I found it helpful to google "flood basalt".
Nah there is no way that anybody saw this anywhere else. Couldn't happen.
I have generally fond memories of Eyjafjallajökull and think maybe I should take a trip to Europe right now. "Oops, sorry! Can't be around to teach my class. Volcanic eruption stranded me. You can reach me in Madrid if anyone has questions."
Does anyone else hear "Bárðarbunga" and think Berlusconi?
I found it helpful to google "flood basalt".
My main association with that phrase is the Siberian traps, which, well, fuck.
On the other hand, one of the other volcanoes that is all pulsating menacingly is called Trölladyngja, which I find hilarious and adorable.
It would take a couple orders of magnitude more in [my guess of] the odds of getting killed by a volcano in Iceland to make me not want to go to Iceland.
I want to go to Iceland, too. Unfogged Quinceanera!
Count me in - ms bill and our kids inexplicably wanted to go to California this summer and not Iceland. I have guidebooks - volcano hike!
Half the people I work with got to go to Iceland this summer. But not me.
It seems like something new is developing in the last hour or so, but Twitter comments and the comments on that blog are not helping me understand exactly what it was.
"Coordination of Skógarhlíð has been activated due to these events": was that the eight-legged horse, or the folding boat?
11: It would take a couple orders of magnitude magmatude more
FTFY
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Someone I know fell on an escalator and got pretty banged up. She got 30 stitches. How bad is that?
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Compared to dying in a volcano? Not so bad.
The bulge has changed shape. This means something.
I wouldn't have guessed about the rolled 'r's.
18: I don't think you can tell from just the number. But that sounds painful.
I have some super-boring but kind of important stuff to do before an impending deadline, and refreshing Twitter pages and blog posts about this volcano is proving to be an ideal way to procrastinate.
Is there a reason beyond neato! that people care about this volcano? There's not a village of Icelandic babes in danger, is there?
Pretty sure that champion crossfiter Annie Thorisdottir can beat a volcano.
25: Gaia is preparing her revenge, dude. I know which way the molten rock-wind blows.
Also there's a very, very small chance it'll kill all life in the ocean.
If that fails, we could have some scientists develop and deploy peanut butter fish that somehow capture the jellyfish and convert them all into sandwiches. Soggy, yet delicious sandwiches.
My sting from a week ago has just started to itch.
That's enough of your thieves' cant, Henry Gondorff.
It's magma beneath a volcano on an island encroaching on the magma beneath another volcano on an island.
I an Captain Obvious! Fear and respect me.
Did I miss where you linked this nice page with different views of the quakes which @GreatDismal retweeted?
Actually, another gaming/blog name and one I have at various times wished I had used here. In conclusion LB is a big meanie.
Is there a reason beyond neato! that people care about this volcano?
Well, it could have big short-term effects on air traffic or global climate if it ends up putting a lot of ash in the air. But I think it's mostly "neato!"
(Perversely, I find myself hoping it would somehow mess up air travel in November and cancel my planned trip to Israel because I've decided I don't want to go but that it would be very awkward to cancel.)
Look, the climate deniers have a strategy for dealing with volcanoes.
I am not enjoying the part where the volcano nerd compares this bulge to the fires of Krafla Rifting episode and calls this present bulge and earthquake activity "all the harder to understand and potentially more dangerous."
The Mississippi was frozen at New Orleans. I'd never before heard that.
I have no idea on how to assess the probability of turning into a big flood basalt. That would be bad. I tend to be dismissive of dire predictions for things like this due to temperament, laziness, and magical thinking. But reading around, some kind of smaller climate-altering (and worse for Iceland) development seems to be a distinct potential slim chance. Ya heard it here first.
40: We don't have a hair on our ass if we don't go nuclear on it. What would Freeman Dyson do?
Count me in - ms bill and our kids inexplicably wanted to go to California this summer and not Iceland. I have guidebooks - volcano hike!
You can do this in California, too! Lassen!
The effects of that could become slightly troublesome.
I suppose that professional vulcanologists have to have upper lips of an almost ludicrous degree of stiffness.
"I say, Professor, do you see that on the northern slope of Urplefjell?"
"Yes. Looks like a 10km3 volume of incandescent gas and ash rolling down the hillside towards the sleeping town below."
"What a bore."
"Yes, that could become rather inconvenient for them."
Blogger says it reminds him of "the Krafla Fires rifting episode". I loved that episode!
I know, it's much more like the Skaflar fires, you really must read his four part series on that episode.
47: The One With The Most Important Climatic And Socially Reprecussive Event Of The Last Millenium.
50. Worse than the "Red Wedding"? Yikes.
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Walking Zardoz to school every morning I pass four intersections where you have to press a walk button and wait through a full cycle of greens in order to get a walk sign. Most pedestrians (quite rightly, honestly) ignore this and go when the green is parallel to the direction they're walking, but because I have a baby in a stroller I press the button, and I wait. The walk signs last about three seconds before they start flashing, so if you want to cross legally, you pretty much have to go right away. Pretty much every day there is at least one car that is either still in the intersection when the walk goes (and that then clears the intersection by driving through the crosswalk) or that makes a right on red during the walk either without looking or without letting me a chance to cross, or that is simply stopped completely blocking the crosswalk. Today, as the light turned to walk, a car accelerated into the intersection in order to "beat the red" (it was already red when they crossed the line) and cut the left as shallowly as they could in order to, I guess, get to the next red light 1/8 mile down the street that much faster. The driver nearly hit me. I screamed at him (his driver's window was open) and he grinned cheerfully.
This is not particularly out of the ordinary on my (one mile) walk (through residential neighborhoods) (in one of the most walkable -- if not the most walkable -- cities in the country), which leads me to wonder: is there any greater sociopath in common American life than an ordinary person driving a car? Is there any other circumstance where thinking "well, that baby had better get out of my way, because otherwise I'll kill her" is not just a reasonable, but a normal way to think?
Anyhow, fucking cyclists, right?
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is there any greater sociopath in common American life than an ordinary person driving a car?
Aside from passengers on airplanes, of course.
