Tell her she should learn to expect them to tackle her.
1: This is funny, come to think. Surely she should be dodging and weaving.
Depends who she imagines has the ball. If she thinks she has, she should dodge and weave. If she imagines the person coming towards her has it, she might expect them to get out of her way, or in extreme cases, toss their bag to somebody walking behind them.
This is great. I occasionally get pissed at how much I end up yielding to other people on the sidewalk and determine to hold my line, no matter what.* This almost always means that I clip lots of shoulders and get lots of apologies. It's a stupid exercise, because it just pisses me off more.
*Okay, I don't actually plow down feeble old people.
3: Maybe it's a testament as to how fearsome* she is running with the ball. The teenage girl equivalent of Richard Pryor running down the street while on fire.
*I wrote that as "fiercesome" and then spent more time than I'd like to admit staring at it in puzzlement when it got the squiggly red line.
6: Yeah, not fearsome yet. She's way young on her team (13, playing on a U19 team) and while she's one of the taller girls, she's pretty light compared to the rest of them. When she connects on a tackle, she's dragging targets down rather than knocking them over on impact.
As a native New Yorker, shouldn't she be a natural expert at weaving through crowds?
"Envision the other team as a gaggle of gaping tourists."
9: I thought she was from upstate somewhere....
I assume people who live in chronically crowded places must develop sophisticated but unconscious strategies for getting around.
You can't always be getting out of the way because you'd never get anywhere, but unless you're built like a football player just putting your head down and plowing forward doesn't work either.
On top of that, you can't be thinking about it all the time, especially if you're going to be talking on the phone/texting/reading unfogged while you're walking.
If she imagines the person coming towards her has it, she might expect them to get out of her way, or in extreme cases, toss their bag to somebody walking behind them bite her ear off.
This thread reminds me of weaving through school hallways between classes.
I've never seen weaving on the street, but I did see someone knitting on the bus once.
I am rightfully proud of my sidewalk-negotiating skills, which are all the more impressive when one considers where I was raised.
As a native New Yorker, shouldn't she be a natural expert at weaving through crowds?
She needs a skateboard.
Call me when she starts planting hand-offs on them.
After playing a bunch of Crash Team Racing with my son, I had to keep reminding myself not to slide through turns in my real car.
I found myself coming a lot closer to a pedestrian than I would have before after coming back from India - I hadn't driven there, but I'd neurotically monitored the road from the back seat of a lot of autorickshaws. Fortunately I only drove a tiny bit back home too.
I am rightfully proud of my sidewalk-negotiating skills, which are all the more impressive when one considers where I was raised.
I would think the hog pen was conducive.
The OP puzzles me a bit: why is expecting people to get out of your way a matter of self-presentation on the part of teenage girls? It's a matter of self-presentation on the part of sports jocks -- in particular kinds of sports -- in general, isn't it? I mean, I assume you're thinking that Sally's rugby experience means that she won't be self-effacing, which is good. How that pans out in later life will depend on who she winds up hanging out with.
Is your confusion allayed, parsimon, by the knowledge that LB's daugter is a teenage girl?
I know that LB's daughter is a teenaged girl.
I'm not trying to be difficult here, though things are difficult these days. Just that I can't tell whether LB thinks that Sally's shift is a good or a bad thing. Which she said. I figure further life developments will change things yet again. I'm also slightly pushing back against the idea that contact sports are good for self-presentation.
Son recently finished a run in his ballet school's Nutcracker, dancing the Nutcracker Prince role, and in one of the dress rehearsals the angels (age 6) at the beginning of Act 2 were transfixed by their silver lame tunics/tinsel halos/each other, with the consequence that they were just milling about in a completely unorganized fashion whilst the Prince and Clara attempted to pirouette and leap amongst them . . . director shoutung in heavy Russian accent "Get out of their way!!! MOVE!!!". Son said it was hilarious and only mildly dangerous.
I love the angels and buffoons. The whole rigorously controlled enterprise, turning out impossibly polished and poised 18 year olds straight into the arms of professional dance companies every year begins with these completely disorganized little ones. It is lovely.
The title was intended to be funny, as sounding pseudo-scholarly: I don't actually have a strong opinion on whether this is a good or bad thing, just that it's interesting that a couple of months of tackling people seems to have made her believe (incorrectly, given that she's running into people rather than having crowds part to let her through) that people generally will get out of her way rather than expecting her to give way.
She's never been self-effacing in general, and there hasn't been any kind of broad rugby-related personality shift.
12: You can't always be getting out of the way because you'd never get anywhere, but unless you're built like a football player just putting your head down and plowing forward doesn't work either.
You sort of are always getting out of the way -- you just have your attention out twenty feet or so and are always gently changing direction toward open space. It works smoothly because almost everyone else is doing the same thing (breaks down in high-tourist locations, but most places it's fine).
I honestly don't know if I'm disproportionately dodging people or being dodged: it doesn't feel as though I'm avoiding specific people, so much as that I'm walking where the space is. Possibly bigger, more spatially dominant people aren't dodging at all, but I don't know what it's like being them.
