Yep, riding the metro during rush hour can be an experience.

>> ^raverman:

I'll lift up a car... but I ain't touching anything more than your floppy shattered leg to drag you out.
Move you far enough from the car to be actually safe? What am i a f--king taxi?
But i'll be damned if i sit by you, see if you're breathing, perform cpr or provide any comfort until help arrives.
Good on them I suppose... but that's the least compassionate non-commital rescue i've ever seen.


I have a different take on this. If you were watching people in a normal environment doing something non-stressful then I'd agree with you. But we're not. We're watching people doing something that could well be the most stressful thing they'll ever do. As far as they know the car could explode at any time, or it could fall on them trapping them in the flames or any number of other things. Whether these things are actually likely or not is immaterial, it's all the things that would be running through these people's head. But they overcame that and did what they had to do.

I have a very close friend who is a fireman and he deals with situations very differently to me. He's used to the stress of the situation. He's used to seeing death. It's just his job and he's de-sensitised to it. I'm not. I was driving along behind a truck in rush hour traffic a few years ago. Long story short, the truck in front of the one in front of me braked very suddenly and the truck in front of me didn't notice. Drove into the back of the other truck and crushed the cab. I screeched to a stop, jumped out and ran to the front of the lorry to see what had happened an if I could help. I'm first aid trained so I should be of some use. I was stood in the middle of the road looking at a crushed cab with the driver crushed against the wheel, unconscious. There was blood dripping from the cab. I looked back to the huge queue of traffic that was stopped behind my car and saw the most terrible thing I've ever seen. Just a huge row of people, all just sat in their cars waiting for someone else to deal with the problem. It was probably the worst moment of my life. No-one else gave a shit and I was watching a man die.

My phone was dead so I ran back to the car behind mine and asked the woman driving to call an ambulance, which she did. I ran back to the cab to see if there was anything I could do and I just froze. I couldn't deal with the stress, my brain just tried to shut down. What snapped me out of it was a guy running toward me to help, from about twenty cars further back down the queue. Just having someone else help - not being alone - was enough and we got the guy out of the cab. Eventually a few other people helped, but it took them a while to come forward.

Every one of the people in this video is risking their life to help someone they don't know. They stepped forward and the guy survived. To sit back in your comfy chair and criticise a construction worker in an incredibly stressful situation not doing precisely the right thing is just the wrong way to look at it. They manned the fuck up and saved his life. You've just seen a lot of very ordinary people do something incredible and they deserve credit for that. If I saw a fire crew do the same thing I'd be disgusted, but that's not what they are.

Your mind goes blank and it takes a huge amount of effort to get anything done in that situation. I've got all the time in the world for every one of the people in this video. It wasn't text book, but they saved him, and deserve all the credit for it.

In Massachusetts US, they converted the emergency lane into the carpool lane during rush-hour.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'goat, yell, chris tucker, ahhh' to 'goat, yell, chris tucker, ahhh, movies, Rush Hour, Jackie Chan' - edited by ant

Nice find, I knew this existed but hadn`t seen it before. Imagine what it smells like in there, considering what the train smells like at rush hour in the summer.

@messenger

Also, you could as easily describe all car drivers as "assholes coming together to inconvenience everyone else" every day during rush hour, but I'm guessing you're a car driver, so you empathise with them, but not with cyclists.

It certainly happens that traffic jams and car accidents cause major inconvenience, but that's not the same as going out with the intent of clogging the roads. It's no accident that the event was originally named the "Commute Clot". I actually do love riding my bike, or at least I did before a neck injury made it agonizing to do so. I have no problem sharing the road with anyone who is willing.

Breaking laws "at every opportunity" is not the point of CM. You acknowledge it's a protest, of sorts, so you shouldn't be surprised that we go through stop signs.

Breaking traffic laws most certainly is, or at least was when this thing got started. I most certainly do not acknowledge this as a protest. Protests are against something: a war, discrimination, etc. What is CM protesting; traffic laws? Equal access to the road? No, this is just a troll festival.

I don't like that idea because it requires declaring an official leader and an official "parade route", both of which miss the point of not needing to ask permission to use our own roads, and the point of it being a protest, not a parade.

And if all you want to do is have a bunch of cyclists go for a ride together, obeying stop signs, red lights, right-of-way, etc, that's awesome and no, you don't need permission or special paperwork or anything like that. However, if that's what your local city does then you have strayed from the intent of CM, that being to block off roads with massive quantities of traffic-law-ignoring cyclists so as to disrupt anyone else's commute. If that's the goal, then that's what parade paperwork is for. Just don't expect to be allowed to fuck up the city every month.