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52 cont'd: I mean it's fucking insane. Our society is fucking insane. 30% or something of the exposed surface of our cities is designated lanes for barely-trained and poorly-certified amateurs to operate incredibly deadly machines that are completely, unconscionably overengineered for the purpose to which they're generally put. Those amateurs face basically zero danger of criminal prosecution, are largely able to get away with operating these machines while drunk or high or sleep deprived, kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, and yet essentially our entire transportation policy is designed around allowing these idiot amateurs to go at even faster, more dangerous speeds in safety and comfort.
OH and these machines are a fucking environmental nightmare.
It's fucking horrible. Who gives a shit about gun control, in comparison.
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You could key his door. He can't get out and chase you without abandoning his car to the mercies of people just as time-focused as he is. Anyway, I've taken to swearing as obscenely as possible at drivers who do stuff like.
53: and yet, when a passenger on an airplane kills somebody air travel has to get shittier for everybody on the planet for decades to come because it's such a giant catastrophe.
I mean, really, can there not be a single fucking day where I can walk my daughter to day care (while completely obeying all of the auto-centric traffic laws along the way) without having to dodge at least one driver who is (1) breaking the law (with no particular fear of meaningful sanction) and (2) either oblivious to or unconerned about the fact that they're putting a toddler's life at risk?
Around here, if you call the cops about a bad corner, they'll often come and ticket people for a while. I seems to help.
I've been tweeting at the local 311 service but they claim they can't really do anything unless I can point to somebody actively doing something wrong. I guess I could try the police non-emergency number.
If you got the plate of the guy this morning, wouldn't that count?
The thing is, my current walk actually isn't bad by the standards of these things. I am confident that I'll be able to avoid the legions of deadly idiots as long as I'm attentive and careful (which I am). But it pisses me the fuck off. I'm going to start walking down the street waving a broadsword and looking at the sky. Hopefully people will watch out for me!
60: I mean, I assume they aren't going to put out an APB for the dude for running a red.
62 cont'd: he was white, I should mention.
I mean, just the number on the plate. You probably don't have time to remove the plate while he waits in traffic.
Still, I'm only sort of joking about the keying of the car. When I carry an umbrella or something, drivers are less likely to pull a stunt like that. They may be willing to be known as a killer, but driving with a marred finish is a bridge too far.
(On preview, pwned by the broadsword. Still, an umbrella is less conspicuous.)
63: When you call it in, say the driver looked Hispanic. Then, they'll run the plates, find out the last name was Fitzgerald, and chase the guy for stealing his own car.
Maybe I should add a disclaimer about how I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice.
The broadsword thing makes me think: given that Sifu's white, I bet he'd be able to walk down the street with an M-16 slung across his back, and I somehow think that this might improve the behaviour of the drivers he encounters. (You don't even need a real M-16. Get a replica.)
Massachusetts, sanely, does not have an open carry law. (Well, they sort of do, but the license is super stringent, and around here they simply won't issue licenses.)
Massachusetts isn't Texas. I bet he'd be stopped every block.
It's actually also illegal to carry a sword around. Also sane!
Driving a four hundred horsepower, three ton SUV with completely bald tires around narrow residential streets after a couple of drinks is a-okay, though. Just so long as you don't gun it when any cops are around.
I could open carry the no-auto version of an M-16 here. But, I'd be stopped all the time.
Hmm, broadsword it is. Or something similar. Some sort of polearm. (Pike? Halberd? Glaive? Guisarme? Glaive-guisarme? Naginata? Bohemian earspoon?)
Sticker on the pushchair: "THIS BABY KILLS DRIVERS".
I bet it's legal to carry an axe. I'll just swing an axe around!
Oh I'll give the baby an axe. Good call.
I think I'm in either the same city as Blume/Sifu or the next one over, and my ineffectual approach is to be as aggressive as I can when pedestrian-ing without the kiddo. I figure each time I step into the crosswalk and cause a speeding driver to have brake suddenly I might make it a little more likely they'll be a little more careful next time.
Twice this summer I've had to yell at people who were advancing (not very fast, but still) through crosswalks while not looking forward. Like, yell to get their attention before they hit me, in the crosswalk. Fucking people.
It's weird how drivers at some intersections seem well-behaved and at other intersections they intentionally gun their engines or honk or otherwise act threatening toward people crossing in the crosswalk. I mean, the population of drivers from one intersection to another must not be all that different, but the level of safety seems to vary a lot for non-obvious reasons.
It is in fact a massive and willful societal blind spot.
The guisarme is the right tool for the job here because you can yank the fucker right out of his car through the driver's side window when rolls through the corner.
81: the real villains are the transportation engineers.
80.2: I've had people intentionally advance into the crosswalk (or onto the sidewalk when exiting a parking lot), blocking it, so that you don't walk in front of them and keep them from making their turn. Ha ha fuck you a whole lot!
If I walk from my apartment to the Red Line I usually cross Highland at Grove St and a lot of drivers really don't want to stop for the crosswalk there.
I can't figure out if I can legally carry a sword or not.
87: The Arby's parking lot by my old office was especially dangerous for that.
87 That happens all the time where I live. If I'm carrying an umbrella I'll grip it like "I'm so going to dent your fucking Audi if you come any closer, asshole."
Does Mass. have the peculiar and terrifying "you can go right through a red light if you're turning right" thing like France?
I think the UK is probably not quite as bad. It's not as car centric a culture, and roads are often narrow and somewhat difficult, so a basic level of attention is required. But yeah, I still see arsehole behaviour all the time. More on the motorway, though, than on normal urban streets.
88: yeah people are real dicks about the crosswalks on Highland for some reason. Really all of the "arterial" streets in Somerville (Highland, Summer, Somerville Ave., Beacon, Central are the ones I know about, but I'm sure it holds for others). Maybe because people take them as a shortcut to avoid Mass Ave.?
92: it does. Cambridge, to its credit, reacted to the enactment of that law by immediately putting "No Turn On Red" signs on every intersection, but it's legal most places.
Funny that on my trips to essear and Sifu's city I've found it to be set up in a pedestrian friendly manner, and though the drivers had the usual East Coast aggressiveness they weren't too much of an obstacle.
