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The Quiet Ones

nytimes.com

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Re: The Quiet Ones

#171

Post by pavel_lishin »

nlh wrote: post #158
bpatrianakos wrote: post #75

Oh, the quiet car. I ride the quiet car every weekday to and from work into and out of Chicago (except ours is Metra, not Amtrak). His description of it is completely accurate. The people on the quiet car tend to be thinkers, readers, writers, and I dare say just a bit more intelligent than the average rider. I've had the same experience before. For some reason people think the signs and the announcements don't apply…

While we're on this subject, a related rant/question: Why are so many people so totally oblivious to so many announcements, signs, and otherwise? You've all seen it: Boarding a plane, for example. "Ladies, and Gentlemen, we're boarding rows 1 - 5 now. Thanks." And as sure as Spring, there will _always_ be someone from row 324 who gets in line. The staff are far more polite than I'd be: "Sir, we're boarding rows 1 - 5…

My guess? There's no disincentive to ignore signs.

If you get in line for rows 1-5, and your ticket reads 324, your worst case scenario is standing in line until they call your rows. The best case scenario is guaranteed luggage space and convenience.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#172

Post by rcthompson »

I can deal with just about any noise of any volume as long as that noise doesn't include any intelligible speech. Muffled voices are fine, the combined voices of an entire crowd are fine as long as I can't make out what any one voice is saying. But as soon as the part of my brain responsible for interpreting spoken words gets activated, I lose the ability to concentrate on anything.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#173

Post by snogglethorpe »

portlander52232 wrote: post #48
jerf wrote: post #37

Sometimes, the urbanites on HN will pile on suburbia, wondering how anybody can live there. This is one of the reasons I often feel the same way, only in reverse. As I sit here, I can not hear any sounds not originating in my house. While I certainly visit the places with Musak, loud bars, et al, I don't live there. It isn't as grating when there is surcease. I'm not saying that Here It Is, The Reason Suburban Living…

My experience with suburbia was that there was always yard equipment going, plus dogs and teenagers. These loud, punctuated sounds always bothered me much more than the regular, low din of a city. Moreover, most of the noise in cities in from automobiles, which are mainly a problem inflicted upon us by suburban development.

... and there are neighborhoods in the centers of cities, typically residential with little car traffic, that are very quiet.

Tokyo has a lot of these. It doesn't have a single "downtown", but rather a large number of busy centers, usually around railroad stations, and in many parts of central Tokyo, the "infill" between these is residential single-family housing or small apartment buildings. In many of those areas, streets are very narrow and windy, there's very little automobile traffic (people walk or bicycle), and it's often very quiet, to the point where one can sometimes hear people talking inside houses while walking down the street...

Re: The Quiet Ones

#174

Post by portlander52232 »

ANH wrote: post #96
jerf wrote: post #37

Sometimes, the urbanites on HN will pile on suburbia, wondering how anybody can live there. This is one of the reasons I often feel the same way, only in reverse. As I sit here, I can not hear any sounds not originating in my house. While I certainly visit the places with Musak, loud bars, et al, I don't live there. It isn't as grating when there is surcease. I'm not saying that Here It Is, The Reason Suburban Living…

I'm in suburbia now, and the noise is nearly constant, year-round. I grew up on a farm, have lived in the hearts of major cities, the middle of an isolated mesa -- basically covered the spectrum of sound environments. Nowhere has the noise gotten to me like in suburbia. Two words: leaf blowers.

The other day I was awakened by the... most... annoying... sound... in the universe: a leaf blower outside my window.

Worse! They blew everything directly into the bicycle parking row! Years' worth of dirt on my bike in one minute. Debris and filth in all the works. Earthworms. Had to completely detail the whole bike.

Meanwhile, leaves are some of the best compost available. Why do we blow them noisomely to rot on the "unused" areas of the pavement (i.e., bike parking, bike lanes)?