You keep referring to it as a protest, so why don't you tell me what you're protesting?

But these Critical Mass pricks certainly are a self-righteous bunch.
In large part, fair, I suppose.

This is not a protest; this is assholes coming together to inconvenience everyone else.
Not so. Protests are not designed to be convenient. They're designed to get attention. Some disrupt people's lives a lot. CM only does a little. Also, you could as easily describe all car drivers as "assholes coming together to inconvenience everyone else" every day during rush hour, but I'm guessing you're a car driver, so you empathise with them, but not with cyclists.

...bikes have to obey traffic laws, just like cars and buses. Critical Mass does not obey traffic laws; that's the whole point of the event...
Well, no. Breaking laws "at every opportunity" is not the point of CM. You acknowledge it's a protest, of sorts, so you shouldn't be surprised that we go through stop signs. Big deal. As for property damage, that's not part of CM. Not sure what you've been reading. Beyond traffic laws, we generally don't do anything wrong, and IMO, people who do should be arrested.

so they don't have to do the proper paperwork for an event
Some cities do file the paperwork every month. Don't know which ones. Not mine. I don't like that idea because it requires declaring an official leader and an official "parade route", both of which miss the point of not needing to ask permission to use our own roads, and the point of it being a protest, not a parade.

they should all be ticketed and the few who take it even further, smashing car windows and such, should be arrested too. There's no reason they should be above the law, no matter how much they believe they are.
Fair. Any cyclists who break laws beyond traffic laws are stepping outside the protest, and are fair to arrest. And we sometimes are arrested, but usually just for riding our bikes, you know, like peaceful protesters often get arrested. But mostly, the police respect us as harmless protesters and let us go on our way, sometimes even helping to block intersections for us.

Make CM a cyclists' parade... it'll do wonders for your PR.
So, the exact same protest, but with some city bureaucrat's stamp on a piece of paper, and suddenly now it's OK with you? I mean, is it OK, or isn't it? If it's OK, then why do you care if we have a permit? If it's not OK with you, again, what difference would it make if we had a permit?>> ^xxovercastxx:

<the neat-o stuff quoted above>

I don't get it. People nudging red lights? That's your complaint? Try driving in DC during rush hour....

@gwiz665 Just to be light-hearted a bit.

Everyone who is in the front of the line at a red light has a moral responsibility to move as quickly as they can off the line as soon as there is a green light if it's during rush hour and traffic is backed up, especially if the light is known to be a very fast changing light. Go ahead, refute that moral code!

This is why cops should never make a stop in the middle of the damned road.

Even in the middle of the night. It's bad news in the middle of rush hour it's bad news in the middle of the wee hours too.

>> ^Psychologic:
As far as driving, the problem areas with being high are heavy traffic and busy intersections... anything that requires accurate tracking of multiple objects.
Unfortunately, these are also the situations involving the greatest danger to others.
>> ^rougy:
If you've ever watched a circle of college kids playing hacky-sac, upon close observation you'll notice that the best players are usually baked at the time.
Weed doesn't impair the reflexes like booze does.


Tell me about it.

Next time you drive a limo through Boston during morning rush-hour traffic, give me a call.

We'll compare notes.

This isn't a case where it is "always" bad or people are "always" getting what they deserve. The clamps are simple, fast, and cheap. Some municipalities are using them to generate revenue, but others are actually trying to discourage parking in places where parked cars and people moving around those cars frequently are in danger. For example, the street in front of my apartment allows parking on my side of the road, but not the other during rush hour. They don't want everybody parking there and trying to run across the busy street to get home. That's understandable. However there is also no parking there overnight. Why would it be ok to park there at noon, but not midnight? There's no telling. But if enough people get pissed about it, we could petition the county to change the policy.

My point is that there are valid reasons for locking a car down and not wasting the money to tow it away, when the problem is not the presence of the car but the activity of people stopping to park and moving about outside the car. But it must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, looking at it from a safety and traffic-flow point of view. And if the reason is bullshit, go ahead and cause a little civil disobedience. Politicians should fear the people. It's healthy.

Well, the decay of power is one thing that makes the current grid bad. There are others, I'm sure, but I can't name any. The point is, though, that this solution won't necessarily come from the power company. It'll come from consumers who will see this as a way to reduce their energy costs, with a one-time investment that will pay for itself over time.