Are there any states in the U.S. that don't have right on red?
It is pretty amazing how pedestrian unfriendly standard American city design is. Although honestly, the older East coast cities tend to be better than average.
Growing up in Southern California, I got used to the idea that most of the earth's surface belonged to cars and pedestrians were grudgingly tolerated second class citizens.
95 cont'd: legally, you are supposed to come to a complete stop and yield to any pedestrians, of course. Not that anybody ever does, or would ever expect to get ticketed for failing to do that.
92: All US states have it, I think, unless otherwise noted.
There was an intersection I used to drive through frequently in NJ that explicitly had a "no right turn on red" sign where I had to turn right on red anyway because if I didn't the cars behind me would honk and scream, and I nearly got rear-ended there a couple of times.
96: I mean, it's probably one of the best urban areas in the country as far as that goes. That's one of the messed up things.
101.2: yeah, there are a bunch of intersections around here where there is actually a separate red arrow for right turns, but where you will get honked at if you don't run it.
91: I've also struck cars with either a briefcase or an umbrella a couple of times when they blow past me as I'm in the crosswalk instead of stopping. Not hard enough to leave a dent, because there's not really time to wind up, but enough that they hear it.
The business district in my neighborhood is full of self-entitled, slow, elderly jaywalkers who don't even bother to turn their heads to look before crossing a street in the middle of a block. It's kind of great, except I think nearly all of them also drive and do so in the same manner as they walk.
99: Brookline they are generally pretty solicitous as well. This is a relatively recent development; I think I was in high school when those "yield to pedestrians in crosswalks" signs started going up, and I found it highly implausible for several years hence that it would ever take anywhere.
96 was me. Around here, there's a strong jaywalking culture. Drivers can also be very polite (oh, I see you're trying to jaywalk! Please go in front of me, nevermind the traffic on the other side) which is annoying as all get out. There are also areas that promote aggression/disclose behavior, as Moby noted.
My adviser is a terrifying, oblivious, elderly driver. I've been in a car with him three times, and once he drove down a one-way street the wrong way, once he hit a car while parking, and once he nearly hit a pedestrian. At least he goes really slowly. I need to figure out a way to turn down rides from him.
I think "disclose" was meant to be "dangerous". Stupid phone.
105: you should see how they park. I saw someone, while pulling out of a space in front of U. Sam's, hit both the cars in front of and behind them a few times before they got out.
Jaywalking isn't illegal here, which is terrific, and definitely slows cars down, but I would much rather have a culture of good pedestrian infrastructure than one of aggressive jaywalking, especially when I'm walking with a stroller. The problem with the jaywalking is it sort of comes with this idea that pedestrians and cars are competing on equal footing for the same resources, which I think leads to bad driver behavior.
109.2: Probably been in the smoking bar for too long.
Jaywalking isn't illegal here
I had no idea there was any place in America like that.
Actually, I take it back, it's just completely unenforced. You can theoretically be given a $1 fine if convicted.
At least in PA, it's only legal to turn left on red if you're in the left most lane on a one-way street and you're turning into the left-most lane of another one-way street. My hometown's downtown area is a grid of alternating one-way streets so this was actually fairly common to do. Turning left across a red arrow seems clearly wrong and illegal, although understandable. It's the same as sitting at a red light when there's no crossing traffic.
Have you considered driving Zardoz to daycare? Win-win.
I'm surprised Sifu's impairment list didn't mention cell phone use. I've heard it may be the worst of all, and shockingly common.
I ride to my El station along Western Avenue every day, and see some amazing stuff, but actually feel safer out there in the open on a huge busy street than I do crossing my own quiet residential street, where the driver is always either talking or texting.
I should have mentioned cell phone use, it's true! It's at least as bad as being drunk a/f/a attending to the road but it's completely legal (most places). Texting while driving is now illegal here, which makes me extra-amazed at all the people I see not just texting while driving, but texting while holding the phone up in front of their face.
Although I actually suspect that talking on the phone might be just as bad (even with a hands-free) as texting, so I'm not entirely sure why they went with that.
My favorite was the guy reading the medical journal in traffic in front of the hospital.
120: Because at least you're still looking at the road?
Christ, cell phones. I was at the chain coffee place at Shady & Forbes recently on a weekday morning and watched the cars going north on Shady for five or so minutes. Something like 40% of drivers were on the cell phone. If you find driving so utterly boring, take the fucking bus.
I saw a nice experiment recently (can't find a cite; not sure it's published yet) where they had people driving a simulator in four conditions: driving without talking, normal in-car conversation, normal cell-phone conversation, and cell-phone conversation where the person on the other side of the cell phone call could see the view out the windshield. Normal driving and in-car conversation were pretty similar to each other (which is known; talking to somebody in the car with you doesn't mess you up that much) and normal cell-phone conversation was much worse (again, well known) but interestingly allowing the person on the other end of the call to see the road made the driver almost as responsive as they were in the first two conditions. The authors argued that this supported the shared attention hypothesis; the problem with talking on a cell phone while driving is that the person you're talking to doesn't share your attention to the road, which is why you get the difficult (dangerous) divided attention situation. Sombody in the car is looking at the same things you are, and so the conversation naturally ebbs and pauses in reaction to things happening on the road.
123: But there's poor people on the bus.
122: right, but from what I understand the evidence is that the problem with talking on a phone is basically orthogonal to failure to look at the road -- you can be looking right at something and not react because you aren't attending to it.
125: Then plan B, world revolution. Then take the bus.
Anyway, my personal belief is that driving got worse when gas prices spiked in the last decade. People paying twice as much for gas felt entitled to more "service" the way they won't bus their own table when they are in a fancy place that charges $20 for pasta.
127: there are a lot of related experiments (some may even have the same experimental design). That hypothesis (that shared attention with somebody who is ignorant of your driving situation is what hurts driving ability) is pretty well accepted in the literature, I think, at this point.
I feel Tweety's pain. The sad thing is that not only is Boston one of the most sane areas of the nation to pedester, the US is one of the most sane places in the world to do so. After commuting on foot in China, Highland Ave at rush hour felt like skipping through wildflowers. It really doesn't get much better than this.
