Streetpong [video](streetpong.info) |
Streetpong [video](streetpong.info) |
The installation in the video is not real, but because of the popularity of the video, they're currently working on a physical prototype.
I don't see how the game has anything to do with it. If a person is capable of physically retaliating to a complete stranger over a game of pong, that person is mentally ill and has serious problem existing in society regardless.
How many cars pass through an intersection on any given day. How many end up on the curb?
There have been a significant number of cases where cars end up sidewalks near where I live. It's not just drunk drivers; it's often distracted drivers who are texting or using an app.
Bollards are a great and fairly cheap solution, but many bureaucrats are pro-car and oppose them for the danger they might pose to drivers.
<< [O]ne of the downsides to bollards is that while protecting human beings, they can do damage to automobiles. John Kaehny, the former executive director of Transportation Alternatives was a big fan of bollards and often pushed the city to install them at dangerous locations. DOT traffic engineers consistently opposed his efforts telling him that bollards were no good because they did damage to cars or that bollards struck at high speed could "become dislodged and become dangerous projectiles that might kill or injure pedestrians." These are the kinds of stories that makes one think New York City traffic engineers empathize more with automobiles than people. >>
Sure thousands of cars can pass through a crossing every day with out on mounting the pavement. But road safety is all about improving the odds.
:D
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/17/cell-ph...
Source: translation of http://vimeo.com/48514003
:)
(Hint: Here's how you say that sentence properly: "Yes, because we actually stop at them!" The way you constructed it - you're doing it at the moment, definitively ..)
First sentence on the web-site: “StreetPong is a concept about playful urban interactions.” The last three words are the key here. I think it is a cool way to encourage complete strangers in a big anonymous city to have a little interaction, and then get to shake hands or high-five as they pass each other crossing the street.
Who knows what positive effects little ideas like this could foster?
Pretty cool :)
I wonder what they are using for communicating between the two touch screens on each side of the road. It almost looks like the touch screens are large mobile phones.
It's a concept created using VFX[1].
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/09/10/german-crosswalk-lets-opp...
What I would love to see, and which seems realistic from this video, is an installation that shows the people waiting a "loading bar" or countdown or some visual indicator of how long until the crosswalk is green for pedestrians. In the video they show this as the background color - red or green - gradually draining from the screen.
Depends on what you mean by "break". In Boston, you might just get, epic, hour-long pong battles. Seriously, the pedestrian signal situation in Boston is so haphazard you could hardly make it worse by introducing experiments like this.
Based on the operational studies, only the red time countdown device has a positive influence on safety and delay but increases the travel time and decreases the capacity. The pedestrian countdown signal, however, has little improvements for both travel directions.[1]
[1] http://www.ce.siue.edu/faculty/hzhou/publication/What%20do%2...
What if winning the game granted your side a couple of seconds head start? I wonder if there would be little impromptu election committees formed on each side to nominate a representative for that side; "Step aside, I got this..."
Or maybe there could be a more cooperative game where the collaborative success at some activity would make the light change sooner. That would be awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_scramble
They're a nice way of balancing foot traffic with the need for vehicles to turn at a light. I'm not sure why they're not more popular around the world.
Because they tend to prioritize pedestrian traffic.
If it's usually green for car traffic all the time, and only turns green for pedestrians on request, why not change immediately when somebody pushes the button?
The basic idea regarding vehicle and pedestrian movements is that the system can be entirely pretimed (interval control) or divided up into phases (phase control). The typical idea of operation is that any compatible phases should be able to run concurrently so long as there is time available. During Pedestrian Walk and Clearance time however these phases cannot be forced off or timed out. (Otherwise people could get hit by cars) This limits the amount of time the button can be pressed during a green light and still change the pedestrian signal.
(Ampel being the German for traffic light)
Great innovation.
There is a certain perverse nostalgia these days to times before smartphones, before the internet, before the telephone, before technology. Wasn't it great when you were stuck on train without a book, and just had to grin and bear it? Many would argue this builds character. I would argue it's luddite masochism.
Boredom is actually good for children and adults.
http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/raise-great-kids...
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405311190345450... - you'll need to view the google link to see the full article - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21895704
>Wasn't it great when you were stuck on train without a book, and just had to grin and bear it?
Seriously? Is it THAT bad sitting quietly by yourself that you had to use the expression "grin and bear it?" I would not be upset being on a train without entertainment. In fact, I don't usually bring entertainment with me on flights or trains and if I do, I usually don't end up using them anyways.
Thirty years ago, when I was still a novice at Tu Hieu Pagoda, washing the dishes was hardly a pleasant task. During the Season of Retreat when all the monks returned to the monastery, two novices had to do all the cooking and wash the dishes for sometimes well over one hundred monks. There was no soap. We had only ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks, and that was all. Cleaning such a high stack of bowls was a chore, especially during the winter when the water was freezing cold. Then you had to heat up a big pot of water before you could do any scrubbing. Nowadays one stands in a kitchen equipped with liquid soap, special scrubpads, and even running hot water which makes it all the more agreeable. It is easier to enjoy washing the dishes now. Anyone can wash them in a hurry, then sit down and enjoy a cup of tea afterwards. I can see a machine for washing clothes, although I wash my own things out by hand, but a dishwashing machine is going just a little too far! While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly:
Why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There's no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.
http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/G%20-%20TNH/TNH/Fro...
The above solution at least allows 2 random people to interact while waiting, which counteracts the isolation tendency IMHO.
