But anyone watching will probably just assume that you actually have a conventionally compelling reason to run. So I say, "Run, heebie, run!".
I run and look silly all the time -- one of my favorite things about myself.
Also, if anyone does see you, you can shout out something like "They're coming!" or "Run while you can!" or "There's a lobster loose!" at them. It'll be fun!
You're pretty athletic, right? If you actually are a terrible runner, like me, well then you probably would look silly, but anyone in reasonable shape looks graceful when they're running, even if they don't feel like it.
I run to catch subway trains in Harvard square--which a lot of people do--but there's a big sign saying not to.
5: What's a terrible runner mean?
(have patience, it gets good at the end).
Back in college, I was going to a movie with a friend who I jogged with (slowly, neither of us was in terribly good shape) once, and we miscalculated the time to get there from Hyde Park, and got off the train about a mile from the theater with about ten minutes to get there. And we were really annoyed that we were going to be late. Half a block into the walk, I realized we were both wearing sneakers, and suggested that there was no reason we couldn't run there.
It was the oddest feeling -- I'd never run a distance longer than bus-catching distance because I literally wanted to get there faster before. Maybe not since: it really doesn't come up much. But it was a real light-bulb-over-the-head moment.
Hopping or skipping look silly, but will bring a smile. A running person, somewhere it is unexpected, looks mysterious and interesting.
With the dogs on 12 foot leashes, I would sometimes walk with both hands above my head, and play moving rotating human maypole as they circled me. I presume that did not look dignified.
Maybe if you dance across campus a few times, running won't feel so silly.
What's a terrible runner mean?
Anyone slower than Jesse Owens.
I run a lot (~65 mi last week, frex), and I get shit yelled at me a few times a week. The burnouts on Haight Street and in the Panhandle seem especially fond of yelling at the passing runner, but I do sometimes get yells from more put-together-looking folks as well. It seems to me such an odd compulsion: Why does running in particular seems to make strangers want to chime in with their opinions? (I suppose I'm not a big yeller in general, so my puzzlement is unsurprising.) It does make me wonder whether I look particularly silly for some reason, and so I go between annoyance and self-consciousness.
Things yelled at me, in rough order of frequency: "You can stop running--they're not chasing you."
"Wanna cigarette?"
"Nice shorts!"
The first phrase, or variants thereof, is yelled by far the most often. I get irritated because each yeller of it clearly thinks that he (it's almost always a he) is being soooooo original.
So run, heebie. If enough of us do it, maybe people will quit shouting shit.
Hey, I just realized that this is one of those threads where, in 40 more comments or so, Heebie will say, "I totally meant for this thread to be about goofy confessions, but you guys turned it into a thread about running. But that's OK too!"
I will therefore step up:
I sometimes worry, when I'm pleasuring a woman, that the pleasure will be so intense that she will become like a zombie for my love. But then my superego tells me to just keep going.
Must be a bummer when they start staggering after you, avowing their love for you and attempting to eat your brains.
If the people on this site weren't such snobs about TV (I don't even have a TV that receives network sitcoms), someone could refer to that Friends episode where it turns out that Phoebe runs like a total spaz, and so Rachel is embarrassed to be seen running with her. But then it turns out that running like a spaz is totally freeing (until you run into a cop horse. Because you're such a spaz).
But I guess no one will refer to that.
15 But then my wife tells me to just keep going.
18: Can't trust zombies, man. They may sweet-talk you, but when they get ahold of you it's all about the brains.
17: The British version of Friends was so much better.
I'd probably run more except that I'm always carrying stuff. Running with a shoulder bag just seems unworkable in any graceful way.
22: I carry a backpack. People find that odd too.
24: That is odd. You should wear it on your back instead.
Ha ha! Look, everybody! Peep's carrying a backpack!
I try to not carry stuff when I don't need to, partly because I have a terrible habit of carrying ludicrous amounts -- first aid kit including a mylar sleepsack *and* three days' reading. Having nothing but what's in your pockets is wonderful for the posture.
Of course I put too much stuff in my pockets.
