h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's a tough call! Here in Chicago, transit fares are nontransferrable, and it's a fineable offense to allow anyone to use your ticket. It does cost riders who do buy their tickets a lot of money. We don't have tickets that work like yours and allow a seond rider along. It'd be cool if we did!

I'd probably be more inclined, if we had tickets that allowed us to bring a second rider along, to say someone was with me and allow my ticket to cover them. It's technically not stealing, because you've paid for your ticket. It's up to you who you decide to consider your guest, isn't it?

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Yes, it is up to me to take someone, but if they've not paid for their ticket, they are increasing the general cost! Do you think there's a general criterion for deciding who's "worthy"? someone obviously poor? Someone obviously too cheap to buy a ticket? Would you "save" someone who's insulting the conductor?

Referring back to the brainwashing/indoctrination question:

"Experts agree that if narrow and restrictive theological concepts aren't ingrained by the age of 12, then your child chances of becoming a Methodist increase by 75%."

http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/archives/goddoll.html





az

ps
thanks to the researcher formerly known as Gosho for this

one shouldn't lump everyone together"
Very true.>>

oh noooooo

Guess it is a bit like the car park tickets where I shop. You pay your 70p or whatever for 2hrs parking then when you get to the till, the supermarket refunbds the cost of the ticket to you. So you are then in poissesion of a perfectly valid ticket, that is free. If I spot someone going for my space when I leave I tend to ask them if theyw ant it. Strictly speaking, I suppose, it isn't in the spirit since the system is designed to penalise those who park there without shopping at the supermarket.

But what the heck, seems reasonable to me.

Yes, but in that example, they get a ticket before they have an opportunity to buy it. Would you offer your ticket to someone about to get towed or get a fine for not buying one?

Hmm, would depend. Actually, I don't think it would matter since the offense has then occurred. At the time that the ticket inspector/warden/whatever checked for/requested a ticket, the person didn't have one. And they should have. They therefore were in clear breach and contravening the terms, and they knew it. Therefore it is quite right that they be fined for it I suppose.

However, its got to be worth a go, you never know, you might have got a nice ticket collector.

I once got told off by a parking attendant for parking my 'bike on the crosshatching in the corner of the car park, managed to get away with it (probably cos I was in the right) but his explanation was that the cross hatch areas were fire escapes. Fire Escapes? From a carpark? An open air, ground level carpark? With no fences?

Sorry, not trying to derail your discussion!

Not fire escapes, but those surfaces are officially zoned for the fire trucks to access the area - you wouldn'T believe how much room those things seem to require for maneouvering!

Actually, they're not. Well, not in the UK anyway, no the vorners of the car parks are yellow hatched to stop people in cars trying to park there as it causes hassle. There's no access to be gained by them, due to the adjoining spaces forming the square. Most council car parks I know of are OK abvout it. Us bikes are using an area no one else wants, not taking up a car space with a bike or anything.

But then it isn't an official space. Had one like that here recently. They repainted one of the council car parks, but with 1 fewer spaces. But they didn't burn off the old lines. So it looks like it might still be a space so people park in it. And the get fined by the council for parking in an area that is not designated an official space. Sound slike a scam to me!

Waht a way to collect money! I understand now what you mean by the corner spaces, that is odd, they sound ideal for bikes...

They do that with parking lots here, too. Same reason, I'm sure. It's easier to tell here, though, because the parking lots are metered, so if there's no meter there to feed, you know it's not a legal parking space.

All those leftover bits ought to have trees planted in them, a bit more effort, but a lot of benefit...

Yeah, they plant flowers and trees on some of those spaces here. And on the medians that divide traffic on larger (four lanes or more) streets which pass through residential areas (they install the medians to prevent U-turns and illegal turns). It makes everything look so much nicer and less congested!!

Trees? Come on, this is a *council* car park, they could never afford the upkeep! Don't you know the leaves fall off them? And they keep growing. Very inconvenient things, trees. Just ask the British railtrack company.