Protip: Look the most immediately dangerous driver in the eye as you cross. Failing that, cross behind a baby.
52. Cyclists are just as bad as drivers, not that I have any interest in having that discussion anywhere on the internet. Let me just leave it as "people using any sort of vehicle are mostly self-absorbed assholes." People in cars are worse in practice because cars are more deadly.
54. There are around 36,000 motor vehicle fatalities per year in the US, a number than has been declining over the last decade. Worldwide there are over a million, concentrated in developing countries. The first western country you encounter is (surprise!) the US, with 11.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
60. Cops won't do anything about an incident they didn't witness and for which there is no evidence. You can complain about the intersection, as was suggested, and sometimes they pay attention.
70. "It is known," as they say in GoT, that MA has the worst drivers in the country. Worcester, Boston, and Springfield are 3 of top 4 in that ranking. From internal evidence I guess you are in Cambridge or Somerville, which is just as bad.
81. A lot of drivers seem to have a bad experience (cut off, caught behind a slow driver or bicyclist), decide to get back at the world for it, and drive more idiotically. Since the Boston area has some of the worst traffic in the US, it's a positive feedback loop. A lot of it has to do with the unfortunate fact that a cop stopping someone for a traffic infraction just makes the traffic worse, so mostly MA cops don't do that unless they are really pissed off, so unless you cause an accident you pretty much get off free. There is essentially zero traffic enforcement here, and hasn't been for at least fifty years.
119. It is my hobby to check (when possible) for cell phones in the hands of drivers who do stupid, not-paying-attention oblivious shit: not staying in lane, not stopping for lights or not starting within an hour of the light turning, near-collisions via tailgating, near misses with pedestrians and cyclists, driving 20mph in a 40mph zone, etc. The current tally is "over 75%." MA prohibits cell phone use by teenage drivers, but of course that is not enforced. Like all MA traffic laws it is purely notional.
Cyclists are just as bad as drivers, not that I have any interest in having that discussion anywhere on the internet
This statement is profoundly idiotic. Can you figure out why?
People in cars are worse in practice because cars are more deadly.
Oh wait! You did figure it out!
Except "more deadly" is kind of misleading, because cars are very deadly and bicycles are not at all deadly. ("but I know a guy once who fell of a bike going down a big hill and got paralyzed!")
70. "It is known," as they say in GoT, that MA has the worst drivers in the country.
Might be known, not actually true. Knecht had a good time demolishing this one yesterday.
Except "more deadly" is kind of misleading, because cars are very deadly and bicycles are not at all deadly.
This is ridiculous. If a car and a bike get into a fight, the bike dies.
Since the Boston area has some of the worst traffic in the US
Not actually true, unless you mean specifically on 93 at rush hour.
I know which way the molten rock-wind blows.
Yeah, well I know why the molten rock-bird sings.
131. The safest drivers, by all the statistical measures, are exactly where you'd expect: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. (Ireland slips in there in some, which astonishes me: they drive 50-100kph on winding one-lane roads with walls for shoulders.)
Actually, MA is alleged to be low on fatal accidents, but high on property damage and non-fatal injuries. Not sure how true that is, but it's widely repeated here to try to riposte the undeniable fact that "MA drivers are the worst in the US."
This reminds me. I've had my bike since winter and never ridden it yet. They keep adding bike lanes, so I should really give it a try.
re: 142
Yeah, the UK's is pretty close to the Scandinavian countries, too. Lower on fatalities per capita measures, slightly higher on fatalities per mile driven.
It's my perception that UK drivers are, on the whole, much better than US drivers. All that extra effort and money spent on training, speed cameras, and normalization of public transit seems to pay off.
(NZ drivers are slightly better than US, but much worse at staying on their side of the road on blind curves between sea and cliff. Barbados drivers scared the hell out of me, but thankfully the distance between any two points there is always short.)
133: I'll take Cambridge over Paris any day of the week. Never been to enlightened Scandinavia though.
Is it legal to ride a bike while drunk if you say on the sidewalk?
141: My guess is that they're related. Vehicle fatalities aren't decreasing because people are driving in less demented ways, they're decreasing because people are driving cars with more safety features. And the safer the drivers feel in their cars the less they remember that, no seriously, cars are dangerous as fuck.
Personally I think we should require, as a safety feature (for, you know, me), all cars to have a broadsword sized blade sticking directly out of the steering wheel ending about four inches in front of the driver's chest. I'm pretty sure people would drive a lot more cautiously/slowly/etc. with that thing there in front of them.
147: Depending on where you live (e.g., Minneapolis) it's legal to bike on the roads completely hammered. Really! And public intoxication is legal too! I don't know why people live in other places. And, I mean, sidewalks too.
149.1: meanwhile you can't sell small, light, fuel-efficient European cars in the US because they have insufficient mass to insultate the driver when they obliviously run into something less soft and yielding than a baby in a stroller.
all cars to have a broadsword sized blade sticking directly out of the steering wheel ending about four inches in front of the driver's chest
You must have really long arms.
Hey, I didn't say it had to be as long as a broadsword. Just sized appropriately, which is to say, massive.
But yeah forcing people to stick their arms way way out in front of them would probably help make them feel more vulnerable as well.
137. Allstate Insurance disagrees with you (and with Knecht). They rank Worcester worst, and Boston second worst. DC is third, and Springfield, MA is fourth.
http://news.msn.com/us/boston-has-worst-drivers-of-any-big-us-city-allstate-report
139. Probably should have said "rush hour traffic." 93 is bad, but if you look at every Boston area arterial road (95/128, the SE expressway, the MA Pike, Rt. 1, Rt. 3, etc.) during morning and evening rush hour, you see a ton of red on Google traffic. In Boston and Cambridge there is lots of red as well. Outside rush hour things aren't as bad, certainly. Presumably you are walking to day care during morning rush hour.
A lot of the European and Israeli postdocs I know complain that US drivers are slow and meek and cautious, and I don't feel like my experience as a pedestrian in Europe has been notably safer than in the denser US cities. Although I guess some of their comments are about highway driving, not city driving. Anyway, it seems counterintuitive to me that it would be much safer to be a pedestrian in Europe than in a US urban environment. (In US suburbs it seems like being a pedestrian is generally suicidal.)