But anyway -- so I can run just because it feels good.
partly because I have a terrible habit of carrying ludicrous amounts
I feel pretty naked if I'm not carrying around about 17 pounds of random crap at all times.
Mostly, I carry a bag so that I'll have some aspirin, an umbrella,something to read, and pen and paper available. But then since I'm already carrying the bag, it gets filled up with all sorts of other junk of varying usefulness as well.
You should yell "The damn has broke!" for ensuing Thurberesque hilarity.
Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he suddenly remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to meet his wife, for which he was now frightfully late. Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street (probably toward the Maramor Restaurant, a favorite place for a man to meet his wife). Somebody else began to run, perhaps a newsboy in high spirits. Another man, a portly gentleman of affairs, broke into a trot. Inside of ten minutes, everybody on High Street from the Union Station to the Courthouse, was running. A loud mumble gradually crystallized into the word "dam." "The dam has broke!" The fear was put into word by a little old lady in an electric, a traffic cop, or by a small boy; nobody knows who, nor does it now really matter. Two thousand people were in full flight. "Go east!" was the cry that arose--east away from the river, east to safety. "Go east! Go east! Go east!"
26: See!
28: That's what I have in my backpack(oh, yeah, also my lunch and a snack). I really only carry it to and from work, but that's most of the travelling I do anyway.
29: That would be appropriate for me, because that's where I live.
Or did you know that, JP?
31.2: Now that you mention it , I recall that, but must admit it was not in my mind as I was writing the comment. Because I would never tell a lie in this forum.
Alternatively, yell: "I've got the Golden Ticket!"
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We desperately need a thread for mocking the trailer for the Tea Party movie. Unbelievable.
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27: You didn't grow up when TEOTWAWKI wasn't mainstream converstion. I tend to carry tools to fix the tools I carry just in case.
33: Oh, man. I love how the "minuteman" guy was standing next to a $7.99 citronella torch from Target. They probably blew all their money on the "in a world..." voiceover guy.
Seriously, can we get a thread that will attract some trolls to make fun of?
35: Having some trouble parsing that. I didn't grow up when we weren't expecting disaster, it's true; and my family runs to engineers and medical types; hence the multi-tool, the latex gloves, spare batteries, Sharpie. And then I'm often carrying wierd things for sampling for my actual life.
I have a friend who regularly carries bolt-cutters and a nonsparking crowbar and I don't even know what all, despite not actually being a chopshop freelance. He's much bigger than I am, though.
37:WTF, I can't get Friday night off? I wanna renegotiate for more pastries and vitriol.
Aw, Bob, I don't even think of you as a troll anymore. More like a cute little goblin.
I want to know what the deal is with the fucking beltway. How do people stand it?
(Yes, I'm at a dead stop).
43: no one takes the beltway anymore; it's too crowded.
Why does running in particular seems to make strangers want to chime in with their opinions?
Oh, riding a bike invites the same thing, not to worry.
When I used to really ride everywhere, I used to get so frustrated by the slow pace of walking on those rare occasions that I was on foot that I'd break into a trot. This does not happen anymore.
40: The trouble is not with your parsing, it's with my writing. The end of the world was something we sort of expected after the CONELRAD alerts, the duck & cover exercises in school, and the earnest discussions of fall-out shelters; how to build them, how to stock them, and how to defend them.
Funny now, deadly serious then:
http://conelrad.com/index.php
I want to know what the deal is with the fucking beltway. How do people stand it?
If we'd just cut taxes and stop building highways there'd be a lot fewer traffic jams and people would have more freedom. I blame Washington for all the traffic on the beltway.
Heee! I run with a backpack, too, peep! I'm nearly late for the train regularly. My backpack weighs a million pounds as I fill it with work that I can not do at home. Sometimes I run with my backpack while smoking a cigarette (take that hecklers of Otto). When I'm not running, I sing along with my iPod out loud.
Oh, riding a bike invites the same thing, not to worry.
Like the pedestrian who recently yelled at me that I needed a light for my bike or else I was going to DIE and it would be ALL MY OWN FAULT.
(FTR, I do have a light, I just didn't have it on. It wasn't dark.)
