So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[belfastboy]

What clearly impedes the flow of traffic are drivers who enter intersections they can’t get all the way through. So they’re stopped in the intersection when the light turns red in their direction and green for the drivers in the perpendicular direction who can’t proceed because of the rudenik blocking the path. This is what causes gridlock. The worst of it is that it prevents emergency equipment from getting through.

There are actual time and motion studies on this. I think the Brits have studied it extensively.....being so fastidious about lining up for shit.

 

[tonyb]

There are actual time and motion studies on this. I think the Brits have studied it extensively.....being so fastidious about lining up for shit.

I hesitate to take seriously traffic studies generated by people who drive on the wrong side of the road.

But yeah, hard data, rigorously obtained and studied, can only verify what we already know — DON’T ENTER AN INTERSECTION IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CLEAR PATH ALL THE WAY THROUGH IT!

It’s easier (and more encompassing) just to say “don’t be in an intersection under a red light.” Don’t enter it when the signal light is red; don’t enter it if the light will be red before you can get clean through it, rolling or not.

 

[Zombie_61]

On the plus side, if you can keep accumulating discount points, by the tiem they finally sort it out, they'll be paying you to take the boots!

That's what I was thinking, but the nitwit who "assisted" me with the second return and my third attempt to order the same lousy boots didn't seem to know anything about Sears' "points program" and I'm back to paying $88 for them. Still better than $160, but not as good as $49. At this point I can't wait for the opportunity to dance on Sears' grave.

 

[belfastboy]

I hesitate to take seriously traffic studies generated by people who drive on the wrong side of the road.

But yeah, hard data, rigorously obtained and studied, can only verify what we already know — DON’T ENTER AN INTERSECTION IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CLEAR PATH ALL THE WAY THROUGH IT!

It’s easier (and more encompassing) just to say “don’t be in an intersection under a red light.” Don’t enter it when the signal light is red; don’t enter it if the light will be red before you can get clean through it, rolling or not.

Entering into an intersection and getting stranded doesn't happen much here. Polite though we are...no one wants to risk the ire of the drivers that are blocked. Traffic in our area is one of the worst in North America and though we are not allowed to pack firearms still no one wants the risk of pissing off the other drivers.

 

[GHT]

I hesitate to take seriously traffic studies generated by people who drive on the wrong side of the road.

There's lots of theories, arguments and view points that debate this. Fact is, The Romans marched on the left, so all of Europe kept to the left. It was Napoleon that forced a switch to the right, purely for political ideals. I did hear that Americans chose the right because there was still bad blood between our nations, but I think that's another invented story that's gained ground just by airing. Nowadays with the amount of potholes, we tend to drive on what's left of the road.

 

[tonyb]

Entering into an intersection and getting stranded doesn't happen much here. Polite though we are...no one wants to risk the ire of the drivers that are blocked. Traffic in our area is one of the worst in North America and though we are not allowed to pack firearms still no one wants the risk of pissing off the other drivers.

I wish I could say the same for (too many of) the drivers here in greater Denver.

You’re up on Vancouver, right? My wholly anecdotal observation is that drivers in greater Cascadia (Northwesterners know what that means) are more observant of the rules of the road.

 

[Harp]

The belief, especially among Americans, that the Soviet Union was of little consequence in World War II is pretty high on my list of all time pet peeves. That postwar propaganda campaign sure did its work...

The Second World War inflicted a horrible cost against the Russian people; added to this is Stalin's Holodomor
genocide that starved 7.5 million to death; and the post war invasion of eastern Europe. Uncle Joe called the
tune long before Yalta or Churchill's Iron Curtain speech at Fulton.

 

[belfastboy]

There's lots of theories, arguments and view points that debate this. Fact is, The Romans marched on the left, so all of Europe kept to the left. It was Napoleon that forced a switch to the right, purely for political ideals. I did hear that Americans chose the right because there was still bad blood between our nations, but I think that's another invented story that's gained ground just by airing. Nowadays with the amount of potholes, we tend to drive on what's left of the road.