28: I imagine that the effect will wear off after a while.
At this point, she's planning to keep playing rugby indefinitely.
Okay. I meant that she's likely to figure out at some point as she grows older that expecting other people to get out of the way, both literally and figuratively, is not going to work very well.
Oh my god, now she's exactly like everyone else in Inwood. I swear people just walk straight at me.
LB, some deprogramming seems necessary. You're going to have to plant some bigger people in the crowds near her to crash tackle her now and then.
I miss being able to dance through crowds as a kid. It seems rude to use the same tactics now that I'm slightly bigger than average.
Maybe Sally is just going to have to move to Montana or some place where there's lots of space.
32: It's got to work for some people, sometimes, no?
33: Funny, I don't notice Inwood as a problem that way. (Driving, when I do, it's a problem. I've never been in a neighborhood with so much impromptu tripleparking. But not walking.)
I'm always getting out of people's way. And sometimes I get annoyed about it, why shouldn't they be getting out of my way? But I don't actually know what tod do about it.
32: To the extent that I know what you're getting at, which is limited, I think there is an interesting question here about manners/civilized behavior in crowds. When you've got a collision or near-collision on the sidewalk, it's because neither party dodged. How do you tell who broke the rules? What are the rules? Are they good rules?
I have very specific rules for who should give way when that exist in my head. Other people do not necessarily seem to know these rules. I generally don't run into people if they are not being in compliance with the rules in my head, but I probably make it clear that I am giving way begrudgingly.
28: Never explain, LB. People gotta keep up or be too embarrassed to ask.
I remember walking on busy sidewalks in Berkeley and noticing I deferred to big men and deciding "fuck that" and just walking straight without yielding. Some times I gave at the last minute (and got mad at myself), sometimes we did shoulder checks, and sometimes they got surprised and yielded. I still think, 'fuck that', but now the sidewalks aren't especially crowded.
39: That's not necessarily what I getting at -- I was more interested in the figurative sense in which one might expect others to get out of the way -- but sure, in terms of urban rules: it differs from city to city, I'm pretty sure. In some places, you are not to look the other person in the eye, or smile at them. In other places, it's okay to do that.
If you walk around with a chainsaw and a t-shirt that says "I will use this chainsaw on your fucking face" then problem solved.
Not that topically but not totally untopical: Last week I yelled at somebody for not picking up dog shit on the sidewalk. It wasn't even a sidewalk where I usually walk. She said she didn't notice her dog shit on the sidewalk, but it was a huge shit. To be fair to her, she either picked-up the shit or stayed back to pretend like she picked up the shit until I'd passed from sight.
I felt vaguely like I'd crossed a bridge in terms of social norm upholding.
The only thing I actively notice as bad behavior is groups eating the whole width of the sidewalk. Individuals, I dodge or am dodged by without thinking about it, mostly.
42: I was more interested in the figurative sense in which one might expect others to get out of the way
Same issues apply, don't they? If one person's giving way, one person isn't. It's always interesting figuring out who and why.
45: right, that's mostly what bothers me. Also, when the sidewalk narrows to make room for a tree, don't make the oncoming person walk in the poop-filled tree-cavity, jerks.
Also if your stroller is big enough for two six-year-old children to be sitting side-by-side facing each other playing a game that involves toys strewn across what appears to be an honest-to-god center console, your stroller is too big.
The only thing I actively notice as bad behavior is groups eating the whole width of the sidewalk.
Oh yes hate hate hate hate hate.
Especially when I'm walking behind them and practically stepping on their heels and they still don't get the message and shift to let me through. I swear, I have to walk into the street to get around groups about five times a day. HATE.
in the poop-filled tree-cavity
Trees have anuses.
I'm kind of sick at the moment and I've noticed a side effect either of the sickness or of medicine is making me a lot less patient than usual. Some amount of hate may be overstated in the comment above. Also, if I call you a moron today, I probably don't really mean it, or at least I would usually have the good sense to keep it to myself.
I'm impressed that Megan managed to clear the sidewalks.
N.B. the sidewalks here are way less wide than they are in New York. A group of three (or even two) abreast is easily enough to block the majority of sidewalks.
N.B. the sidewalks here are way less wide than they are in New York.
But compared to Florence, it's like there are whole acres to frolic in.
I find it hard to believe the dogwalker did not notice her dog shitting. That's mission accomplished, right there.
Florence, where tourists are encouraged to carry tiny flags to mark the location of their bodies in case they are crushed beneat the peopl-anche.
51: Also, if I call you a moron today, I probably don't really mean it, or at least I would usually have the good sense to keep it to myself.
Let's talk about ... quarks!
I swear, I have to walk into the street to get around groups about five times a day.
I dunno, when I'm walking faster than other people and overtake them from behind I'm not sure they need to yield. Why should't I just slow down? (I mean, I can't slow down because I walk fast, but still.) If the slow people can cluster up a bit to make room, I appreciate it, but I also usually don't mind stepping out into the street. Except when there's snow on the ground, or lots of puddles and rain. I guess this is complicated. Parsimon, a ruling please?