We desperately need a thread for mocking the trailer for the Tea Party movie. Unbelievable.
I love the shot of the people carefully mapping out their route to the capitol. Like some complicated strategy is required to navigate a city.
48: Cool, DK! I think you even have me beat with the smoking a cigarette while running with backpack.
50: A city with a tricksy French road layout, don't forget.
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While strolling through the site's abouts (they get changed and are often amusing) I now see that there is a cute baby picture in one of them.
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Huh. Not the one you'd expect, either.
Nobody expects the Unfish infant picture!
Everybody un-expects the fish infant picture.
re: 9
Once, on a pub crawl up Glasgow's Great Western Road, we realised we had 15 minutes to make the Strathcylde Union bar before curfew* [about a mile and a half]. We ended up running. Roughly eight or nine really quite drunk people, flat out. We made it with a couple of minutes to spare, and not even out of breath [to be 23 again!].
* in the days when Glasgow had a curfew.
Unrelatedly, Andrew Revkin is a douche.
57: Curfew as in bars had to close? Or curfew as in "everyone under age x has to be off the street"?
re: 59
Nothing that dramatic really. Basically, nightclubs used to have a time after which they couldn't let people in, and it was staggered so it was _before_ many pubs closed. So people either had to leave the pub early to go clubbing, or had to forgo clubbing altogether. The idea was that it prevented everyone leaving the pubs together at the same time, and then the usual taxi/club/kebab mayhem, by splitting the drinkers into several groups leaving pubs/clubs at different times.
So, if you were in the pub and wanted to go clubbing you had to leave before 11 to get to the club. Or you could stay in the pubs till, say, 1, but then you had to go home as you couldn't get in anywhere. It was called a 'curfew' but really it was enforced early-entry for nightclubs.
It was introduced after a spate/mini-spate/whatever of post-pub stabbings.
58: I'm not familiar with him. Can you point out the douchey bits in that article?
A very old newspaper article on the Glasgow curfew:
It no longer applies.
60: Thanks. Was that specific to Glasgow?
the usual taxi/club/kebab mayhem
What a glorious concept.
Nobody expects the 10 millionth "nobody expects" riff.
re: 63
Yeah, it was a local council thing. Edinburgh always had much more liberal opening hours. So much so that at that time [early/mid 90s] we used to quite often travel to Edinburgh to go clubbing, stay out all night and catch and early train back.
65: Nobody expects the "I've seen it all before" riff either.
66: I do remember running into quite a few Glaswegians out late in Edinburgh back in the early 90s.
58: I'm not familiar with him. Can you point out the douchey bits in that article?
The fact that the article exists at all, for one. People crack some computer system and start trying to publicize people's private correspondence, so he writes a New York Times article including details of that private correspondence? Not cool.
Also, he seems to be giving at least a little credence to the crazy right-wing conspiracy theories. Yes, scientists will privately talk about how much other people's work sucks. No, this doesn't mean they're conspiring to suppress ideas they don't like.
In fact, the "fookin' snaaake!!!" people were from Glasgow.
67.2: maybe they were just fooking snake huntin'
re: 67
I'm not actually Glasgwegian but I studied there/lived there through the 90s. But yeah, Edinburgh had better clubs for certain kinds of music* and had much later opening hours -- you could drink 24 hours if you knew where to go -- so lots of use to catch the train through, but if you wanted to see the latest 'name' DJs around that time, Glasgow was still best.
* things other than house/techno, basically.
On Revkin specifically, it's not that he's particularly bad himself, but he does typify the way science journalists will write these articles about climate science where they spend way more time on the views of "climate skeptics" than on the views of scientists. In this case, note that he both begins and ends with the climate skeptics, and mentions (and quotes) them a couple times in the middle too.
71: Get Blume to cut an x in the pwn wound and suck out the venom.
73: The Times has a pretty poor track record overall on the issue.
75: Indeed, but they're hardly alone in that.
There was an interview, I think in a running-oriented magazine back in the mid-90s when I actually ran regularly, where someone replied to the question, "what changes have you seen in road running since the 1970s?" by saying that people don't throw trash at them during training on open roads as much as they used to.
re: running hazards.