147. Riding on the sidewalk isn't legal in most cities, afaik. People do it anyway, of course.
155. Also high on injuries.
159: It's legal here, outside a few business districts.
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OK, so I just got an email (purporting to be) from some lady in Sweden asking around for tutors for her son when he comes to [school] to study here. Her reasoning is, apparently,
The purpose of this tutoring arrangement is simply because i never want him to be idle or become a street nuisance before resuming to a Univ/Coll. by January,which means coaching session would proceed till December.
It looks spammy, obviously, but I can't see the angle on it so it might be entirely sincere. I'm tempted to reply with an explanation that there's no need to worry too much about this sort of thing. Really, with the prevalence of gun related crimes and fatal car accidents here in the United States he's really very unlikely to end up hanging out in dangerous areas or anything, or at least not for very long.
Would that be particularly bad, and if so, would it be bad enough not to do it anyway?
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Drunkest I ever rode my bike was after the Chicago Meetup.
April 2006?
155: And call me crazy, but I consider low incidence of fatal accidents a pretty good metric for transportation safety.
The discussion of state rates of fatality vs. damage is completely compounded by the mix of urban/suburban/rural in the state. (Somewhere in archives is a link to table showing the complete reversal of those two rates between urban and rural environments.)
Incidentally, riding a bike on the sidewalk is legal in Massachusetts, as long as you ride no faster than walking pace, and are not in a central business district.
Anyway, it seems counterintuitive to me that it would be much safer to be a pedestrian in Europe than in a US urban environment.
Why? At the very least, European cities are mostly designed with pedestrians in mind, unlike a good number of American cities, especially out west. It can't hurt pedestrian fatalities to, say, have sidewalks to walk on.
re: 167
And I'd guess very high density, road layouts often built pre-car, etc make it hard for cars to get up much speed. So most collisions, whether with pedestrians or other cars, are going to be low-speed.
168: plus smaller, lighter cars.
169: true. Most of the time when I get hit by a car it just bounces off me.
In US suburbs it seems like being a pedestrian is generally suicidal
This is wrong. In many suburbs, pedestrians are so rare, they attract interest from drivers -- they may even stop to ask if you're lost.
re: 170
I'd much rather be hit by someone driving a Renault Clio than someone driving a Dodge Ram [or similar owner-has-a-small-penis vehicle].
"Papa? Why did you run me over?"
"Because of my small penis, Nicole"
owner-has-a-small-penis vehicle
Urban pickup drivers maybe, but there aren't many of those, and most people who own a pickup actually haul or tow stuff. The marketing around them is ridiculous, I admit. Why am I defending pickup drivers? No idea.
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Kid kicked out of preschool over parent's internet complaints
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This is news? Seems like half of the commenters here are on the verge of that happening.
re: 174
I'm thinking generally of the whole over-sized SUV class, rather than just pickups. I picked the Ram because the shape of that type of front end is particularly nasty for pedestrian collisions, but I could have picked any SUV, including lots that are basically urban or suburban vehicles [here, as well as in the US].
Why? At the very least, European cities are mostly designed with pedestrians in mind, unlike a good number of American cities, especially out west. It can't hurt pedestrian fatalities to, say, have sidewalks to walk on.
Even western cities have sidewalks, and often big broad ones. I don't know American places without sidewalks that I wouldn't characterize as suburbs instead of cities. On the other hand, older parts of European cities sometimes have only marginal sidewalks; there's a lot of, say, Florence where you have like an eight-inch-wide strip at the edge of the road to walk on and (admittedly, tiny) cars are zipping around corners all the time.
And since global driving fatality rates have come up, I will re-post this essential bit of contextual data in a doomed attempt to guide the armchair sociologists.
The trends in automobile safety worldwide over the past 40 years are pretty amazing. The US was lowest in fatalities/mile* in 1970, has improved significantly since then, and yet has been overtaken by just about every developed country in the world (some such as France and Japan starting from a much, much higher rate). This chart is from 2007, and I think the exhibited trends have continued since then
*Since more miles driven per capita in US than many countries (esp in 1970), this understates the relative rates of auto death as an overall risk factor compared to those countries.
I note, also, that according to wiki the Ford F-class is the best selling vehicle in the US. I doubt most of those buyers are hauling stuff.
I doubt most of those buyers are hauling stuff.
You might be wrong! I have no stats, but you see very few pickups in cities, and very many as soon as you leave them, and among the exurban/rural classes, leisure activities like boating on various small lakes and ATVing and all the rest, are pretty popular. Not to mention that just about every small-business tradesman has a Ford pickup.
I offer no defense of SUVs at all.
And also from the thread linked in 178, my comment on the useful study I found which illustrates the different risks of urban versus rural driving (US data).
This paper(pdf) sums it up nicely for the US on that point. They decompose "fatal crashes/mile driven" into: "all crashes/mile driven" × "crashes with injuries/all crashes" × "fatal crashes/crashes with injuries". The ratio of rural to urban for these three are =0.67, 1.12, and 2.99 respectively (overall ratio is 2.23). Somewhat more likely to crash per mile driven in cities, slightly less likely to be injured in that crash, and much less likely for those injuries to be fatal.
My cousin has the biggest pickup ever, but he's an actual farmer.
You can't forget how obese we Americans are! It takes a big vehicle just to haul the people!
178: what does "traffic deaths" mean on that chart?
you see very few pickups in cities
I am not sure this is true for all cities.
It is true, though, that every single contractor in the country has an F-150. It's really something.
My point is just this: it's true that pickups are often a cultural marker for people who are Republican-voting, coal-rolling assholes, but owning a pickup is separate from their being assholes in a way that owning a Hummer is not.
Even western cities have sidewalks, and often big broad ones. I don't know American places without sidewalks that I wouldn't characterize as suburbs instead of cities.
Try walking from the Rio to the Strip in Vegas. It's pretty scary.
