in countries such as trinidad and tobago, a former british colony where folks still drive on the left hand side of the road, the patterns hold for off road travel/ambling/etc, ogged...
maybe in the next post when you're talking of the british commonwealth you'll make sure to list a few countries that have majority non-white population...
(apologies for the snarky comment...this is my first blog comment ever and i'm trying to figure out the proper mix of snarkiness, politeness, aggression, wit, etc)
Yes. I lived in New Zealand for a year and by the end I would naturally break to the left to pass another pedestrian. I've been back almost a year and sometimes I still break to the left (that's the hand you use... well, nevermind).
maybe in the next post when you're talking of the british commonwealth you'll make sure to list a few countries that have majority non-white population...
My very own "What about Poland?" comment, but funnier.
That said, thanks for the answer, folks. I guess it would have been strange if people drove and walked on different sides.
An odd aside, Sweden used to drive left, but rather than have cars that were right hand drive, as in England, but had cars that were left hand drive, as here in the states. I guess it was a neutrality thing.
The aprocryphal story is that Sweden switched to driving right at midnight Dec. 31/Jan.1. Oh, if that were true.
I'm not British, so I don't know if I can generalize, but when I was in London the pattern on the escalators seemed to be: stand on the right and walk on the left - just like in the States.
Sweden did switch from left to right, but in line with their moderate approach to life, they did so gradually, over a period of three months. First the big trucks and buses, then a month later smaller trucks, ...
That's funny, Bob. I love Swedes, except that I've sworn off them.
Those wacky Commonwealth types (plus Japan) even spin their revolving doors clockwise. Remember this or you may just get a faceful of door.
What is American sidewalk protocol? Is it the same in Britain?
I've heard people come out with the old 'those crazy Swedes switched from left to right overnight!' story for many decades. I'd like to know why they think a gradual approach would be preferable.
Which side of the road do they drive on in the Chunnel?
Anthony, I think the joke is that a gradual approach would be completely unworkable.
Is there a philosophical label for a rule which is completely arbitrary, except that once the rule is set, it's necessary to follow it? I call it the "Right-side Rule", but there must be an accepted name.
I would guess that when the rule was switched in Sweden, there was a fair amount of indignant argument explaining why driving on the left was in every way much better.
If not, the Swedes are WAY too sensible. You need to have a few wack jobs for society to run smoothly.
John, I think it's a 'convention'. David Lewis has a book (his first?) investigating how conventions are used to solve coordination problems--it's important that everyone drive on the same side of the road, but it's not important which side it be. One of the interesting applications of this involves the question of whether the meanings of words are conventional.
I'm not sure that the wack jobs are necessary for society to run smoothly--more that we're necessary to keep society from running smoothly to someplace it oughtn't to be.
The straight dope about the switch in Sweden. Confirmed by my Swedish neighbor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_the_road#Sweden
In physics we call it "spontaneous symmetry breaking", which is a good argument for not letting physicists name things.
I'm from India myself. I am also a klutz. For a year after I came to the US, I didn't realize that the reason I kept bumping into people on the sidewalk was that the protocol had changed. I just assumed it was me being klutzy unable to figure out how to walk without bumping into people in a strange new land. Then one day my friend asked me how I was dealing with the new protocol, and then it all came together. Now I have the opposite problem when I go to India on vacation. And sometimes on the street I break to the left just to watch the oncoming person freeze in indecision.
So you've gone from blaming yourself for things that aren't your fault to tormenting third-worlders for fun. Ain't assimilation grand?
The amount of unintentional innuendo in this thread is pushing my Poormanian Inner Beavis toward a complete loss of his shit. For example:
1) The first comment, while essentially free of innuendo, is jaw-droppingly hilarious
2) Switching from left to right.
3) Response to "switching from left to right": wack jobs make society run smoothly
4) Well, no, wack jobs don't make society run smoothly; they just make sure society doesn't end up in the wrong place
5) The switch from left to right has to be done quickly, not gradually
6) And finally, a guy from India who says he's a klutz reminded me of this wonderful article from the now unfortunately defunct SatireWire.
I guess all I can say to that is: Yes, I want it, more, more, don't stop.
Matt: "Anthony, I think the joke is that a gradual approach would be completely unworkable."
