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Author Topic: Bickering about bicycles, now with occasional tips about motorised vehicles  (Read 242226 times)

calenlass

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Whenever you Australians and British talk about "car parks", I always think of parks for cars. You know, green spaces for them to frolic and play.

I always imagine them something like this.

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Elysiana

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Maybe cars would be less likely to run themselves off the road in agony if they had more places to play.

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CARS.
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calenlass

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Take the dog to the dog park and the car to the car park. They need to be let off the leash once in a while.
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pwhodges

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Is the dog park the hook outside the shop where I tie the dog up when shopping?
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"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

calenlass

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Actually, I can completely understand the absence of dog parks in the UK, considering how seldom I have ever seen anyone need their dog on a leash at all. Something about people and their dogs in the US just doesn't work, so we are not allowed to have them off-leash in cities pretty much ever. To compensate, we have dog parks in urban areas for the city-dwellers who own dogs.
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The Seldom Killer

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Ah yeild signs in multi-storeys, that reminds me of Canada. In the UK you're lucky if they bother painting some directional signs on the ground.
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SirJuggles

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Ugh I work for the Parking Services department at my University, and our two mandatory days are dorm move-in at the beginning of the year and graduation/commencement at the end. Getting put on Parking Garage duty for commencement is a sure sign that the managers HATE YOU.
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pwhodges

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To compensate, we have dog parks in urban areas for the city-dwellers who own dogs.

They're not unknown in the UK; when I lived in Hackney, there was a small grassed area provided specifically for dogs at the end of our road, even though it was less than 100 yards to one of the biggest parks in London.
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"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

Akima

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"YEILD" always sounds to me like something a mediaeval knight was supposed to shout at his fallen foe. It's the same thing as a "GIVE WAY" sign here, isn't it?
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edwinalink

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Right now I'm thinking a British EXIT sign just says "Pip-Pip, Cherrio!"  :psyduck:

he is TOO totally appropriate there.
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The Seldom Killer

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Frankly I'm surprised that the American YIELD signs haven't been replaced with BACK OFF MOTHERFUCKER.
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edwinalink

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Frankly I'm surprised that the American YIELD signs haven't been replaced with BACK OFF MOTHERFUCKER.

Why do that when we already have stickers adorning the rear of the car that carry the same message?

they're right between the Juggalo sticker and the sticker of Calvin Pissing on... who the hell knows anymore.
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The Seldom Killer

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In my part of England there seems to be a proclivity for the rather fatalistic bumper sticker that proclaims "Wednesday til' I die". Although the midweek massive loss of life has yet to occur, it really doen't instill me with any faith about the driver's commitment to road safety.
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SonofZ3

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Actually, I can completely understand the absence of dog parks in the UK, considering how seldom I have ever seen anyone need their dog on a leash at all. Something about people and their dogs in the US just doesn't work, so we are not allowed to have them off-leash in cities pretty much ever. To compensate, we have dog parks in urban areas for the city-dwellers who own dogs.

This is so true. Maybe its the water here in the US, but dogs are fucking mean. I've been bitten by unleashed dogs while walking down the sidewalk a couple times in my life, and once you get out of the cities, people shoot dogs, and cats, that show up on their property. It sucks.
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It's probably just that no-one bothers training them.
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nekowafer

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That's what I think. My mom's dogs are all awful creatures because she doesn't care to put any effort into training them at all. When she tells one to sit, and he doesn't, she seems to think that they know what it means but have decided not to listen to her. So either they don't respect her, which is a lack of (good) training, or they don't know what it means, which is also a lack of (good) training. And a lot of people have this mentality.
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pwhodges

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here in the US, but dogs are fucking mean. I've been bitten by unleashed dogs while walking down the sidewalk

I've been bitten, badly enough to go to hospital, by a dog in an English village (opposite my home at the time, in fact); I was preventing it attacking a young girl (she was unharmed though badly frightened) and it attacked from behind when I turned to check the girl.  The dog was later destroyed by the police.
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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."  (from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )
"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

Caleb

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I had a giant German Shepard run me down when I was riding my bike on a public dirt road near camp as a kid.  I was probably like 10-11?  He bit my thigh but couldn't get a good enough grip to break the skin though.  It tore my shorts up.