Once they have power generating capabilities in their own home, and they see they can make as much as they need and then some, the next logical step is to try to sell the excess back to the grid. There are ways of doing that today with solar and wind, but they usually require installing an expensive replacement to your current electricity counter (the exact name of the device escapes me at the moment .

The power companies themselves might see this as a more economic way of producing power than building a nuclear power plant, or a coal one. Distributing these in neighborhoods across a city lets you avoid massive blackouts by one power plant going down, like what happened in New York a while back, increasing the survivability of the grid as a whole. I'm in IT, so we're always thinking about Single Points of Failure in a network

The battery ownership approach reduces the price of the car, because you don't need to buy a battery with the car. Electric cars and plug-in hybrids cost as much as they do because of the battery, not because the car is infused with gold. Buying just a car and a subscription for monthly "eMiles", to use Agassi's term, gives you the benefits of the electric car without the cost of buying a battery. Batteries also decay over time, meaning buying the battery with the car (like in the Chevy Volt) would either require replacing the battery every few years, or driving less and less on the pure electric mode.

The smart grid is necessary. It will save money, it will give power companies options they never had before in terms of power management, and it will let end users generate power and reduce their bills by installing green energy producing equipment on and in their homes. It's the only thing that will let us move away from coal burning plants, nuclear plants and the rest of the deal-with-the-devil type of power generation we have today.

I'm sort of enjoying this too... It's not often that I get a chance to actually discuss this topic and articulate my point of view. Keep it going!
>> ^Stormsinger:
This is getting interesting now. I'd rate this discussion quite a bit higher than the video.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the decay during transmission was estimated at 7.2% back in 1995 (and unlikely to have gotten worse). That's a lot better than when I had expected, and doesn't supply much reason to convert to a new technology.
I've heard a bit about the battery ownership approach (undoubtedly from one of the sifted vids), and that may well offer a solution for the first two issues. It doesn't strike me as helping price, though. We'll see.
I'm far less enthusiastic about using car batteries for grid storage. That sort of aggregated solution has been proposed in other areas. The ones I'm familiar with were mainly IT-related, like using local hard-drives in a company's workstations to store backups. So far, I haven't heard of one example that didn't have serious issues. Admittedly, electricity is fungible, while data is not. But I still think control and coordination is likely to make it unfeasible. Think about the start of rush hour...all those cars that were making up a shortage get pulled off the grid in a very short time. That sort of scenario would make temporary shortages even worse, not better.
It probably -can- be done. I'm less sure it can be done efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. My own prediction is that the approach won't account for more than a miniscule fraction of storage. I'd put my money on non-battery storage, either gravitational or thermal.

This is getting interesting now. I'd rate this discussion quite a bit higher than the video.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the decay during transmission was estimated at 7.2% back in 1995 (and unlikely to have gotten worse). That's a lot better than when I had expected, and doesn't supply much reason to convert to a new technology.

I've heard a bit about the battery ownership approach (undoubtedly from one of the sifted vids), and that may well offer a solution for the first two issues. It doesn't strike me as helping price, though. We'll see.

I'm far less enthusiastic about using car batteries for grid storage. That sort of aggregated solution has been proposed in other areas. The ones I'm familiar with were mainly IT-related, like using local hard-drives in a company's workstations to store backups. So far, I haven't heard of one example that didn't have serious issues. Admittedly, electricity is fungible, while data is not. But I still think control and coordination is likely to make it unfeasible. Think about the start of rush hour...all those cars that were making up a shortage get pulled off the grid in a very short time. That sort of scenario would make temporary shortages even worse, not better.