I'm not saying these cities don't have sidewalks at all. Just that large parts of them are extremely pedestrian-prohibitive, even for what should be obvious walking routes - eg going from one part of a shopping mall to another. Though I'll grant that I may be using "city" more loosely than you are. I'd certainly count an inner suburb as part of the city for these purposes.
Actual farmers are perfectly entitled to drive SUVs and pickups. Not many other people are. If you want to go boating buy a trailer, and a small Toyota to pull it.
166: a car that had a steering wheel hub in the form of a chrome steel cone pointed straight at the driver's chest.
Thoughtfully reducing the effort the driver needs to otherwise make to impale themselves in an accident. (The gruesome image is Warhol's White Burning Car III which I just saw recently at the Warhol.)
189: You're going to need a bigger boat.
179 If you work in construction the Ford F-class is definitely the most popular I've seen. And if it's pretty heavy stuff like tile/marble or masonry then the F-350 or F-450 is the only way to go.
189: an SUV would be a fairly shitty vehicle for a farmer, I'd think. They have terrible cargo capacity.
People with kids often justify the purchase of SUVs by pointing out (correctly, if tendentiously) that American child-safety seats are so giant you can only fit two of them in any normal car (and the kid needs to stay in it until they're 25 or whatever).
There's at least a theoretical conflict between measures that force careful driving by having small-scale obstructions, and pedestrian safety from minor injuries -- jaywalking is one example and there are others. My impression is that continental Europe has, in places where driving is allowed, a more generally unregulated, aggressive driving, and chaotic driving "feel" than urban areas in the US, which have relatively broad sidewalks, strict crossing rules, an orderly grid system, etc. My admittedly bullshit sociology would be that this leads to generally higher urban car speeds in the US (and less engaged, more unsafe driving, abetted by SUVs, probably) and probably higher pedestrian fatalities, but also fewer moments of direct car-pedestrian interaction and "oh shit he's about to hit me" moments. Certainly walking in Paris or Rome isn't free of scary interactions with drivers, outside of designated car free zones; less personal experience with Germany and not really any with Britain on this issue. My sense is that the same is true on a smaller scale in the US, with Boston more like continental Europe in this way than, say, Chicago.
Come on, 188.1 is true but also pretty much the most unfairly selective example ever. Of course you shouldn't try to walk from the Rio to the Strip but that says more abou Vegas than anything else.
re: 192
Funnily enough, builders and the like, in the UK, tend to use vans, or small flatbed trucks. It's not common to see US style pickup trucks, which seem, on the face of it, to be bulky and over-spec'd for the job while not really offering enough carrying space in the sorts of typical use cases that people use vans or small flatbeds for.
re: 194
But most SUVs don't offer any additional interior space over a standard family sedan, in my experience. In fact, I've been in some stupidly over-sized ones that had less interior space than some compact cars.
194 -- I've often wondered about the degree of environmental and societal harm wrought by the mandatory rear-facing car seat. It's not nothing, and no one took those costs into account in mandating the car seat rules.
198 isn't really true in general, though there are for sure a lot of stunningly stupid SUVs and now even worse crossovers (not worse environmentally, but just so so so stupid -- let's put a heavier structure onto this car body, making the car worse and adding no function! Awesome, welcome to your new Crosstrek!"
197: indeed. Transit vans (or equivalent) all the way. You've got a much higher and longer and slightly wider (?) load-carrying space than a pickup, and it's covered, so you can carry stuff that needs to be kept dry or out of the wind, and you can lock it up so people don't nick stuff out the back... I don't think I've seen any contractors using pickup trucks.
198: I don't know about the SUVs and cars in the U.K., but if you have to move more than two children that are in seats (as opposed to boosters), you basically need an SUV or a minivan. There may be one or two sedans wide enough, but I've not seen one. Possibly the new cross-overs work also, but I've not seen the inside of one. And they are basically SUVs anyway.
I had no idea pickups weren't used by contractors/builders/construction workers in the UK. That would certainly change the stereotypes.
Maybe that's why houses cost so much in the U.K. Would you like us to send you some pickups?
I've really wondered about the car seat thing -- it seems like an obvious problem of car seat design, rather than a law of nature making SUV's necessary. Surely if designers were actively trying to make seats compatible with smaller cars, you could get three across.
Possibly there car seats are thicker to protect against side impacts.
I had no idea pickups weren't used by contractors/builders/construction workers in the UK. That would certainly change the stereotypes
Yeah, they're more or less unheard of here, though you do get larger flatbeds. I was going to disagree with Ogged's comment about urban pickup drivers, but got distracted. One of the things that strikes me most about visiting the States is the enormous proportion of pickups even in cities.
On-topic, apparently the magma dike has reached Askja now. Maybe more volcano excitement to follow?
And indeed the proportion of enormous pickups.
it seems like an obvious problem of car seat design
Indeed, is there no way to design an adult car seat that can, Transformers-style, be turned into a child car seat?
206: we paid extra for the narrowest one, and it still takes up more than one rear seat in our not-actually-that-small compact. It also barely fits by length when installed rear-facing. It's ridiculous!
201: and, of course, it's a lot easier to shift heavy stuff in a Transit van because the loadbed is so much closer to the ground.
A pick-up with built in tool boxes provides a mix of the dry, secure storage space you'd get with a van while providing some ability to haul larger things like you'd be able to do with a flatbed. For certain purposes, it's a good compromise for the operation too small to have more than one vehicle. Plus, you can more easily (or less conspicuously) use the pick-up for as a personal vehicle in addition to a business one.
you see very few pickups in cities
This is crazy talk. You never actually went into SF when you lived here, did you?
209: where are you reading about it now?
One of the things that strikes me most about visiting the States is the enormous proportion of pickups even in cities.
Higher than the proportion of Chelsea tractors in UK cities? Or don't you have a school run in your neck of the woods?
And indeed the proportion of enormous pickups.
Maybe my "very few" is relative to what I was seeing in NM and CO, where it felt like pickups were in the majority (that's probably not true, but there were a lot of pickups). I'm not wedded to the claim.
On additional reflection, it seems to me that self-employed contractors nearly always have pick-ups. Those doing the same work but as an employee of a larger company nearly always have a van or a panel truck. So I'm thinking the idea that you can use a pick-up as a personal vehicle may be a big part of it.