I didn't stop riding my bike and managed to get away from it.

Thinking back, the fucker was probably going for my groin.

My father complained to the owner and said that he would shoot that dog but I don't think he called the cops or anything.

Honestly, if I had a kid who was attacked by a dog like that I would honestly consider walking up to the road in front of that house and shooting the thing dead.  At the very least I would get the cops to kill it.

See this is why I can't have children ever.  I just got angry thinking about a pretend dog attacking my pretend kid.
« Last Edit: 15 Feb 2011, 09:55 by Caleb »
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nekowafer

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My stance is that many dogs like that can be reformed. But then, in the US we have over-population, so unless the owner is truly willing to work on it, no one has the money for it. And so they're put down. A bad dog is rarely an inherently bad dog. Someone taught them to be that way, whether directly or indirectly.
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SonofZ3

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My fiance's mother has a dog that gets treated like a human being. It bites, and never gets punished. It bit completely through my fiance's thumbnail, like right in the middle of the nail, the one time she was petting it and its punishment was being made to get down off the couch. Thats what happens when people teach dogs they're more important than humans. My fiance thinks this is the right way to treat a dog, as a result, we do not own a dog.
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calenlass

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See, I meant less in the sense of "our dogs versus yours" being more dangerous and more in the sense of unruliness and discipline. There will be poorly handled dogs the world over, but there seems to be a difference in holding the owners accountable. In the UK, I get the impression that a disobedient dog is your fault. In the US, people often throw up their hands because "some dogs are just like that" and "lots of people have trouble with obedience training".

I saw someone hit a bird this weekend and they didn't even notice because they were texting, guys. It made me really sad. :(
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jhocking

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I kinda think American attitudes towards pets is spillover from American attitudes toward child-rearing. Not to get too deep into it, but we don't discipline anybody.

The Seldom Killer

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I'm fairly sure there's a word for that.
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Jace

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The Seldom Killer

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Could be.

I was thinking of racist though.
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ackblom12

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What?!?!?! No, No no no. you were thinking of rainbows and puppies and unicorn foals.

I would never have thought racism.
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The Seldom Killer

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The Seldom Killer

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Just checking. Opaque would, to me, suggest a fairly obvious reference which I was worried about missing.
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nekowafer

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I've always thought that obtuse, in a situation like this, meant someone that was intentionally being somewhat difficult to understand. But that apparently just shows that I never looked it up.
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Jace

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Its like English isn't your first language or something. 
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valley_parade

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See below sig quote.
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Wait so you're letting something that happened 10 years ago ruin your quality of life? What are you, America? :psyduck:

edwinalink

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I don't think being Obtuse means you're intentionally being hard to understand. It is often very hard to get both the base message and emotional intent of what I say. Despite my best Effort, many here surely find me Obtuse.

But I'm not TRYING.
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pwhodges

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Quote from: Oxford Dictionary of English
Obtuse, adj (1) annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand; difficult to understand, especially deliberately so.

Quote from: New Oxford American Dictionary
Obtuse, adj (1) annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand; difficult to understand.

This suggests that they perceive a slight difference in usage on the two sides of the pond.
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"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"  (from: The Eccentric Family )

Scandanavian War Machine

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yeah, i never thought of obtuseness as being deliberate necessarily, and I'm american, so that sort of makes sense, I guess.

language is funny
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Elysiana

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I always thought it was a deliberate attempt, and I'm American. I have no idea why I thought that, and I don't think I've ever looked it up - maybe it was just the context I've always heard it in. I always think of The Shawshank Redemption when I hear it.
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calenlass

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Just checking. Opaque would, to me, suggest a fairly obvious reference which I was worried about missing.

Opaque means "hard to see through". Mostly, anyway.
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Lines

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Yeah, but that could be mistaken for being fairly obvious. Who knows. Yay semantics!

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David_Dovey

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I always think of The Shawshank Redemption when I hear it.