It's weird looking at a quark in a mirror and suddenly up is down.
55: She had bags with her, so maybe. She was actively trying to delay the dog from shitting by keeping him from squatting.
essear should carry an airhorn. One, it would definitely work, and two, people in his vocation need eccentric affectations like that.
sometimes we did shoulder checks
I can think of twice I've done a solid shoulder check on someone on the sidewalk. Once I don't feel bad about at all; I've told the story here before. I was jogging on a sidewalk with tightly packed parked cars on the street side, so bottled in between the cars and the building. A bunch of young teenage boys (on an otherwise empty sidewalk) saw me coming, and (I'm speculating, but it seemed to be what was happening) spread out so there weren't any gaps big enough to run through. The vibe wasn't threatening, just that they were being assholes to see if they could make me stop. So I ran at the biggest gap there was, and clipped one of the kids hard enough to spin him around as I passed through.
The other one, I'm probably someone's how-awful-New-Yorkers-are story. Times Square, I was carrying very heavy, fragile, bags that were hurting my hands, and I really didn't want to stop and put them down. A bunch of tourists were spread out chatting and blocking the whole sidewalk, looking right at people (including me) walking towards them. Rather than stopping and asking permission to get by, I walked at a gap without slowing down. I figured someone would step out of my way at the last minute, but was wrong: again, I clipped a woman pretty hard. That, I feel a little bad about -- if I hadn't had my hands full of heavy stuff, I would have stopped and said excuse me. But I don't understand at all why you'd look at someone trying to walk down a sidewalk and not get out of their way.
A mirror that breaks isospin is seven yoctoseconds of bad luck.
59: On this, I think there are objective standards -- that if you're walking slowly enough, you're responsible for leaving space to get by you. You can walk at whatever speed you want, but you shouldn't (where possible) veto someone else's decision to walk faster. But I also have no objection to walking in the street to get around people where it's possible and necessary.
The truth is that all of us pedestrians are playing into the hands of Big Car by fighting over the few scraps of public city right-of-way we are allowed. We -- the walkers, the bikers, people in wheelchairs, owners of reasonably-sized strollers -- should be uniting to cast off the bonds of motonormative oppression. This is explained well in Howard Zinn's Traffic Do's & Don'ts.
65: I think only parsimon's ruling can really count here.
It's weird looking at a quark in a mirror and suddenly up is down.
Very strange indeed.
I really love walking down the middle of a major street, like Smearcase and I did when we caught the end of the Honk Parade from Porter to Harvard Square, or like during a big blizzard. There's so much empty space given over to cars.
Dammit, 68 is just me leaving money on the table.
airhorn.
OK, but only use it over a closed stall door in the public restroom.
sometimes we did shoulder checks
This always happens when I get in my mode described in 5. It's interesting who apologizes and who is outraged.
I don't think I've ever deliberately shoulder-checked people on sidewalks, but there have been a number of times when I was getting off of trains or buses. On grumpy days I would kind of hope that some moron would try to sneak in the door before people had a chance to get out, so I'd have an excuse. It rarely helped.
But I don't understand at all why you'd look at someone trying to walk down a sidewalk and not get out of their way.
So now we know where your kids get it from...
63: I had the overtaking slow people blocking the way problem a lot skiing in Italy last winter. I found that a whoop was usually effective.
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A friend of mine just got named "der neue Improviser in Residence" of a small German town for next year. The hell? To give a bit of context, he is a musician, but I stil find that weird.
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http://gravyboat.tripod.com/sound/getrough.wav
8: rather than knocking them over on impact.
This post and some of the early comments did make me reflect on the fact that in my experience there has been little in my life that has been as satisfying in the moment as delivering* a solid shoulder-led tackle to someone's mid-section (say mid-thigh to mid-chest) with subsequent wrap-up and "knock over" . Rarely situationally-appropriate**, and I haven't delivered a real one in over 25 years, but utterly satisfying when you got the chance. The first real one I recall was when the skinny teenager next door was "teaching" me how to stay low when I was 7 or 8, and I hauled off and did one just right and toppled him over cleanly. I always was a psychopath solidly-built.
*Receiving a good clean one is not really that bad either, although it generally represented the thwarting of ones immediate sporting goals (but getting crunched just after well-timed lateral in Rugby was the great).
**Not always even in game situations when it's you stopping the guy with the ball. But I'd usually go for it anyway.
77 is why socialism can't come fast enough. When I get tired of having people with millions of dollars' worth of problems calling me on the phone to fix their problems, I want to be der neue Improviser in Residence.
77: Is that why we have the phrase Jerry-rigged?
It's interesting who apologizes and who is outraged.
It's interesting how free the ladies are with the shoulder checks. If guys do this there's a chance someone will respond by taking a swing at you.
We don't have that phrase. We have the two similar but distinct phrases, jury-rigged and jerry-built.
83: The shoulder check is mutual; the guys Blume and Megan are shoulder-checking are shoulder-checking in return. So not so unbalanced. (My two stories are more on me, as both times I hit someone stationary, admittedly.)