Uh, yeah, I got that, thanks. But believe it or not, I've been told this meme in all seriousness by nincompoops on a number of occasions. I remember patiently explaining to a drunken English nurse on Crete in 1984 that anything other than the all-at-once option (my preferred one is 'Volvos on the left, Saabs on the right') might lead to unpleasantness. I even had to construct a little model using empty retsina bottles.
By my limited observation, there's only a quite mild tendency in the U.S. to walk on the right side of a sidewalk, and even less of any tendency to pass only on the right, the latter being to the point of essential non-existence.
But I don't have a statistical survey on this, and don't intend to look for one.
(I'm also fairly sure that customs in England differ naught from the rest of Britain, but I could be wrong, and perhaps you were excluding Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland because of some point.)
My sidewalking strategy is to make as many cuts and dodges in whatever direction as are necessary to get me out where I belong, in the forefront of the crowd, and anyone who gets in my way had better watch himself, boy howdy!
In my German class which I've now stopped attending because I'm a rudderless fuck, we once had to give sentences using some reflexive verbs among which was sich ärgern; I think I said "ich ärgere mich über die Leute vor mir die zu langsam zum Fuss gehen". I don't even know if that's the right way to talk about walking.
I've found walking in between the curb and the parking meters to be an effective way of passing people on the sidewalk.
I suppose this is kind of like passing on the shoulder when driving. Not that I've done that.
I used to live in a place, which by the way happened to have a majority non-white population (not that that has any relevance to what follows), where apparently it's considered quite normal to try to pass people in the airline aisle as everyone is trying to get on or off the plane. I've never seen it actually work, but I have seen it often attempted.
It's also quite common in this situation for the person behind you to helpfully place their hand in the small of your back and gently push to kind of remind you that you really ought to be moving forward, even though there's no way for you to go any faster due to people in front of you. It's a charming practice, let me tell you.
My elbows grew very sharp in that place, and my considerably long temper much shorter, and upon returning to the States remained that way for quite some time.
1. This is actually a serious research topic in game theory under the header of coordination games. (Read Dixit & Nalebuff's Thinking Strategically, ch. 9, and Tom Schelling's Micromotives & Macrobehavior, ch. 7: "Hockey helmets, daylight savings, and other binary choices" for delightful introductions.)
2. The rule for pedestrians in the absence of sidewalks is to walk on the side with oncoming traffic. There is no rule to pass other pedestrians on the right. This is just a habit adopted from driving.
Is there a philosophical label for a rule which is completely arbitrary, except that once the rule is set, it's necessary to follow it? I call it the "Right-side Rule", but there must be an accepted name.
Self-enforcing convention.
In Canada the keep right rule is quite evident. An interesting adjunt to this is that in elementary school (ages 5-12) the halls were a mess of people walking every which where and dodging one another. The first week of high school (ages 12 to 18) was similar, but after that the new youngest kids had figured out that the older kids walked on the right and the halls sorted out properly.
Ogged, sidewalks in Britain are a complete free-for-all, as if they were peopled by millions of w-lfs-ns (a scary thought, I know). I have discerned no protocol at all.
As for the Chunnel, Mitch, you don't really drive in it. You and your car traverse the Channel in a train, spend a few sweaty moments reminding yourself that you're not in the UK anymore, then get on with your life. (Which involves going to booze warehouses for half-price wine and beer.)
One thing I've wondered is why are races (running, car cacing) run counter-clockwise? I know in Roman times they did had individual "tracks" with a pole at either end. You had to circle the pole. Is it easier for right-handers to turn to the left?
And one last thing. Why do we call long wavelength musical notes "low" and put them low on the staff, while the shorter wavelengths are put high on the staff? The convention started before anyone knew about frequency and wavelengths, and could have been done the opposite and everything would still work. The best guess I've heard is that with the early instruments (kinda like a big clarinet without a reed) you play low notes with all the holes covered, so perhaps the early notation denoted the lowest hole covered as a shorthand.
It's the sensation associated with singing a low or a high note. Try it -- you can feel a low note being produced at the base of your throat, while a high note comes from somewhere up in your sinuses.
a rule which is completely arbitrary, except that once the rule is set, it's necessary to follow it?
"Department policy."
It's the sensation associated with singing a low or a high note. Try it -- you can feel a low note being produced at the base of your throat, while a high note comes from somewhere up in your sinuses.
Apparently this is not the case with trained singers.
