communities is not so much the wind directions as the speeds; check out Cold Bay, which is at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula near the eastern end of the notoriously windy Aleutians.
The prevailing winds at Cold Bay, btw, seem to be either NNW or SSE most of the year, and that is in fact the alignment of the main runway at the Cold Bay airport.
80: Thanks. Yeah, I was noting the headings in the runways/heading thing as a very rough proxy for prevailing winds over in the Whoosh thread. I somehow came under the impression that past a certain northness (which I assumed Fairbanks would be) they only used True North to avoid the rename problem. But a little bit of searching reveals that that is only Northern Domestic Airspace (NDA) in Canada, which covers very little population (Inuvik isn't even within it).
85: Good work. I just wanted someone other than me to click on some of those wind rose diagrams. Fairbanks' runway does run SW-NE.
Мне в моем метро
Никогда не тесно.
Потому что с детства
Оно как песня,
Где вместо припева,
Вместо припева:
"Стойте справа,
Проходите слева!"
Порядок вечен,
Порядок свят.
Те, что справа стоят - стоят.
Но те, что идут,
Всегда должны
Держаться левой стороны
diffuser clearly deserves a fruitbasket. Who's got it?
Airports have two directions? Wait, I have an idea. Why don't they always make runways so that airplanes land going uphill and takeoff going downhill?
I can't tell if I'm being trolled here or not.
Hey, since this is the thread where we've had some discussion of Alaska I guess it's the best place to report that I finished Coming into the Country today. I found the third part a lot less interesting than the first two, but the whole thing is very good overall.
I couldn't remember whom I was trolling.
Germans crowd each other. I guess that would be surprising to those who imagine Germans as being cold and withdrawn. Would that they were!
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My sister tells me she just bought a new T-shirt for my niece (4) manufactured by the estimable Chinese brand "POOF GIRL EXCELLENCE"
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93: it's just such a self-evidently great idea that I have to believe its risen independently, many times.
93, 96: Meet Courchevel airport. This video of a takeoff seems to give the best sense of it.
Chinese queues
I blame the Qing legacy.
I meant to paste in the "are vicious" part, too. I have no one left to blame.
I was trying to figure out a joke along the lines of 98 but couldn't think of one. Well done.
Not one of the 100 comments by Moby Hick. Huh.
Yeah, he hasn't been around much lately. Not sure why.
103: We killed him with our humorlessness.
Meet Courchevel airport. This video of a takeoff seems to give the best sense of it.
I suppose that long pause before moving forward happens because the pilot is praying.
My parents, especially my dad, are excellent at Chinese queuing. They don't push people, they're just good at instantly moving into any space that opens up. It's kind of magical to watch them.
Series of Tubes is a seriously fucking nice airport. They've got a flat screen TV right here at my gate showing the Kentucky-Louisville game. Also, free WiFi.
IMX Scandinavians and Chinese in Hong Kong queue up by mobbing. It was easier to navigate in H.K. 'cause we could see over the crowds, not so with the Vikings.
104 It doesn't seem that impressive in person, just another small ski resort airport.
Well sure, if you come from a place where ski resorts have public airports.
My mistake, I thought you were saying Ted Stevens' Techno Tubes Airport was not impressive.
I suppose if people can go around jumping off mountains in wing suits it's not that impressive when they jump off in a whole airplane, but I wouldn't do it.
Moby Hick has been posting Moby Hick style comments over at EOTAW.
Only one or two. It moves much slower so in theory I'm able to get more work/running/family-ality done.