83. Monstrous effect of the American feminism clearly detectable.
88
in nyc subway someone always offers me to help carry a suitcase up or down the stairs, men and women alike, i always thank them no, cz usually those are not that heavy, so newyorkers seem are mostly polite and considerate people
Posted by: | Link to this comment | 12-12-12 1:49 PM
89
what, i typed a lot to not say niceties to obnoxious white middle aged women who feel entitled to open doors
hope LB's daughter will learn holding doors for others in return to the same favors
Posted by: | Link to this comment | 12-12-12 2:03 PM
Well, I was only checking guys who hadn't moved out the way with plenty of advance visibility. I hadn't either, but why should it always be me?
why should it always be me?
Exactly this.
I hadn't either, but why should it always be me?
Because they're being criminally rude and you'd rather not be?
Generally, whoever is walking faster has a responsibility to go around, swerve or otherwise move to avoid people who are moving more slowly. This applies equally to people moving in the same direction and to people moving in opposite directions. If two people are walking towards one another at exactly the same speed, whichever of the two persons has more clear space on their right has a responsibilty to move out of the way. If two people are walking towards one another at exactly the same speed and both have exactly the same amount of clear space on their right, both people have a responsibilty to move.
Why do relative speeds matter for head-on interactions? But generally, those are pretty good rules, except that I'd want something about not blocking the whole sidewalk.
I always pass curb side when I'm walking past a lady because I'm a feminist.
So wait, if a group of people is standing blocking the entire sidewalk, everybody going by has a responsibility to go out into the street? urple is nuts.
Round here, I do a lot of not getting out of the way when there are twats on bikes on the pavement. With pedestrians, I feel it's mutual. I also have done a lot of training my kids not to be arseholes (blocking pavements etc).
One of the reasons I was happy to move out of Oxford was the tourists and eurokids - when approaching an inevitably-pavement-blocking group with the buggy, I would yell excuse me and then just push the buggy into them. I blame their handlers though, they really should know better.
Why do relative speeds matter for head-on interactions?
Because the person moving faster is scanning farther along as they go, because they're coming up on people more quickly.
Once some stupid frathole shoulder-checked me and then yelled "Your fault!" back at me when I turned to look at him and his three or four fellow-holes. Christ, what an asshole.
Not that there aren't at least five reasons why this never, ever comes up in my life.
Because they're being criminally rude and you'd rather not be?
Except that it's not always so clear as that to all parties involved. Dudes (and it is often mostly dudes) are just walking down the sidewalk, not even realizing their assumption that you're going to make way for them. If we run into each other and they wonder for even a second how that happened, well good.
Any slow-moving person who is moving at any angle at all to the direction of the sidewalk has an obligation to look out for other pedestrians and to get the fuck out of the way. If they're staying strictly parallel to the street, it's legitimately on others to avoid them.
And honestly, for all their many, many, many flaws, Texan men defer to a woman on the sidewalk so early that you can't preempt it. (And why would you?) You can certainly acknowledge and thank and be polite, and even mutually step aside the other way, but you wouldn't regularly be ignored.
Round here, I do a lot of not getting out of the way when there are twats on bikes on the pavement.
This seems uncontroversial.
Why do relative speeds matter for head-on interactions?
If you take two eggs and, while moving one and holding the other still, smash them together, the egg that was still will break.
I walk faster than most people and end up doing a lot of weaving and swerving. I only full-on body-check people who try to get on the subway when I'm getting off. I always say "Excuse me!" in an offended voice (because I'm getting pissier as I get older.)
101.--God, this would annoy me so much.
If you take two eggs and, while moving one and holding the other still, smash them together, the egg that was still will break.
No, the fifth egg on the far side of the line-up will swing out.
I have done 41.2 also; got tired of hopping into the street or up onto stoops (in Capitol Hill in Seattle), decided that I would move right until my right foot was brushing the edge of the sidewalk and just keep going.
Most men unthinkingly thumped into me and looked surprised, most women were generally moving aside already. There was a style of gay masculinity that sauntered all over the sidewalk, got shoulder-checked, and complained loudly. On the other hand, butch women came along without altering line and then, mysteriously, we brushed past each other with no visible swerving, just by being on our outer feet. Quite seductive.
106: How come? (I'm pretty indifferent to it one way or the other, but I'm curious.)
104, 107: wait, is one of the eggs upside-down?
101,106:Second nature to me, but then I usually have 150 pounds of dog with me.
But even without the dogs. I will open the door for anyone. My experience is that other guys do it for me.
Annoying? Sure, it's competitive politeness. Such anagonism won't make the world a worse place.
There's a standard width for US sidewalks -- subsidiary to Big Car -- and it makes me nuts when sidewalk-rollers are designed to be wider than that; Segways or strollers. What, you think you're a unique purchaser of mass-produced goods? (Oh.)
109.--I get to be mostly gender-neutral a lot of the time, until I decide otherwise. To have a whole bunch of strangers decide to mark me as a woman gets really tiring.
Agh, wider than half the width of the standard sidewalk. A f wider than the whole.
