If it had been a train track, she's dead.

Thank God we're still a nation of cars.

She should just sit in her apartment and wait for her family to visit her? ...And If they don't then she should die of heat stroke? How very French.

Frankenstein! Frankenstein the legend, Frankenstein the indestructible! Sole survivor of the titanic pile-up of '95, only two-time winner of the Transcontinental Road Race... Frankenstein! Ripped up, wiped out, battered, shattered, creamed, and reamed... a dancer on the brink of death... Frankenstein, who lost a leg in '98, an arm in '99! With half a face and half a chest, and all the guts in the world, he's back!

They should award 150 points for the brutal caning of bureaucrats with no respect for their elders.

Machine Gun Joe Viterbo -- Sly Stallone's best role ever.

Tut, tut. That old woman was obviously crossing the street to do a job that young Americans won't do. And there are millions of slow senior citizens already in this country; surely you wouldn't want police officers stationed on every street, ticketing these poor eager slowpokes? Have you no compassion?!

Dumb.

I think this what you mean by "wahoos," when all the rest of us think that you are referring to fish: someone who approves of harassing the disabled because they are not moving fast enough.

Traffic control signal devices confer only qualified permission to proceed. Red means stop, green means go if it is safe to do so. If a disabled person is having difficulty negotiating an intersection, it is not safe to proceed.

Not only is man fallen, but he can't get up.

Not even 20 years ago Boy Scouts were admired as the type of kids who would help frail old ladies across the street. Now Boy Scouts are portrayed as evil incarnate, and little old ladies are merely traffic obstacles. What the heck is going on?

We developed the nursing home system to kick the little old ladies out of the house. Apparently they weren't as pleasant as we are led to believe.

In defence of David, who needs no defending, and who could defend himself well if he did, which he doesn't, but whom I would be proud to defend if he did, if he did, which he doesn't, the fact that the old dear was 100% in the right and that it is a shameful, mean-spirited, post-modern outrage to criticize her (not to mention a possible violation of the Commandments)doesn't change the main point that such situations drive us to the moon. It's not unlike being behind the senior (who we can't be sure didn't fight at Iwo Jima) in the checkout line who waits until the cash is tallied before taking out the purse, figuring this is a super opportunity to get rid or those extra pennies one by one and asking the clerk to remind him/her just what exactly it was that was on sale.

I enjoy these stories most when they come on the heels of sunny predictions about how science is on the verge of extending longevity. That being said, I vote for Granny. But let's not pretend we find it charming or that our inner child doesn't want to do something illegal.

h-man. amen! I heard those trains can do real damage when they run over people.

Peter: That was the best nondefense defense I've ever had the pleasure of being defended by. Not that I need any defending.

I was perhaps overly-readied for this story on my way home today when I came an intersection. I had a stop sign, and the cross street didn't. Nevertheless, a on-coming car stopped to wait for a jogger to get to, and then cross the intersection. He then waited for me. To cross in front of him. Although I had a stop sign. And he didn't.

I take deep breaths and say to myself, "patience, you're going to be old and slow someday, be patient." Shame on the officer for not going over to offer assistance and to ensure the lady's safety.

One of the good things about Concord, NH is that if you do not stop for the pedestrians you will get a ticket in a heartbeat. Likewise you will get one if you honk at them to hurry up. More places should do that.

It takes a special kind of mentality to fail to notice that sunny predictions about how science is on the verge of extending longevity are accompanied by sunny predictions and actual discoveries about how we'll improve the quality of longer life.

The kids being born now, who will live to be at least 120 on average, will be as spry and content at age 90 as we are now at age 45.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 11, 2006 3:22 AM

If someone is tailgating me in city traffic I become one of the most courteous drivers, stopping for every pedestrian or cyclist who merely hints at a desire to cross the road (and in the Netherlands, there are quite a few). Still I normally catch up with the other traffic at the next traffic light. Having thus transferred my irritation at the traffic to the tailgater, I arrive at the office in a good mood.

Pedestrians have the right-of-way in marked crosswalks in most jurisdictions. They might have the right-of-way even in unmarked crosswalks. i.e., any road junction, depending on the state law and the class of highway involved.

I find that suburban and rural drivers are much better behaved about things like this than the wahoos and yahoos in the city, who blow horns and wave fingers at those who stop for peds and slow down in school zones.

Fifty points? No way that old lady was worth more than ten--the difficulty factor was too low. Once again the need for a unified league with consistent scoring becomes glaringly obvious.

Michael:

The kids being born now, who will live to be at least 120 on average, will be as spry and content at age 90 as we are now at age 45.

Are their child-rearing years going to lengthen proportionally and will they have more children?

Are their child-rearing years going to lengthen proportionally and will they have more children?

Yes, they already have.
I doubt it.

They'll just have two - three kids somewhat later in life than previous generations, continuing a trend that's already apparent.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 11, 2006 7:14 AM

"The kids being born now, who will live to be at least 120 on average, will be as spry and content at age 90 as we are now at age 45."