Really? I'm not a trained singer, and don't know much about it, but isn't, for example, 'head voice' a term used by trained musicians for singing high notes?
Why does the alphabet start with a? I mean, it could just as arbitrarily start with f.
Oh right--sorry, I was thinking of a different phenomenon. Nevermind.
It's actually all due to the Coriolis force.
Ben W: Sehr gut!
(It's zu Fuss rather than zum Fuss but that's barely worth niggling about.)
I have always thought that German a funny language is. How much clock is it? I know not, but I watch clocks pleasingly.
My dog has no nose.
How does he smell?
Awful!
I found myself expatriated to the UK for a year in the early 90s. Aside from coming back both pregnant and completely unable to ever again donate blood (coinkydink?) I gained the impression that no one in either the UK or the RoI gave a fart which side of the pavement I was on; it would always be the wrong one because somehow they just knew I was an American.
Well, lots of things are conventions, but I was thinking of a term emphasizing the complete arbitrariness of some conventions, which are nonetheless very important.
EG the bride wearing white is a convention, and perhaps completely arbitrary, but not at all important. (In China white is a color of mourning and ghosts, which for me makes it appropriate for weddings, and less arbitrary.)
"Self-enforcing" helps, I guess. I guess I just wish it were a snappier term.
In case anyone wants to discuss the topic which tweedledopey brought up, the more interesting question isn't, "Why does the alphabet start with a?" Rather, the question, which I'm sure other intoxicated youths have pondered, is "why does the alphabet have an order?" My guesses are for mnemonic purposes and because alphabetical order is useful for things like filing, but if someone wants to go back and look at sumerian or something, that'd be interesting.
Wenn is das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
ash
['Light entertainment war.']
"Self-enforcing" helps, I guess. I guess I just wish it were a snappier term.
I'd say Fontana's response beat mine by a mile in terms of snappiness, but "convention" alludes to two things: 1. that the status quo is maintained by some force of habit and 2. (most) other alternatives are not recognizably better or worse. "Self-enforcing" just refers to the fact that no person can individually break the habit without being punished by the convention itself, rather than some punishment mechanism (e.g. if you want to break the right side driving rule you'll eventually get into a head-on collision with some driving on the "right" side of the road).
"why does the alphabet have an order?"
Well the question on which game theorists have spilled a considerable amount of ink is why does the typewriter keyboard start with QWERTY and not something that might be more amenable to touch typing?
Re the QWERTY layout: I thought it was that the layout is designed precisely to prevent fast typing, which jammed manual typewriters.
Yup, it does very well on one dimension though, which is alternating left/right hand typing. So it's not quite as slow as some people claimed, but it's still damn uncomfortable (typing A with pinkie etc.)
A more current example is the phone dial letters which were invented as mnemonic devices but are now used to type txt messages on cell phones, with some of the most frequent letters (i, o, r, s) in very impractical positions. Just another case of a standard or convention outliving its original purpose.
Don't people talk about the 'qwerty effect' in which a non-optimal arrangement is locked in because the cost of changing is too high? Maybe "lock-in" is the more common term for this. Brad Delong has some interesting comments about lock-in and Microsoft's dominance.
Oohh. I actually know the answers to not just the original question, but also some of the comments:-
- generally people who drive on the left, also walk on the left. In Australia and NZ, it's very much a "keep left unless overtaking" rule. If you walk on the right on a busy street, you WILL be glared at. In Dublin, it was much the same, but the excess numbers of those from "over the water" (ie continental europe) meant that it wasn't as strictly observed as by us ANZ types.
- trained singers still sing high notes in their heads and low notes from their chests, it's just that you're taught to think about it as a progression through from your chest to the top of your head so that you have a clean run through the middle notes and there isn't a distinct change-over between your head notes (yes it is a singing term) and your chest notes (put your hand on your chest, you can feel your low notes, but not your high notes). One of the reasons you have to think about it is that you have to think down to your head notes and up to your chest notes so that you are always on key - otherwise, singers tend to go slightly sharp on their high notes and flat on their low notes.
- if you study the history of music, low notes are called low notes (and high notes called high) not just because of the sensation when singing them, but because of the way they are visualised, and played on musical instruments (one of the first musical instruments was a xylophone-like thingo from Asia). The convention actually applied across many ancient languages.
Here endeth the lesson. ;o)
- OLS