In NYC, everyone holds doors, and you're also supposed to thank the holder. Not doing so puts you at some risk of being yelled at.
|| My boss told me today, that come January, I'm getting laid off, and I should start looking for a new job. Damnit.|>
Sorry to hear that. That's really shitty advance notice on top of it.
101, 106: I also do that by second nature excepting women much younger than me. I'm on a college campus and the kids are so often slow and oblivious that I just can't stand it.
I do love the word "excepting".
5: This may not be US-universal, but I've learned that if you do not make eye contact with oncoming foot traffic, while walking briskly toward the biggest existing gap in it, the opposition will yield. Looking like you're thinking about how best to kill someone when you reach your destination may help, also.
When I make eye contact it all too often turns into the simultaneous-yield-to-the-same-side-back-and-forth dance or other awkwardness.
While working on my general self-assertiveness over the last few years, it struck me as really strange that people don't get out of my way. I'm not particularly large, but at 5' 11" I'm taller than average, I walk quite fast, and my default facial expression is grumpy. I'd think people would want to dodge.
The only thing I actively notice as bad behavior is groups eating the whole width of the sidewalk.
I view these as opportunities to play Red Rover.
I yield to people who smile.
Aww.
Halford takes the opportunity to shove steak tartare down their gullets.
128 to 126, and the same to LRT. What a rotten time of year to tell you.
Ow, LRT.
Frivolously, the next meetups should play Red Rover.
What everyone else has said, LRT, bad news and terrible timing/advance notice.
I wish you luck.
Yes, 117 sucks. Around here, some management have taken to invoking the freaking "fiscal cliff" in ominous tones ("It's why we can't have nice things.").
Whatever its behind closed doors political lobbying sins may or may not be, my employer had up until very recently blessedly refrained from doing anything more than urge employees to vote. Now a PAC has been formed, and we are encouraged to write our reps/Senators about the fiscal cliff in terms straight out of the conventional Beltway wisdom playbook.
Light Rail Tycoon, that is rotten. I hope you find a new job quickly.
LRT is stras i thought, maybe he is not, you were in the hospital with some serious infection some time ago, iirc, no? seems a little difficult year for you, hope you will find a job in a short time, if one is healthy everything else will fall into a good order eventually
as unfogged is such a great and mighty community of inseparable friends you should provide some sort of networking in this kind of situations perhaps really helping out someone you care about
but i recall a car drive for thorn's protege, so maybe you are the good peopleÂ
Thanks guys, I'm 28, and I've never lost a job, and this was also my first real job, I had for 4.5 years, so the whole thing still feels not-quite-real. I'm going to see what I can find on the market, and if nothing comes up before then, I think I'll finish my BA in the fall.
117: Yeah, that is a drag. I would offer assistance, but most of my relatives up your way are broke as hell and just getting broker.
That sucks, LRT. I don't quite remember who you are, I'm afraid: someone here, a very occasional commenter, is a baker (works in the wee hours of the night) - is that you?
Tough break in a bad year. Best of luck.
Good luck, light rail. (Death to bus rapid transit?)
139: Okay! Erm, baking establishments -- of the bread-making kind -- seem to be closing down left and right around here, but that's on the east coast. Baking of the more fancy kind (desserts) maybe okay. I don't know if you want to continue in that line of work. A BA probably never hurt anyone.
There is another commenter here who has been a baker, but I have no idea if that's of any use.
Another commenter was a baker? In China?
And that really sucks, LRT. There's no good time of the year to be laid off, but this time of year is especially tough.
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Being passive-aggressive is the right move sometimes. Finally I have managed to cause enough minor headaches for my co-workers, to balance out the ones they give me. I think there is even a slight surplus, so I can be nice over the holidays!
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The baking was done in China? Well, I have no idea about that. Perhaps the ovens there are calibrated every whichaway.
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I'm kind of a sad person lately. A good friend's 18-month-old daughter has brain cancer. She's had one surgery so far, another scheduled in a few weeks, is on chemotherapy in the meantime, and an IV ... it's hard to avoid the conclusion that she's not going to make it. But maybe she will! Since it's the holiday season, one is not supposed to speak of these things, but damn, there's a whole lot of grief going on.
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148: Yeah, that's tough. Other aspects of life seem small in comparison.
148: That's really awful. I'm sorry to hear that.
It is awful. I don't want to burden this place with it; it's more an explanation for any untoward behavior on my part in the next while and last few weeks. It sure does bring a person up short. My friends are being incredibly heroic.
That's terrible, parsi. Love and peace.
Oh, sad news, parsi. As in a field a silken tent, but in a storm.
Wow, 117 and 148 are both terrible. (Although the edge definitely goes to 148.) Sympathy all around.
Sympathies to both LRT and parsi, serious illness is awful.
I had dinner with bakers who work near St Louis about a month ago. One mentioned taking on people. Where are you?
Last week I yelled at somebody for not picking up dog shit on the sidewalk.
Please come to Inwood any time.