Car seats are an abomination. We have a minivan, but it's an older, smaller one, and I have to move my seat forward to accommodate the car seat behind me. I wonder if it's purely a matter of marketing that requires seats to look bulky because bulky looks safer.
Seattle contractors also mostly have vans. Rain cover, lower bed to shift stuff out of, huge lockable volume. Not as good on dirt roads as pickups.
214 That's what I've seen a lot of.
Way back in the day I did construction work for a couple of years, mostly tile work and there's just no way a van could handle the kinds of loads involved. We're talking a couple of yards of sand, several 95 lb bags of portland cement and boxes of tiles = a few tons. You need the heavy duty suspension of a F-350 to carry that day after day. Besides, it's no fun all to shovel a yard of sand into the back of a van, much easier to let a front loader dump it in the bed of your pickup.
I feel less safe as a pedestrian in the UK than I did in the US, but I'm comparing what is probably one of the best walking towns in the US to bog-standard UK town, so it's not particularly fair. I also have terrible depth-perception and thus think everything is closer to me than it actually is, and dislike how fast people go on streets that I think are 'too small' and have small pavements/sidewalks. From my perspective, drivers are definitely better in terms of skill in the UK, but not necessarily any better in terms of assholishness.*
*All this should probably be taken with a grain of salt, as I'm in the car once a week and otherwise walk everywhere.
194 -- I've often wondered about the degree of environmental and societal harm wrought by the mandatory rear-facing car seat. It's not nothing, and no one took those costs into account in mandating the car seat rules.
I have a friend who is obsessed with promoting car seat safety, and is constantly posting things about how even 40 lb children should be rear facing. I wonder if it'll change if she has a second.
223: in those circumstances a UK contractor would use a flatbed lorry. Builders generally have those; other contractors (plumbers, sparks etc) use Transit vans.
How flat is a flatbed? Because what we call a flatbed certainly could not be used to haul sand.
184: what does "traffic deaths" mean on that chart?
Not sure. Here is the article it is from and here is a 2010 update from the International Transport Forum but cannot find the definition or "road death."
But via Wikipedia talking about similar data: Half of the world's road traffic deaths occur among motorcyclists (23%), pedestrians (22%) and cyclists (5%) - i.e. "vulnerable road users" - with 31% of deaths among car occupants and the remaining 19% among unspecified road users.
Higher than the proportion of Chelsea tractors in UK cities? Or don't you have a school run in your neck of the woods?
No, not at all. That's kind of what I was getting at. Pace Ogged, I get the distinct impression that the sort of people who have Chelsea tractors or flashy sports cars in the UK would often have pickups instead in US cities, and many aren't actually being used for practical purposes.
The Wikipedia article on Road Traffic Safety has some interesting info. Also a "Criticisms" section that resonates with some of this discussion:
Some road-safety groups argue that the problem of road safety is largely being stated in the wrong terms because most road safety measures are designed to increase the safety of drivers, but many road traffic casualties are not drivers (in the UK only 40% of casualties are drivers), and those measures which increase driver safety may, perversely, increase the risk to these others, through risk compensation.
The core elements of the thesis are:
--that vulnerable road users are marginalised by the "road safety" establishment
--that "road safety" interventions are often centred around reducing the severity of results from dangerous behaviours, rather than reducing the dangerous behaviours themselves
--that improved "road safety" has often been achieved by making the roads so hostile that those most likely to be injured cannot use them at all
--that the increasing "safety" of cars and roads is often counteracted wholly or in part by driver responses (risk compensation).
223: for most jobs around here, the heavy or huge material is likely to be brought in from the warehouse on the warehouse's flatbed (is there any machine cuter than the forklifts that piggyback on the flatbed by lifting themselves on their own forklift? Possibly the smallest tugboats?). This might be because I'm in the dense part of the city, so the warehouses have regular deliveries but contractors driving back and forth is traffic-choked.
My mother's ruburbanizing county has more individual pickups, with the fillip of people using the smallest truck they can, because gas prices over long mountainous distances are vicious. And the Alaska cousins build by shopping for everything in Seattle over a winter, organizing it onto pallets, and having a boat drop it off on their beach.
99
PDBS drivers are astoundingly solicitous of pedestrians. There is a faction that gets red in the face about bicyclists who won't move over to let them pass and writes letters to the editors about it, but pedestrian crosswalks are sacrosanct
Here in DC, bikers are supposed to take up a whole lane. I don't, because I don't want to get honked at. The fear of getting hit is more comfortably abstract than the fear of someone yelling at me.
As for measuring deaths per mile, is anyone else annoyed by that? I get why they do it, it's more reflective of the fact that in the US people drive a lot more, but isn't that part of the problem? People would die in traffic less if people were in traffic less. That's not the biggest or best argument for public transportation, but it's worth mentioning.
232+: The flatbed delivery is the practical way to get even compost, from a cubic yard up. You get soft stuff in a big tarp sack and when you take the sack back to a depot you get a deposit back.
OTOH, I have collected material at Online Metals in a Prius, which barely has the clearance to bump over the adjacent train tracks, and while they were *amused* I certainly wasn't the first person to have done so.
Both Volvo and Volkswagen offer this in certain models. Has been around for 10 years or more.
I think those are built-in booster seats, not infant seats. Booster seats aren't really the problem, you can easily fit three across in most ordinary family sedans. It's the infant/toddler seat and especially the dread rear-facing seat (now "recommended" by the internet for approximately forever, even though both kids and drivers hate them) that make using a normal backseat so difficult.
Yeah, to 229.
In Boston I kept hearing what sounded like a huge Mack type truck -- low pitched engine, sounding like it was gaspng for air -- to find it was a pickup. Being used for work -- building or whatever -- but the proportions just seemed wrong. Fully 50% of the length of the vehicle being cab/engine.
Yep. Extended cab is the going thing. The sales pitch is that you can use it for work and then as a family car. They've always had them, but only recently have they started to make them with backseats that weren't miserable to sit in.
233.3: Not just an argument for transit, but an argument against our building habits of the last fifty years -- people drive long distances because no two useful places are next to each other.