Let me go way, way out on a limb here and predict that this is about as likely to happen as the space elevator, space catapult, and whatever other wonderful ideas that Glenn Reynolds is convinced is Right Around The Corner.

b,

Over the years, the Reynolds of the world have been proven more right than wrong.

All,

There should be points awarded for running slow drivers out of the the left lane. Oh wait, going over the speed limit is illeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegal!!!

Bruno: I'm certainly not discounting the Inevitable March of Technology, but Prof. Reynolds is bonkers. Your grandchildren's grandchildren won't see a space elevator, or a permanent base on the Moon, let alone Mars. And even they won't have an average lifespan of anywhere near 120 years.

Geez, when did we all become Prius drivers.

b:

You're seriously attempting to argue that 100 years from now we won't have space elevators, Moonbases, and long lifespans ?!?

Think back to the turn of the 20th century, and mentally replay what's been discovered/accomplished since then.
Now consider that the pace of discovery has been doubled or tripled.

Barring a total collapse of all human civilization, the odds of your prediction being correct are exactly zero.

We won't have warp drives or teleporters in a hundred years, but you'll likely live to see a space elevator.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 11, 2006 12:32 PM

Michael: "You're seriously attempting to argue that 100 years from now we won't have space elevators"

No, I'm not "arguing" it, I'm stating my opinion based on knowledge of science & human nature. Same as you. Fun, isn't it?

"Think back to the turn of the 20th century, and mentally replay what's been discovered/accomplished since then.
Now consider that the pace of discovery has been doubled or tripled."

Yes, I'm familiar with The Singularity Is Near! "argument". And it's bonkers.

"Barring a total collapse of all human civilization, the odds of your prediction being correct are exactly zero."

Well, that's convincing. I can do that too--the odds of a space elevator being built in the next century are exactly zero. You're not totally off track though--there won't be a civilizational collapse, of course, but a planet where the likes of Iran (or Pakistan, or North Korea, or...) have nukes is not a planet about to build a space elevator.

Yes, Kurzweil is over the top.

However, in another thread, you state that in twenty years American servicemembers will have nanotech armor that will be very effective in ending casualties. Due to your knowledge of science, you're aware that a space elevator would utilize THE EXACT SAME materials science that nanotech armor would.

Therefore, I'm a bit confused about why your knowledge of human nature would lead you to conclude that we'll use a given material for military purposes, but not for civilian purposes.
When has that ever happened before ?

Further, in looking at history, we see humans building stone-paved roads, canals, railroads, asphalt roads, and airports; ships of all kinds, animal-drawn vehicles, self-propelled vehicles, and aircraft.
Why would we now decide to simply stop improving our means of transportation ?

We will soon have the means with which to build a space elevator. Your conclusion is that nonetheless we won't do so, which strikes me as an odd assertion.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 11, 2006 2:10 PM

To quote the bard, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

My bet is there'll be stuff we can't even imagine. A hundred years ago, who could have predicted or imagined that a whole bunch of disparate people living all over the world are having a great time "talking" to each other by typing on a screen in a little tiny notebook connected to an imaginary network you can't see or smell . . . and should any of us need to check a fact or figure, we may simple type the question into a little rectangular box and up will pop tens of thousands or even millions of sources answering the question?

erp:

Just so - computers and near-instant communication and data transfer - thus "the pace of discovery has been doubled or tripled."

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at April 11, 2006 3:31 PM

The only reason for a space elevator is to build Moon Bases and other such fairy tales. And if there's one thing we've seen over the past 3+ decades, it's that Americans don't care about space, except for pretty pictures. No one cares about the Space Station, and no one misses the Shuttle. Tom Wolfe was spot on that astronauts in the 60s were celebrities because they were the modern equivalent of knights, dueling one-on-one against the cosmonauts in Earth orbit. There is absolutely no interest among the public to do any of the stuff that those who fantasize about colonizing space think is so fascinating and compelling.

I think that Michael is being overly optimistic about the life-extending promise of modern medicine. There have been exactly two great discoveries in medical science that explain more or less all of the increase in life expectancy. The first, and more important, pre-dates the 20th century: the interelated understanding of sanitation and the germ theory of disease. The second is the discovery, in the 20th century, of antibiotics.

Although these two discoveries have increased life expectancy, they haven't done much to touch the human life-span. That is, the oldest people aren't any older, there are just a lot more of them. Noting that the bible put the human life span at between 70 and 80 years, it hasn't changed much in three thousand years. Nor has the upper bound of female fertility changed much: women still go through menopause in their mid-forties, about when they always did. A good rule of thumb is that woman who hasn't conceived by 40 won't. Women are giving birth later, but that's through IVF and with borrowed eggs.

If there is some huge increase in life-span in our future, there had not yet been any hint of it in real life.

But David, some young researcher may be conjuring up a great discovery as we speak. That's the fun of it. We don't know what's waiting for us just around the corner.