Thank you for pre-emptively answering the question I was gonna shit up the thread with by asking.
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calenlass

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So today I watched some asshole student as he went the wrong way in a one-way parking lot to steal a spot out from under the nose of someone else who went the proper way around and had been waiting on it. He smiled at me and said "hey, there" as I walked by. I kind of smiled back, but if he had only known it was my contemptuous smile. In my head I was all "bitch I would not be friends with you, you are a scumbag". Fucker.
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bainidhe_dub

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Ooh that is how I look at the entitled jackass who parks in the fire/loading lane at the grocery store and leaves his blinkers on and takes just as long to get just as many things as me who parked properly in a parking space and will not at all be overburdened with my two bags and a gallon of milk. Not even handicapped people get to park there, you fuck, that is the ROAD.
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I guess I'm kinda blessed because at my uni people mostly follow the unwritten rules of the parking lot. At least in the one car park that I frequently use. It's oriented north-south and at the north end, the end closest to the buildings, there is an island in the middle. Once the car park is full the way things are done is that you go to the top of the car park, go around the island and wait for someone to walk to their car. This usually less than 10 minutes. If there is already someone waiting then politely queue behind them until another bay becomes free. I really like this system.
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calenlass

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That is how it is supposed to work, but I would guess this only happens about 50% of the time on my campus.

Things can get pretty stupid around here. For example, on the first day of classes this semester,

I was walking to my car to exchange my dance bag for my trumpet when an SUV (jeep or something similar) stopped halfway up the ramp and a blonde girl got out of the passenger side. There were a lot of cars behind them and I felt compelled to say something to the driver (another blonde girl), so I said something about it being a really bad idea to stop here and that maybe they shouldn't. The first blonde proceeded to tell me, in an unmistakable "fuck off" tone, that she was just going to her car so that her friend could have her parking space, if that was alright with me. I put up my hands and raised my eyebrows and just walked away, but as I was closing my trunk after retrieving my trumpet, I suddenly heard tires screeching. I looked up to see that she had pulled out of her parking space and backed incredibly close to the oncoming car behind her, that some other jerk had gotten impatient and decided to pass her friend, and that she was now pinned between them. As I watched, she got out of her car and started shouting at the jerk to "back UP! No, YOU back up!" over and over. It may have been a mean thing for me to do, but I started laughing and couldn't really stop myself before I walked away.

I know she heard me, and I felt a teensy bit bad, but really not all that much.
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Akima

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So today I watched some asshole student as he went the wrong way in a one-way parking lot to steal a spot out from under the nose of someone else who went the proper way around and had been waiting on it.
That is just asking to get keyed or bottle-capped or your tyres slashed.
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pwhodges

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Not  in a university  carpark, surely?
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Don't cross the fucking street when there is a green arrow for left turns you ignorant fucks. I AM going to cut you off, and I will not care.
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The Seldom Killer

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Check your local state and municipal ordinance, pedestrians may still retain right of way under those conditions.
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Jace

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Well the crossing signal says do not walk, So I imagine they're just dumb 
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Zingoleb

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man fuck the cross/do not cross signs

they are never accurate, they always tell me not to walk when there's no one around and then lead me right into oncoming traffic
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nekowafer

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Yeah I've had that issue so many times. I just pay attention to the cars. But then I'm usually jaywalking so yeah.
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jhocking

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All this talk about driving habits on universities is reminding me of some observations from back in college. You see, I used to work in the Orientation program to greet new students, and parents driving in were often assholes. Like, they would routinely yell at volunteers telling them the parking lot was full and directing them elsewhere, and one girl actually broke down in tears from the extensive screaming. That was pretty awful (way to set an example for your kids) but the interesting thing was that nobody ever got mad at me while we carried their stuff up to the dorm. In fact I was frequently thanked and turned down several tips.

It seemed like the actual act of driving was turning people into assholes, because in other contexts they were perfectly normal and decent. Now I’m curious if this anecdotal observation is true, and if so why (if I had to guess, it’s because people drive so often that they end up with no tolerance for the inconveniences that come up.)

I’m not sure what to do with this information.
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