The other day I said to some idiot kids who threw trash onto the street "there's a garbage can right there" because for some reason I can talk to people about the injustices of their lives for two hours and switch right into "what's for lunch?" mode but the sight of littering makes me irate. As anyone could foresee, they just totally ignored me. It would have taken not one calorie more of effort to put the fucking Four Loko can in the trash can. Throwing it on the sidewalk was an act of Fuck You to the world. Argh. ARGH.
I don't even know where Inwood is.
To be fair once they started drinking Four Loko I think the "fuck you to the world" ship had sort of sailed.
I never tried it. Is it really that bad?
I would have stopped and said excuse me.
I have a theory that the words "excuse me" have no meaning in the local dialect. Almost nobody ever says it and when I say it, it seems not to register. To say it seems to be like saying "bless you" if someone coughed: it just doesn't make any sense to anyone. I've tried to remind myself that this is not worth getting mad over.
I sometimes shoulder check people if they're leaving no way off the subway. I just walk straight ahead because it's a doorway and it is for walking through.
This thread is bringing up everything about NYC that makes me ragey, and I'm still on like comment 66.
Christ, parsimon, best to you and your friends. So awful.
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So you know we just had this mass shooting here, right? The weird and horrible thing, apart of course from the incident itself, is how ordinary the whole situation had become not even 24 hours later. At first it was all over the news; the local public radio station (it was right before and during ATC) was all over it, it seemed like everyone was kind of buzzing about it--but then today, it was like, ho-hum, another mass shooting. Not enough of a body count to get worked up about, plus as we all know, this is not the time to initiate a conversation about gun control and mental illness. Happens all the time. Processed, done, move on.
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a conversation about gun control and mental illness
That's going to be the theme of my 25th high school reunion. I have to do the banners, if you have any ideas.
Our prom theme involved Billy Joel, so we're actually getting better as we get older.
I also shoulder check people who pwn me en masse about getting off the subway. EXCUSE ME.
Only 2 or possibly 3 people are dead! Barely worth a passing thought.
And then it turned out the thread had gotten sad and I was making little jokes.
162: I was just saying to my wife that unless someone climbs a tower with a sniper rifle (and guns down scores of people), or dresses as a cartoon villain (and guns down scores of people), or is Muslim (and shoulder-checks someone coming off the subway), nobody really notices any more. It's pretty grim here in the US of A.
Also, parsi, I hope everything works out for your friend's child. And LRT, I hope you find fulfilling work very quickly.
Speaking of tragic deaths, this Josh Marshall post only touches very slightly on what is I think the obvious explanation of the phenomenon he describes, which is that famous musicians die in plane crashes unusually often because they fly so much. Alaskans (and Alaskan politicians in particular) also have a much higher risk of dying in plane crashes than the average American, for the same reason.
Oh man, Parsimon. That's horrible. Thoughts going your way.
171: not just fly a lot, but fly a lot on chartered planes, which is a great way to improve your chances of getting dead. I once had the chance to take a helicopter from Vancouver up to the headwaters of the Stikine River. This was long before I became terrified of flying, and I still said no. (No, the helicopter didn't crash. Yes, that was a story without a payoff. Whatever. You're not the boss of me.)
nobody really notices any more. It's pretty grim here in the US of A.
Economically yes, but from a crime rate perspective things are relatively good.
174: true. But aren't mass killings on the rise?
I shouldn't have phrased it like that, as I have no idea if mass killings are on the rise. Sorry for leading the witness, your honor.
I once had the chance to take a helicopter from Vancouver up to the headwaters of the Stikine River.
That's a long way, especially in a helicopter.
I'm actually not sure if they're on the rise either. Kind of feels that way sometimes.
Maybe it's just old age? Events seem closer together than they used to?
When I was 18, it felt like the mass killings actually mattered, man.
It's because you had hopes that, someday, you too could grow up to be a mass killer. Now that dream is dead like so many others.
Oh, man. Sympathies to parsimon and friends.
178 and upwards: I don't know that they're on the rise either, and my having written that indicates that I'm not inclined to do the research right now to say one way or the other. But I'm convinced that they've become common enough that they're just another horrible thing that people accept as long as we can process them efficiently, and that's horrifying.
To an extent being able to process this kind of thing is important in that from time to time a member of the herd is going to go off the rails and do something crazy. Sometimes the only option is going to be putting that guy down as fast as posssible and moving on because you can't prevent everything. Or maybe I'm just saying this because I'm drunk and watching Batman Begins on my night off.
getting crunched just after well-timed lateral in Rugby was the great
ah, well. then your immediate goal is, in fact, to get taken out and therefore remove the defender at the peak of the umbrella defence from the game. an expert will actually pick out the defender in the approach to the play, showing them the ball, holding the pass until, ideally, just too late, so the acting half and the defender end up 30 yards behind the play in a heap, leaving the winger and fullback with a 2 v 1 finish.