I used to run regularly [years back] along the canal in north Glasgow. There was a spot where burning cars and chasing dogs were a regular hazard. It gave the running a bit of a Mad Max vibe. Not that Glasgow is littered with burning cars, but it just happened that this particular stretch passed a bit of waste ground where joy-riding kids liked to dump and torch cars.
Not that Glasgow is littered with burning cars
Suuuuure it isn't.
When I ran cross-country in high school, we practiced in the morning and occasionally our routes matched the garbage truck routes. Unfortunately, garbage trucks stopping to pick up piles of rotting garbage in front of stores sometimes move at running speeds.
79: Not since Matt left, anyway. Coincidence?
There was also one route we took that went up into the hills and off the roads onto a fire trail. It was an out-and-back run and a couple of times there was fog so thick that you'd hear someone running towards you but wouldn't see them until you were just far enough away to be able to avoid each other.
"Matt"? What is this, pre-reversal Unfogged?
||Procrastination is lucrative. Also price psychology lesson: if a necessary purchase is crazy expensive and then turns out to be somewhat cheaper than first advertised though more expensive than you initially expected you feel very relieved. Or to sum up, holiday flight to Poland for under a grand (barely). And even finally managed to find one that didn't involve a midnight return. Yay. ||
Return to previously scheduled commenting.
Looks like they've changed the title of the article, too. It's a little better.
I have no idea what his point is in 86. The article is still pretty awful. It is all a "political process" story rather than helping people make sense of what really has happened and been revealed in this process (and especially is that what has been released is a culled sample from a much larger store).
The thread at RC is an interesting/infuriating read.
68: For journalists the standard is that once it's out in the open it's fair game for publication, even if it shouldn't have been revealed in the first place. I'm not that thrilled about that standard, but Rivkin isn't going off the established journalistic path. A close friend is a journalist, and we occasionally get into disagreements over these sort of things. It's surprising just how far accepted practices in journalism deviate from common intuition about what is fair and reasonable.
89: I agree that there is a decent argument that the event is newsworthy and the mere existence of the article is not necessarily bad (although I have significant problem with the corpus of NYT's articles on climate change--there is a continual assumption of newsworthiness given to dubious denialist challenges). My problem is with the content and credulous journalistic stance.
I read an incredibly aggravating article recently, but I can't remember from where, but my memory is that it was a lay person scientific site, not a political site.
Apparently the climate has failed to warm over the last ten years the way global warming would predict, and in fact average temperature is nearly steady. The article was all about how scientists are scrambling to explain this, and how global warming denialists are gleeful.
Buried near the bottom was the statement: actually, many places have continued to heat up disastrously, like the polar ice caps. It's just that average temperature has been offset by other places that are experiencing weird phenomenon in the cold direction.
I'm not expert in the science, but I think what that's about is that 1998, specifically, was an incredibly hot year. So if you take 1998 as your starting point, it was no hotter globally than ten years before. If you look at the trend over time, rather than just the difference between two points, though, the trend's still been going up.
Can't vouch for the exactitude or accuracy of that, but that's my impression -- if you wanted something better I'd look around Real Climate for posts that talk about this.
Here was the article. It's not a scientific publication, after all, but stil has a tone that it's willing to do real reporting, yet has this fake-confusion quandary.
92: yes. For instance you can see 1998 sticking out in this series of graphs. It made last year a bonanza for denialists that it was 10 years on.
And I do think that the "actual science" ends up suffering a bit on these hot button topics. For a whole lot of reasons. Does not kill it, but the social and political factors intrude in a lot of different ways.
92 sounds about right to me.
2005 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 1998. 2007 was roughly as hot as 1998. The past decade is the hottest decade on record, although most of the individual years haven't surpassed 1998.
1998 was hot with the help of a strong El Niño; most of the years since have been hot without that.
Huh. The article linked in 93 says:
And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.
This sounds like the opposite of my understanding. I guess I have to do more reading.
The New Scientist article that I took the graphs from in 94 has some relevant discussion.
in Edinburgh back in the early 90s.
M/tch, you were in Scotland?