It probably -can- be done. I'm less sure it can be done efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. My own prediction is that the approach won't account for more than a miniscule fraction of storage. I'd put my money on non-battery storage, either gravitational or thermal.
>> ^demon_ix:
Well, there are downsides to centralized power generation as well. Power decays when transmitted across large distances, and even the most centralized sources still have to be spread across the world.
Some of the problems with any smart grid concept is the financial viability. Why change the whole way the grid works, when all you're gonna do is run it the same way (from power plant to end user, across miles of power cable). Changing the way the economics work, by moving the power production to the home, or to the neighborhood will make a smart grid all the more viable. People will be able to put these things in the house, use up whatever power they need, and the rest will be sold back to the grid, for use in houses that don't have this capability.
One of the solutions to electric car adoption has been sifted a few times in the past, and is about to go into full testing in Israel soon before a scheduled commercial release in 2011. I'm referring to Shai Agassi's Better Place, which has been sifted quite a few times.
By separating the battery ownership from the car, they're changing the cost of the EV from what's the main deterrent today from those cars today, which is the initial investment. Their solution to range is replacing the battery, and as long as they manage their goal of almost ubiquitous charge spots, range will not be a problem for 95% of car users.
This also relates to the smart grid concept by giving power companies the means to store electricity around the grid in the form of car batteries. The concept is called V2G, meaning the grid can take power out of the car when needed, making it a battery for storing intermittent sources, like wind or solar. By itself it's not very useful, but in large EV quantities, it becomes a very viable option.
---
Wow, I sort of went off-topic there, didn't I? This discussion was about a stationary home/neighborhood power generation device at some point.
>> ^Stormsinger:
The problem with decentralizing power generation is that there really -are- economies of scale here. Large generating plants have significantly better efficiencies in all our current technologies. Centralized plants also offer a cheaper avenue for cleaning the results, whether that means CO2 scrubbing, filtering soot, or handling nuclear waste products. Perhaps fuel cells can change that...perhaps not. But in my mind, efficiency is more important than decentralization simply for the sake of decentralization.
People will support electric cars when electric cars are available that have a reasonable range, can be conveniently and quickly recharged, and have a reasonable price tag. That's likely to be quite a while, given our current battery technology. The question of where the electricity is generated has nothing to do with it.

GSF, man, I don't even know where to begin. Here it is from the top I guess.

"I approach the law as a means of maximizing freedoms and minimizing evils."

I approach the law similarly. The question is always in the details. The disagreement is always on where exactly the minimum lies. You clearly think we are way past it. Frankly, while I agree in some instances, in many I feel we haven't gone far enough. Financial regulation, for instance, would be one of those areas. As for airport security specifically, I think we are about right on. In the end, we probably both have reverence for the wisdom of our forefathers in creating a mechanism for the resolution of grievances we may have about specifics. In this particular case, the kid broke the agreed upon rules.

"It would be akin to them taking over security at the movies, or at your local shopping mart."

No, it would be more akin to them taking over security on interstate highways, or on our border. Airports are interstate commerce at its purest, and the constitution gives the federal government clear authority to regulate it.

"And it isn't just a few dollars, it is billions...and I don't even fly that often anymore but yet still I pay. "

I think you mean billions between all of us, as you don't have billions of dollars. In which case, yes it is a few dollars. It isn't like the government has nationalized the airlines (yet... I wish they would provide a public option at least).

"An airport is NOTHING like the Pentagon."
In a way you're right. It isn't really like the Pentagon. It isn't really classified to the same degree. It is, however, like a border or an interstate highway. While it generally is okay to film in these sorts of places (like it is generally okay in an airport). It is not okay however, to have people systematically casing the security detail. Especially not while broadcasting it to unknown or otherwise undisclosed recipients. It's not rocket science. It's common sense. If he busted out his camera and took a picture of his family getting on the plane, he would not have been hassled.

"An airport is completely private in nature."
If you want to argue instead that airports are private, go right ahead. The only problem is, then your right to film and distribute without express permission goes out the window.

"Secondly, I can't honestly believe you think talking about how dumb not allowing blankets on a plane is as some kind of security risk."
He didn't talk about it, he asked her if the policy existed. That was exactly the kind of behavior she was told to look out for. That, combined with systematic filming of the security detail, suggests that he was investigating the viability of some sort of plot. Given the grave cost of a security breach, and the relatively minor inconvenience he experienced, I think the search was warranted.

"There is a difference between someone who is a threat and someone who is being petulant."
He certainly was being petulant. That doesn't mean he wasn't a threat. The quick search (not even any rubber gloves!) verified that he was not in fact a threat. Then they let him go, and let him be as petulant as he wanted, while taking the necessary precautions in case they are wrong.

"I don't know if you ever had any run ins with the police, it doesn't sound like it."
I used to run with a bunch of anarchists when the Iraq war broke out. We had our own special investigator. We would do things like lead thousands of people onto main street at rush hour every week, shutting it down every friday for months leading up to the war in a fair sized city. We, as the handful of organizers, would stand on the perimeter of the mass facing the police so that we would be first arrested. The cops are just people man. With a little social decency you can avoid getting hassled. This kid brought it upon himself.

"I have also known people like these officers who forget what their job is."
And those officers themselves should be dealt with. They don't necessarily reflect policing in general.