What-If 0110: "Walking New York"

[phlip]

I wasn't pointing out a mere technicality, I meant that that's what the word means so I don't actually know what was being said.

That's what it technically means, yeah. It's also often used as a shorthand for fiction that is neither poetry, nor drama.

It basically means "normal people-talking"... as opposed to other specialised forms of writing. In literature, as you say, it basically means "not poetry" or such things... In maths/physics, it mostly means "not symbols and formulae"... eg saying "it was 3 metres away" instead of "s = 3m". Look at a mathematical proof, or a scientific argument, or whatnot, and you have patches of symbolic manipulation and calculations, and tables of results... but all the other words around them are prose. The formula can tell you that E=mc², but it's the prose that tells you what E, m and c are, and why you should care that these things are equal.

The point is that dismissing a term as "only useful in prose" isn't that strong... because prose is a significant part of, and often the most interesting part of, pretty much anything.

(Now, to be fair, I get the impression that Neil was being facetious with that comment... but I can't tell for 100% sure...)

[Klear]

I think he meant that they are not useful as scientific measurements, since we already have plenty of well defined ones, so using some without any precise definition isn't very helpful.

I wasn't arguing that point, just saying that his use of the word "prose" was completely valid.

Edit: Also, I really wanted to link the SMBC comic, even before I came to this thread.

[gmalivuk]

I get that that's what he's saying, I just don't get the point, because no one I know of was previously using them scientifically to mean specific quantities of time.

[Kaiman]

6 miles in a day? Are we talking about a bunch of geriatrics?

[gmalivuk]

He's using metric, and 10km is the order of magnitude closest to how far most people could walk every day.

[AJR]

As a real-life comparison, there is Noelle Poulson, who has just finished walking every street in "central London" (defined as the road congestion charging zone, which is 21 km².) She's walked just under 400 miles, with a total time of 175 hours, which if you walked for 6 hours each day would be a month (she actually did it over the course of almost 2 years). At that rate, you could cover NYC's 6,074 miles in just 15 months, or 21 months if you took weekends off.

[David24]

There is an element to this question that didn't come up - the legality of the situation. Sure, you could walk a distance equivalent to New York, but that's not the question. If we assume that breaking and entering, thus attracting police attention, would be the inefficient method, how long would it take for a person, no matter who, to gain legal authority to enter these places.

[Neil_Boekend]

There is an element to this question that didn't come up - the legality of the situation. Sure, you could walk a distance equivalent to New York, but that's not the question. If we assume that breaking and entering, thus attracting police attention, would be the inefficient method, how long would it take for a person, no matter who, to gain legal authority to enter these places.

That's probably infinite, as there are bound to be some who refuse (well within their rights).

[rmsgrey]

There is an element to this question that didn't come up - the legality of the situation. Sure, you could walk a distance equivalent to New York, but that's not the question. If we assume that breaking and entering, thus attracting police attention, would be the inefficient method, how long would it take for a person, no matter who, to gain legal authority to enter these places.

That's probably infinite, as there are bound to be some who refuse (well within their rights).

Do their rights extend to an eternal bar, or does their right to bar you from their property expire with their ownership?

[phlip]

On the other hand, if we're taking that long a view, are we able to get access to these buildings at a rate faster than the rate at which NYC is expanding? If a new building is built while we're waiting for access to an old one, can we ever make it to the end of the list? What if a new building is built over the top of an old building we had previously visited, but which has since been torn down? Do we need to re-visit that block? If so, what if an old building is gradually repaired, Ship of Theseus style? Does that count?

[ubikuberalles]

Question: If it was a woman walking all those streets in New york, how many times would she be harrassed?

[Pfhorrest]

If I were to walk all those streets in New York, how many times would I become uncontrollably nauseous because some asshole thinks it's OK to spew their drugs into the air of public streets other people have to walk on too?

[Joe O]

I'm pretty sure there's a small typo there. It says it takes 100 days to walk 6,074 miles. I think it should be 1000 days, unless someone walks 60 miles a day.

He's figuring continuous walking (i.e. no sleep breaks).

At first I thought you were wrong, since 6074 miles / 6 miles per day is so nicely "a little over 100(0)."
But, the steady walking speed he had mentioned just before is 2.5 MPH which would take 101.2 days if walking constantly, a little over 100.
I guess it is right either way, though as someone who has walked 2500+ miles from Mexico to Canada I know from experience that I would much rather go 6 miles a day than 60.