Yeah, actually there is. Not only is it important to unplug from technology on a regular basis, but an idle brain is useful for creative thinking and problem solving.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/aug/24/charlie...
My current flat has a dishwasher, my last flat did not. Time that I once spent doing the dishes, I now spend on my side project, or engaging with friends, or relaxing with a book. Each of these is more enjoyable, and more meaningful, than concentrating on washing the dishes.
I appreciate each and every moment for what it is, but I appreciate moments of pleasure more than moments of boredom. That should not be a strange thing.
Please stop pretending to be wise: http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/
This is a more reasonable argument, and I agree. It is often useful to have quiet space to think. That said, I prefer to put the dishwasher on, and go for a walk outside for 15minutes, than to stay inside doing the dishes. The dishes themselves are not in and of themselves important. In the case of the streetlight, many people may be too busy navigating the streets to relax properly into a good idle state, or they may be pissed off and want some light-hearted fun; we should not make value judgments on them for that.
> it [is] important to unplug from technology on a regular basis
Whilst I might not necessarily disagree with you on this point, people often make this claim with no actual evidence or reasoning. Why is it important to unplug? In some situations, I can clearly see a benefit - for example, eating dinner with friends, pulling out a phone to check social media disrupts your ability to connect with your friends, makes you seem rude, and will likely reduce the quality of your interaction. When I'm on the train to work in the morning, listening to music and reading web articles on my phone seems like a net benefit.
There can be benefits to avoiding technology and to doing things properly and in-person - but those should be evaluated on an individual basis with logic, rather than with a general appeal to puritan work-ethics and ascetism.
If that same accident happens at 20 mph, there's only a 5% chance of a fatality. That's a big reason why London lowered the speed limit in the heart of the city to 20 mph: http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/09/13/the-heart-of-london-ad...
New York is pushing for a similar change... hopefully if and when it happens, more bollards can be put in place without endangering others. http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/05/16/neighborhoods-across-n...
And while it routinely happens that motorists will ignore pedestrians or cyclists at corners or that they drive over red lights, I have yet to see someone accidentally driving on the sidewalk at a traffic light, endangering pedestrians there.
http://news.ca.msn.com/local/montreal/pedestrian-killed-on-s...
http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/11/11/three-killed-by-curb-j...
http://www.myfoxny.com/story/19681198/car-drives-onto-sidewa...
http://gothamist.com/2013/11/11/two_pedestrians_killed_after...
http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20131226/san-bernardino-ma...
And these are just the first few links that show up on googling for "pedestrian killed on sidewalk" there are many, many, many more articles just like these.
I would much prefer a link that provided me actual data in order to believe that this is an event that occurs all the time (such as the number deaths of pedestrians on sidewalks per capita).
For example, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration put out a 2008 report (I chose 2008 as it was the top result on Google) listing the average pedestrian fatality rate per 100,000 people by state [1]. It seems to range from ~1 to ~3.
According to the CDC, there are 799.5 deaths per 100,000 population in the United States (2010 data) [2]. This means my chance of dying as a pedestrian, compared to other potential means of me dying are around 0.3%.
A few studies have found that between 80% and 90% of pedestrian fatalities are a result of the pedestrian being at fault (this comes from the Center for Problem Oriented Policing [3], which cites two sources for this information [4] [5]). This means, again as a percentage chance of all other forms of death, dying while standing on the sidewalk is somewhere in the ballpark of 0.06%.
[1] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810968.PDF (page 18, figure 2-4).
[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
[3] http://www.popcenter.org/problems/pedestrian_injuries/
[4] Lee and Abdel-Aty (2005)
[5] Teanby, Gorman, and Boot (1993)
Also, your sentence
> Yes, because we actually stop at them!
> stop at them!
> at them!
Muphry's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_Law
Ask yourself this question: Are they stopping at the traffic lights right now in the present-progessive sense? Is the speaker talking about doing this 'right now'?
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/pres_pro.htm
.. or is it .. in the Simple Present form?
http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/simple_present_form...
But are you describing a general activity, which you have observed, and which you do not currently possess, in front of you, at the moment? In which case referring to the definite possessive form "they are" is incorrect - who are 'they'? Are you observing this activity immediately?
The correct way to say this sentence: "Germans stop at traffic lights." They're not doing it right now, they're not in front of you - its a general case.
There is a reason to understand and use language properly. I happen to live in a German-speaking country, and this mistake is made often because it is, simply, not taught properly. (I also get my German corrected in the same way, and OFTEN, so lest you feel I'm being curmudgeonly for any reason other than revenge .. ;)
You understood their point, had nothing to add, so you thought you'd be a tool instead.[0]
[0] Just as I have done.
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/roadway_dept/policy_guide/road_ha...
>Roadside signs, utility poles, lighting structures, traffic signals, railroad warning devices, motorist-aid callboxes, mailboxes, and other rigid objects can become deadly roadside hazards if placed where run-off-the-road vehicles can strike them. While it is preferable to maintain obstacle-free roadside clear zones, this is not always a practical option. When rigid objects cannot be removed or relocated, potential crash impacts can be mitigated by specifying breakaway features, or by shielding the object with a longitudinal barrier or crash cushion.
And here's a video of a light pole breakaway feature being tested. :)
"The Germans do stop at traffic lights. Non-Germans, do not."
Notice the difference?
Final Edit: the German-formed sentence I was correcting:
"Yes, because we (Germans) are actually stopping at them!"
"Yes, because we (Germans) do actually stop at them."