Re: The Quiet Ones

#175

Post by GlennS »

accidc wrote: post #148

It amuses me when people from western countries complain about noise(most comments contain clues to location). Having lived most of my life in India, noise has never been an issue for me, even while doing tasks that require intense concentration. It's like the brain implements a band pass filter for most ambient noise, you never notice it. I have also noticed that the more I concentrate on a task at hand, the less I…

I get that too, if I'm reading or writing then nothing short of shouting or a physical tap on the shoulder can bring me back to reality.

But I'm not convinced everyone can learn it. I know people who are light sleepers and get jolted awake in the night because of noise. You'd think if their brains could adapt to filter out the ambient noise then they would have for the situation. Regularly interrupted sleep is probably pretty annoying.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#176

Post by jacques_chester »

AngryParsley wrote: post #108

A lot of the problem is caused by cell phones. People talking on phones are usually louder than in-person chatter. And while a conversation is distracting, half of one is worse. Also, cell phone conversations on public transit seem to be more common than talking in-person. Everyone has a phone, but not everyone takes the train with a conversation partner. Different cultures have different rules about mobile phones. W…

Unlike old-fashioned landline phones, mobile phones do not feed your own voice back into the speaker. So people adjust their speaking volume to replace the missing noise.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#177

Post by bpatrianakos »

randallu wrote: post #135
bpatrianakos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your keyboard and force. For example, a MacBook is generally quieter than other laptops but then again once those keys get old they can get quite loose and clackety. What I can say for sure is that those train cars can be pretty damn quiet. I know the quiet car I ride in is possibly quieter than my own car. And when it's silent the ambient noise tends to sound even more faint until someone on the inside st…

The trackpad "CLUNK" on an MBP is pretty loud and annoying, and incredibly random if you're not the one doing it...

Yes! This and the comment below points out the space bar is also a very loud key we can single out on all keyboards. I set my trackpad to use tap to click because I prefer it and it avoids that sound but I do occasionally click by pressing it. Now you've got me thinking how disturbing I might be with my occasional clicking on my MacBook Air on the quiet car.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#178

Post by rcthompson »

jeremymims wrote: post #93

I'm one of those people that enjoys a certain level of noise... usually music without lyrics. I can work without it but I find that I can more quickly get into "the zone" when I have a beat. I'm also not a huge fan of sitting in especially quiet libraries or buildings. In college, the buildings were old enough that you'd start to hear the buzzing of the lights, the tick of an old clock, the hum of an air conditioner,…

It's a "quiet car", but it's still on a moving train. It's not going to be anything like the deafening silence of an old empty building that you describe. You're always going to have the noise of the train.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#179

Post by esharef »

VexXtreme wrote: post #154
pg wrote: post #81

My life has been a search for quiet for as long as I can remember. I think the fundamental problem with noisy people is not that they're inconsiderate, but that they don't have any train of thought to interrupt, and they thus don't realize the havoc they're wreaking. When I was living in Providence, working on On Lisp , I told my loud but well-meaning neighbors that I was writing a hard computer book, and that made t…

I am the same way. I always find it perplexing how most people can't spend literally 10 minutes in complete silence with their own thoughts without getting anxious. I notice this mostly with the younger generation these days (young women especially). They literally feel the compulsion to always have some sort external stimuli coming in, usually in the form of a constant stream of music from their phones/MP3 players.…

"young women especially" really?

Re: The Quiet Ones

#180

Post by ww520 »

cletus wrote: post #13

I sympathize with whoever criticized the guy for loud typing. Seriously, it's distracting/disruptive. I learnt to type on (manual) typewriter too but laptops and keys don't need to be stabbed with the force of a thousand suns to register the press. It can be just as loud as people talking and (IMHO) can be harder to tune out. After all, we're used to hearing people talk all the time. Oh and while I'm in the mood for…

Loud typing is a symptom of the lack of private working space in the office. That means the company is too cheap to set up offices or good insulating cubicles for the developers.
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