Spent 6 weeks in Scotland Sept/Oct. The road conditions worsened the further north we drove. At the top of Scotland the roads were appalling. When I spoke to the Highlanders about it they responded with a "we like it this way". I interpreted it to mean they liked it as it enhanced their rugged image and liked that it might help keep the riff raff urbanites down south. Whatever reason it was no fun driving their roads.

 

[Edward]

The belief, especially among Americans, that the Soviet Union was of little consequence in World War II is pretty high on my list of all time pet peeves. That postwar propaganda campaign sure did its work. I'm tempted to fly the Victory Banner on V-E Day just to tick them off.

Then there are those over here in the UK who smugly sneer at Americans who believe that, while perpetuating the "plucky Britain stood alone" myth. Alone... except for the Empire! It's amazing how many have no idea about things like the Polish BoB pilots either.

It is epidemic up here and I wonder if that is what they are teaching in driving schools these days. I see it mostly within the immigrant population.

Driving cultures and norms vary markedly across the globe, and people everywhere tend to take their own habits from where they learned wherever they drive.

What clearly impedes the flow of traffic are drivers who enter intersections they can’t get all the way through. So they’re stopped in the intersection when the light turns red in their direction and green for the drivers in the perpendicular direction who can’t proceed because of the rudenik blocking the path. This is what causes gridlock. The worst of it is that it prevents emergency equipment from getting through.

And then the guys on the next turn do get to get through, they demand their turn so the next guys miss theirs, and on it turns with half the drivers ignoring the lights .

There are actual time and motion studies on this. I think the Brits have studied it extensively.....being so fastidious about lining up for shit.

Toilet queues are indeed the worst.

 

[tonyb]

...

And then the guys on the next turn do get to get through, they demand their turn so the next guys miss theirs, and on it turns with half the drivers ignoring the lights .



Toilet queues are indeed the worst.

And then what you have is gridlock. It becomes like any form of corruption — if you don’t fight it, if you tolerate cheating, you just get more of it, to the point that you feel like a chump for playing the game straight.

 

[tonyb]

Here's what really frustrates me at the moment. People who think they are experts on any number of esoteric subjects -- let's say theatre acoustics and motion-picture audio processing -- simply because they are very very rich in the worst kind of bourgie-parvenu sort of way, and have the ear of your Board of Directors. I now have to waste a great deal of time explaining where this fellow is absolutely wrong without ever actually having the pleasure of telling him so to his face. After all, America is a society where having money -- no matter how you got it -- means you are Listened To, even when you have absolutely nothing of any worth to say.

Fortunately, I am a trained actress. I have to be.

I was raised under the tutelage (such as it was) of a fellow who behaved as though a little bit of knowledge was as good as real expertise. Of a piece with that was his habit of opining forcefully and at length on matters of which he knew very little. (And often what little bit he “knew” was mostly incorrect.) He frequently and enthusiastically jumped into business schemes that invariably failed when his ignorance and lack of impulse control caught up with him. If not for our mother’s steady income, our early lives would have been even more chaotic and financially precarious than they were.

He could be a charmer, though, and he talked a real good game, so he always managed to find a fresh sap to entertain his propositions.

Alas, his personality rubbed off to varying degrees on my brothers and me. I’ve had to fight those unfortunate impulses all my adult life. Among my adjustments is an aversion to financial risk. (My wife’s stepfather was similar to mine in this regard, and she has made a similar adjustment. We rarely have disagreements over money.) But I and my brothers have long been ones to speak up at meetings, in classrooms, at public gatherings of most descriptions. And sometimes we engage our mouths before we’ve let our brains formulate a cogent argument.

As I said, I’ve fought that training most of my adult life.

 

[3fingers]

As I said, I’ve fought that training most of my adult life.

The ability to examine and recognize our weaknesses and try to improve them is a sign of maturity beyond average. A lot of people it seems live their entire lives never developing the ability or desire to reflect on their own existence. While being honest with ourselves is desirable, we can also be our own worst critics.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The internet has made it all too easy to know much but understand little. We're fast becoming a Wikipedia society -- quick with the facile fact, the talking point, and the cut-and-paste quote, but incapable of processing context. It's changing the nature of how we absorb and circulate information in profoundly dangerous ways, and the full impact has yet to be recognized. (And even when it does become clear, how many people will be too distracted by "hot takes" to care?)