Actually, parking is a personal bugbear of mine.

yes, but but but...

Trees are nice! And shady! And improve the atmosphere!

Just get some ents to sort out those beureaucrats

Catching up with a lot of backlog...

Hah! You guys have it easy when it comes to neighbors. I was situated in an apartment between two very acceptable neighbors when the one on the right moved in a new boyfriend. This scumbag lowlife went to Mexico to buy up cheap imitations of brand-name stereo equipment (trademark laws being rather loose there) and selling them Friday - Sunday on the lawn directly in front of my apartment. He demonstrated the equipment quite loudly. Luckily, after several months, the police noted he was out there way too often and made him stop. You have to have a permit to conduct yard sales, and they don't issue more than a couple a year to an individual. I think the jerk thought I had called the police. I hadn't, but I was happy for him to think I had, since that was the most minor of problems he caused us.

When he wasn't selling, he liked to play with his equipment indoors. He played it so loudly my walls and furniture shook. Complaints to him and the manager did no good.

His equipment was mostly stored in the moving van he used to bring it across. But being the cheap bastard on electronics we knew him for, he protected it with a car alarm that lacked an automatic shutoff feature. The peculiar design of that complex was such that the sound was funnelled into my bedroom window, and the offending neighbors did not have a window facing the sound at all. And it was very, very loud. I had to go next door and ask them to turn it off, to which the lady responded with the eminently classy, "Get a life." It went off again two hours later, and I had to phone the police. An hour after that, I had to call the police again and ask which zip code they'd come to, as the lady was obviously lying to me when she said they'd sent a unit and hadn't found anything. I lost an entire workday due to lack of sleep, since by the time the issue was ultimately resolved I was too enraged to get a wink.

The guy apparently thought the problem was amusing, so I made it the lady's problem too. I stole her parking spot one day, and told her that since she didn't respect my space, I had no respect for hers. We had yet another row, but they moved out the next day, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

The next couple we got in there weren't nearly so bad, but they were no prize, either. My wife and I just accepted them as a far better alternative, but people visiting my apartment would invariably, within their first ten minutes, ask, "Are your neighbors always like this?" Their most irritating trait was their little boy used to bounce a ball against my bedroom wall, and they denied it.

I've been in a new apartment for the last 15 months or so, and when I first moved in, my neighbors were fabulous. Since then the one adjacent to the master bedroom moved, and the lady who took it over isn't terribly objectionable, though she's one of those who doesn't believe a door is really shut unless she puts her whole weight into it. She had a party over there already, and the noise level wasn't too bad, and as long as her party guests keep their drug use restricted to marijuana, I don't have an issue. But obviously, having to walk my 5 year-old niece through a cloud of pot smoke on my neighbor's first day didn't make a positive impression on me.

I have so many friends who smoke pot that I just tend to ignore it. And ask them, very politely, not to do it around me as I am violently allergic.

Malabarista, I'd say depends on who the person is who's about to get fined for not having a ticket. Is it a schoolboy, or a man in a suit with a briefcase who was rude from the get go? If the latter, I'd say let him get the fine just for being a jerk.

Okay, that's too narrow. If someone gets on and is a jerk, then no, they're not with you. If they get on and they're *not* a jerk, then yes.

Blatherskite, sounds like a fun neighborhood. And depending on the zip, you think they care about car alarms? In Irvine, they're there in 2 minutes. Santa Ana? Whole 'nother story.

Hmmm... anti social drug use eh?

Lots of my pals still take recreational drugs (Es,dope, coke and speed) whilst it is not my bag I have no particular objection to other people doing it.

I think I would not be to happy aobut people doing Heroin or Crack though.

An interesting one Malabrista

But you could solve the dilemma by "adopting" a passenger as they board the bus, I admit that you couldn't identify whether or not they would be a fare-dodger, but it would be similar to my practice of passing car park tickets with unexpired time on them to newcomers , as I leave...

My way of sharing what I regards as a punitive cost.

Novo