I remember when I finally grokked the detail that your felt wish in this situation is to get hit; it was Leeds vs. Bradford back when Robbie Paul was in his pomp, I was in the North stand at Headingley and Bradford were practicing their attack drills in front of me before the game. RP, Steve McNamara, and the back line, with three of the forwards as the clockwork mice. First walking through it, then jogging, then repeatedly belting through it at full power. On the second set from the kick-off, they got to about 35 yards out with 2 tackles remaining, gave the signal, and they scored just like that. And then they did it again, twice more. Every time, RP let go the key pass just the instant after the defender (usually Anthony Farrell, one of the hardest men in the game at the time) hit him.
It was pretty impressive that they had such confidence to let everyone in the ground, including the whole Leeds squad, see the hidden wiring in the machine before they turned it on.
185.1: Yes, I cited that as an example where getting clobbered represented not a "thwarting of ones immediate sporting goals" but a furthering of them. The American football equivalent comes up a lot in running the option. Which is one of the reasons why teams in the NFL don't.
171: sports players. Esp top immediately post-war European football clubs.
171: Alaskans (and Alaskan politicians in particular) also have a much higher risk of dying in plane crashes than the average American, for the same reason.
US Senators seem prone as well. Off the top of my head, Hale Boggs (but in Alaska*) Paul Wellstone, Heinz and Stevens (he may have been retired at the time).
*But the CIA/Mafia/Castro/ghost of LBJ sabotaged that flight because Boggs knew too much about the JFK assassination.
171: I read the crash report from the crash that killed Aaliyah, and IIRC the basic cause was that up front you had a very small singer, and in the back you had her two enormous bodyguards and her enormous luggage, and so the aircraft took off, went tail-down, stalled out and crashed just after the end of the runway. The pilot tried to balance out the load, but the Star gets to sit where she wants, and the Help ride in the back.
Bit of googling: memory slightly at fault - there were 8 people in total, so the bird was both overloaded and badly loaded.
Trouble in the air is very rare. It is hitting the ground that causes it.
One of the reasons I was happy to move out of Oxford was the tourists and eurokids
Amen. Eurokids. Arggh. Noisy,* rude packs of them.
* Sometimes I can't believe how loud Spanish kids seem to be. Sitting next to each other, quite literally shouting at the top of their voices.
171: post-war European sportsmen, because a) they flew a lot, b) when aeroplanes were fucking dangerous, c) in North-west European winters.
Regarding politicians and small planes, the only recent case of this in Britain I can think of was when loon extreme-right pol Nigel Farage hired a plane to trail an election-day banner over his target constituency. Of course, this required Farage to go up in the plane in order to "observe the aerial work" in the words of the official report, or in everyone else's, on a jolly pretending to be Biggles.
The pickup process for the banner is kinda exciting and redolent of 1920s barnstormers - it involves a big loop of rope hung between two poles and a low pass to snag it on a hook - and it went badly wrong. They both survived, but the pilot was obviously affected by the experience as he later ended up in trouble with the law after showing up at Farage's house and assaulting him.
I don't think I make a habit of barging or shoulder-checking people. Sometimes there can be something almost quite pleasant about the process of moving seamlessly through a crowd, everyone moving in that unconscious co-ordination. Generally it goes smoothly, but very occasionally it doesn't, and I understand why people get so annoyed when someone seems to break the rules, or cause an obstruction for no good reason. They are fucking with the smooth flow of things.
I do occasionally choose not to move out of the way, which I suppose is much the same as shoulder-checking someone, as when you are carrying 200lbs or so of flab/bulk and set your weight just-so, people do tend to bounce off. The only times I can remember consciously making that choice is when someone else is plowing aggressively towards me, or when it's a group who are being obstructive arseholes (much as LB described above). In those cases I guess at the back of my mind I'm thinking, 'Go on, take a swing, see what happens.'*
* not that anyone ever does, and not that I actually try to pick fights.
Also, during the 2005 election and possibly the 2010 one, the Liberal Democrat party leader travelled around the UK in a Cessna 404 piloted by Liberal MP Lembit Opik, whose aircraft it was.
Opik is also known for being deeply concerned about asteroids, leaving his wife for one of the Cheeky Girls, and doing a lot of reality TV, not being someone who gets much reality in the rest of his life. Unfortunately for the nation, he appears to be a reasonably competent pilot or at least the big-sky principle was working for him.
I'd forgotten that Farage's pilot threatened to shoot him and also the AAIB crash investigator.
It sounds like he didn't even really have a gun.
The pickup process for the banner is kinda exciting and redolent of 1920s barnstormers - it involves a big loop of rope hung between two poles and a low pass to snag it on a hook - and it went badly wrong.
I didn't know that. I assumed they just took off and then unrolled it from the back of the aircraft in flight.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But that wouldn't be dangerous enough.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But that wouldn't be dangerous enough.
What's even more amazing is that before landing they have to unhook it by doing the same thing backwards.
The process for returning film capsules from spy satellites used to involve a mid-air catch maneuver in which an aircraft would snag the parachute of the capsule using a big trailing loop of wire. Now they just squirt everything back digitally, which isn't half the fun.
202: I especially like the British weather in that clip. You might think it's no day to be out in a light aircraft....but no! we're going to do some sort of crazy weird low-level manoeuvring with several hundred feet of cable and hooks! even though the weather is so vile nobody on the ground will see the banner!