Maybe we'll learn to shop by telepresence directly from the manufacturers (*with* customization: my eshakti dress is excellent) and reduce planning only to segregate heavy industry. Though this will need a lot more office work to be done by wire, or different work habits, as I think the two-job family is making planning harder. Have we talked about this? That city centers are more and more attractive because so many households now have two uncertain careers in them, so the value of being near a travel nexus is going up? Maybe that's just me and just my neighborhood, but I doubt it.
216: The Iceland Met Office:
The dyke has now reached the fissure system of the Askja volcano and GPS measurements indicate that the area there is greatly affected.
Maybe "the fissure system of the Askja volcano" isn't the same thing as the Askja volcano itself, though? "Greatly affected" is also amusingly vague.
Seattle is, in enlightened desperation, getting more and more Shoupian in its parking policy, and I look forward to the day that we pay for street parking based on length of vehicle. O, the cries of rage, O, the swaggering motorcyclists. Then we can pay gas or licensing road taxes based on vehicle weight to the fourth power and the bicyclists will sign up happily, I tell you what.
236 -- 214 and 220 explain it. An e.g. Chevy Silverado quad cab is a great family car, pretty fun to drive, and can also function as your work vehicle. An e.g. Ford E350 Cargo Van is just ridiculous as a family car that doubles as a work vehicle. Some of this is cultural, obviously, it should be possible to combine a van that works for both, and there's a lot of work done in the states by light duty pickups that could probably be better done by converted station wagons and the like.
The smallish backseats in the old sort-of-extended cabs were the right size for kids and dogs, although not as good as letting us lie in the truck bed.
Clearly all families should get Sprinter vans.
242: You'll get the cops called on you for that now. Even with dogs.
239: I wonder if that's the same as what Volcano Café was calling the Askja volcano's "magmatic system"?
The right solution to everything is to get a ridiculous high horsepower sports station wagon, like the Cadillac CTS-V Wagon (available in manual) or the Volvo Polestar V60. I personally feel like one of those would literally fix every problem in my life.
Also, a Chevy Silverado sucks to drive in a city and is named after a Kevin Costner movie. One more reason people drive F Series trucks. They solve one of those problems.
233.2: As for measuring deaths per mile, is anyone else annoyed by that? I get why they do it, it's more reflective of the fact that in the US people drive a lot more, but isn't that part of the problem?
Yes. As the chart I linked mention (but does not show) and this ITF report illustrates in Table 4 and Figure 5, the US does much worse in terms of road deaths per 100,000 population compared to road deaths per km. I do think any responsible look should include both measures.
OK, speaking of cars that someone actually needs, one of our Austin-area commenters needs to buy this incredible working KITT/Night Rider replica. Check out the interior.
If you buy it, we'll drive it out to LA for you.
I continue to be surprised at the number of extended cab pickups that show up in the parking garage for Pirate's games.
The greatest thing ever would be to buy the KITT/Knight Rider car and then tell your kids that they can't ride in it, because of car seat laws.
250: SELLING MY EX HUSBANDS 1985 TRANS AM (K.I.T.T) THAT HE LOST IN OUR DIVORCE.
The occasional chance to award the K.I.T.T. replica to the wife must make all the annoyances of being a divorce court judge seem worth it.
Speaking of fictional cars, on the way into Oxford yesterday I passed someone towing the submersible Bond Lotus on a trailer.
Since this thread has drifted off topic, I suppose this might be the appropriate place to note for the record that I'm thoroughly sick of all of the sanctimonious progressive hand wringing over the ice bucket/ALS thing.
It's as though the left-ish blogosphere collectively decided say to the rest of the world: "Hey! Did you ever wonder where that stereotype of progressives as insufferable scolds and bores came from? Let us show you!"
260
It correlates with the lefties-like-cats, righties-like-dogs thing. Cats don't like to get wet.
260: I think it's worth pointing out that all the money being raised is a small fraction of the budget of the CDC or FDA, so maybe people should stop voting for politicians that promise to slash those. Overall, though, I'm unusually glad that this meme and the reaction to it has mostly passed me by.
261
Wait, shouldn't the righties get the one famous for inexplicable yet overwhelming hatreds, and lefties the one for pointless devotion to losers?
Wait, that's not Iceland. I guess Papua New Guinea was getting jealous of Iceland's media attention.
The classic is the ute with quad cab and canopy over the bed. It's like a really shitty van!
265 -- you fools bet on the wrong volcano!!!
The smoky bar is still unaffected.
Next year it will be "squeeze your head in a vise for multiple sclerosis" or "get kicked in the balls for cystic fibrosis testicular cancer".
268: whaaaat holy shit anoxic ocean jumpin' off
Yikes why? Looks like it's mostly over for now. But I guess more earthquakes and eruptions in the coming days are still likely.
The classic is the ute with quad cab and canopy over the bed.
I just saw one on the Strand this morning, so apparently some people in London have them. Sitting between about 5 transit vans though. And there was a flatbed truck parked nearby.
How flat is a flatbed? Because what we call a flatbed certainly could not be used to haul sand.
I am thinking of this sort of thing: http://www.machineryzone.eu/used/used-truck/4914969/mercedes-benz-sk-814-with-crane-hiab-050.html
One size up from a Transit van in wheelbase terms; single-row cab and a big flat loadbed with drop sides. Sometimes has a small crane. Sometimes in a tipper-truck variant.
re: 275
Yeah, and fractionally smaller 3.5 tonne variants based on the Transit type chassis, too.
This sort of thing [searching the same site]:
re: cars, one for Halford:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k57GmsKLAdo
The super-nonchalant faces on them on the interior shot are great.
265.
The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in Darwin is monitoring the ash cloud from Tavurcur on PNG's East Britain Island, which is slowly drifting southwest.Soon it will be West Britain Island.
Slate comes through with volcano-contrarianism -- http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/29/holuhraun_b_r_arbunga_rabaul_iceland_eruption_isn_t_as_dangerous_as_papua.html
I don't know if 278 counts as contrarianism, but I've been refreshing and rereading it all day whenever I need a smile.
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