 

[GHT]

The internet has made it all too easy to know much but understand little. We're fast becoming a Wikipedia society -- quick with the facile fact, the talking point, and the cut-and-paste quote, but incapable of processing context. It's changing the nature of how we absorb and circulate information in profoundly dangerous ways, and the full impact has yet to be recognized. (And even when it does become clear, how many people will be too distracted by "hot takes" to care?)

There was a time, before I knew what cut & paste meant, when I was left wondering how others seemed so knowledgeable on such a variety of subjects. It was only when I read a particular piece of eloquent prose about the English Civil War, which I was certain wasn't true, that I realised there are so many internet "professors" who read a Wikipedia entry and take it as Gospel.

Long before the internet, the way to find out facts and to cross check them, would be to spend an hour or two in the reference library. For school students of the Boomer generation, Saturday mornings in the reference section of the library was a most enjoyable experience. More so if you needed to cross reference some information and the library wasn't able to help. The librarian would suggest contacting the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University or The Wren library at Trinity College, Cambridge. The palpable excitement was like no other when the returning letter to an enquiry dropped through the letterbox.

 

[tonyb]

The internet has made it all too easy to know much but understand little. We're fast becoming a Wikipedia society -- quick with the facile fact, the talking point, and the cut-and-paste quote, but incapable of processing context. It's changing the nature of how we absorb and circulate information in profoundly dangerous ways, and the full impact has yet to be recognized. (And even when it does become clear, how many people will be too distracted by "hot takes" to care?)

Too many of us confuse the invoking of a name (or a date or a statistic or a pithy quotation or ...) with actual understanding.

There’s nothing new in this, although ready access to “information” does appear to be making those unfortunate tendencies more prevalent.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a time, before I knew what cut & paste meant, when I was left wondering how others seemed so knowledgeable on such a variety of subjects. It was only when I read a particular piece of eloquent prose about the English Civil War, which I was certain wasn't true, that I realised there are so many internet "professors" who read a Wikipedia entry and take it as Gospel.

Long before the internet, the way to find out facts and to cross check them, would be to spend an hour or two in the reference library. For school students of the Boomer generation, Saturday mornings in the reference section of the library was a most enjoyable experience. More so if you needed to cross reference some information and the library wasn't able to help. The librarian would suggest contacting the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University or The Wren library at Trinity College, Cambridge. The palpable excitement was like no other when the returning letter to an enquiry dropped through the letterbox.

I spent many years navigating microfilm machines, blowing the dust off bound volumes of newspapers, and getting locked in the stacks at closing time before I ever heard of the Internet. Some of the stuff I exhumed in those days hadn't been touched in decades, and you always felt thankful that libraries existed when you made such a discovery. When you had to dig thru page after page of material to find what you needed, you couldn't help but understand the context of the information.

 

[Harp]

Long before the internet, the way to find out facts and to cross check them, would be to spend an hour or two in the reference library. For school students of the Boomer generation, Saturday mornings in the reference section of the library was a most enjoyable experience.

I can remember University of Illinois-Chicago days arriving at the library early morning and leaving late afternoon,
mind dazed with so much research. But I enjoyed it immeasurably, and the rich kids from Lake Forest, Kenilworth,
and the Chicago Gold Coast stumbling about inside the typing room provided profitable term paper fodder to
supplement Vietnam's paltry GI Bill monthly stipend.

 

[Trenchfriend]

It's always again astonishing, how a nice walkaround can blast bad mood away.

 

[tonyb]

A friend of the aforementioned stepfather, a career schoolteacher (he’s still among the living, by the way, although long retired, and recently widowed), told me when I was in my teens that if a higher education taught me anything of lasting value, it would be the knowledge of how little I would ever know.

Perhaps he offered that as a counter to the lessons the Old Man was teaching through his example.

 

[Touchofevil]

Boneheads who do not keep their chickens on their property. Instead these idiots let them roam the neighborhood doing their thing which appears to be nonstop crapping and digging. Throw a rooster into the mix and you also get a lot of crowing at all hours.