(and of course we're advertising a rock festival)
203: they lack front-back symmetry.
204: then there's the process of returning actual spies from unfriendly territory using a similar technique.
203:
-- Cheneral Montgomery is alvays flying backvards und forvards between Africa and England.
-- Zey haff planes zat fly backvards?
206: Yes! The crazy shit with the balloon! I can't imagine how much it would suck being the guy swooped up like that. Better than getting captured, tortured, and shot I suppose.
208: according to James Bamford, Body of Secrets, it sucked still more doing it in a high wind. A couple of NSA blokes jumped onto an abandoned Soviet station on an ice floe in the high Arctic and relied on this to get them out again (floe too small for landing, too remote for helis, inaccessible to ships).
So they finished what they were doing, put the kit on and inflated the balloon. Trouble is that the wind got up at that point, so instead of just standing there on the floe waiting to be yanked into the air, they were dragged off downwind as the balloon caught the wind, banging into bits of ice, falling into the sea, etc. It was quite a relief when the C-130 actually picked them up.
I think that probably sucked quite a lot for them.
175
174: true. But aren't mass killings on the rise?
According to this there is no obvious trend. And 100 deaths a year isn't really very many. About 200 people a year are killed running into deer .
I really have to wonder about the wikipedia editor who decided that page really needed a picture of dead deer and that said picture just had to be at the very top.
211: Rudolph!
I suspect the bloody nose foam is the reason* it's up this time of year. See if it stays up.
*Maybe I'm just perverse.
100 deaths a year isn't really very many.
Not compared to the 31,347 people who are shot dead in the US every year, no.
(Corresponding figure for the UK: 51.)
Wiki: A deer-vehicle collision occurs when one or more deer and a human-operated vehicle collide on a roadway
As opposed to what other kind of vehicle, exactly? Or are they being careful to exclude deer running into parked cars?
213: But we have five times the population, so it is really only like 6,000 compared to 51.
214: It excludes deer-Roomba collisions, which would skew the stats.
I presume deer versus automatic rather than human-controlled transport systems isn't that uncommon. I'm thinking of driverless metro systems, coal and logging transports, and so on.
I presume deer versus automatic rather than human-controlled transport systems isn't that uncommon. I'm thinking of driverless metro systems, coal and logging transports, and so on.
213
(Corresponding figure for the UK: 51.)
According to this site there were 138 firearms deaths in the UK in 2009.
|| I don't know if it was the right or wrong decision, but Rice withdrawing her name from SoS infuriates me. Feckless.
|>
220: I can see various reasons why she might have done it. my reaction is more a general sadness. More evidence that the terrorists won a partial victory.
Agreed. I don't even know if I would like her as Secretary (I don't know enough) and I can understand not wanting to be the target, but this is such a ridiculous non-scandal.
Obviously, the ambassador to the UN is to blame for the security of diplomats in Africa.
According to this site there were 138 firearms deaths in the UK in 2009.
That's very interesting James! But in 2011 there were 51.
|| In order to encourage men to try harder in physical sports or the endurance of hardship - running, loaded marches, etc - it is customary to exhort them to Man Up. I am now supervising mixed groups in such activities and have started exhorting the female members to Woman Up - on the (possibly a posteriori) grounds that I am encouraging them to be stoical, robust, self-reliant and in general to exhibit other qualities associated not with masculinity but with adulthood in general.
Am I wrong to do so? What phrase would be preferable?
PS: I am not Drill Sergeant Nosflow.
|>
Having watched too much kiddie TV on Netflix, I think you should tell them to "Ranger up" and then wave their cell phones in their air.
224: You guys have a good year or what?
224
That's very interesting James! But in 2011 there were 51.
You have a source?
Yeah, because it is really important that the UK death rate from firearms is only 20% of the US's instead of 10%.
I mean, that's what really matters here, right?
You care to share it?
Can't be bothered, sorry. Pearls before swine.
Not compared to the 31,347 people who are shot dead in the US every year, no.
31,374 now.
Sure, the death rate for firearms is lower, but it's more interesting that the total rate is lower. (Not very much more interesting, since this has been rehashed eternally on the internet, but still. Getting stabbed to death is pretty bad, too.) According to The Guardian, there were 551 homicides in England and Wales from July 2011 to June 2012 (not intentionally including NI and Scotland, this was just the easiest recent data for me to find on total homicides). Using Wikipedia for population data, that's 0.98 murders per 100,000. For the United States, in 2010 there were 14,748 murders in a population of 308,745,538, giving a rate of 4.78 per 100,000. Which gives us comparative rates very close to what AG said in 231.
Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls
It makes sense that firearms murders wouldn't simply substitute for other murders -- the guy who just shot up the Connecticut school wouldn't have been able to produce nearly the same deathtoll without a gun.
237: That, and single person homicides require more physical courage without a firearm.
Except that even considering how easy guns are to get, the rate of murders in the U.S. without guns is higher than the rate of murders in the U.K. overall.
233
58 > 51 and that appears not to include suicides.
Unfogged continues to be the NYT's assignment editor.