Pedestrian Crossing Quotes

I kicked off my shoes and pulled his hand away from the wheel so I could straddle his lap and hold him. His grip on me was excruciatingly tight, but I didn't complain. We were on an insanely busy street, with endless cars rumbling past on one side and a crush of pedestrians on the other, but neither of us cared. He was shaking violently, as if he were sobbing uncontrollably, but he made no sound and shed no tears. The sky cried for him, the rain coming down hard and angry, steaming off the ground.

S'mimasen," Alyss said repeatedly as they brushed against passerby. "What does that mean?" Will asked as they reached a stretch of street bare of any other pedestrians. He was impressed by Alyss's grasp of the local language. "It means 'pardon me,'" Alyss replied, but then a shadow of doubt crossed her face. "At least, I hope it does. Maybe I'm saying 'you have the manners of a fat, rancid sow.

Discussing it later, many of us felt we suffered a mental dislocation at that moment, which only grew worse through the course of the remaining deaths. The prevailing symptom of this state was an inability to recall any sound. Truck doors slammed silently; Lux's mouth screamed silently; and the street, the creaking tree limbs, the streetlight clicking different colors, the electric buzz of the pedestrian crossing box - all these usually clamorous voices hushes, or had begun shrieking at a pitch too high for us to hear, though they sent chills up our spines. Sound returned only once Lux had gone. Televisions erupted with canned laughter. Fathers splashed, soaking aching backs.

First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.

Although I would appreciate it if you tried not to sound so bloody sarcastic. Beelzebub himself ticked me off the other day for not getting the proper respect from you blasted cats. He came all the way from Pandemonium because he found out that the Captain had started calling me "mate." I said to him: it's a different world nowadays, Beelzebub. It's not as respectful as it used to be. People on mobile phones; people cycling on the pavement; people cycling across pedestrian crossings even when the lights are against them.

Some scientists believe that driverless cars will not work unless they learn to be irrational. If such cars stop reliably whenever a pedestrian appears in front of them, pedestrian crossings will be unnecessary and jaywalkers will be able to march into the road, forcing the driverless car to stop suddenly, at great discomfort to its occupants. To prevent this, driverless cars may have to learn to be ‘angry’, and to occasionally maliciously fail to stop in time and strike the pedestrian on the shins.

... zebra crossings were rather like Bosnia's "safe zones": places where, if you die, you may simply die with the knowledge that your killer was in the wrong.

There is a term for people caught on a street crossing after the light has changed: "pedestrian-traffic residue".

We waited at the pedestrian crossing, and he was silent at last. I watched an old man stagger down the opposite side of the road.

I don’t know if you have ever seen one of those old maps where they mark a spot with a cross and put ‘Here be dragons’ or ‘Keep ye eye skinned for hippogriffs’, but I had always felt that some such kindly warning might well have been given to pedestrians and traffic with regard to this Steeple Bumpleigh.

Fukuzawa looked extremely surly that day. The weekend crowd rolled back like the tide as he strode down the avenue. Even cars stopped as he walked across the pedestrian crossing, even though their light was green. All of this was due to the sullen aura radiating from his expression. However, he wasn't exactly in a bad mood. He was drowning in self-loathing.

It was grudgingly conceded by the traffic wizards that in abolishing so-called normal hazards like sharp curves, intersections, traffic signals, and pedestrian and railroad crossings they had substituted the peril of deadly monotony. The

Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

On 119th Street there had been a sign for years in the front window of an old dilapidated three-storey brick house, announcing: FUNERALS PERFORMED. For five years past the house had been condemned as unsafe for human habitation. The wooden steps leading up to the cracked, scabby front door were so rotten one had to mount them like crossing a river on a fallen tree trunk; the foundation was crumbling, one side of the house had sunk more than a foot lower than the other, the concrete windowsills had fallen from all the upper windows and the constant falling of bricks from the front wall created a dangerous hazard for passing pedestrians.

At the corner of K street and Fourth Avenue, I slowed down to let a pedestrian cross, a boy around my age. Maybe because he was so tall or maybe because of the way he walked-with a determined leaving into the cold-I couldn't take my eyes off him. His face was angled away from the car, and I got this strange urge to make him turn around so I could see it. I pressed my hand to the horn, but no sound came out, which was a relief. What was I thinking, anyway, doing something weird and embarrassing like honking at a stranger? Just then my cell phone rang from the pocket of my jacket. I pulled the car over, saw it was Ethan, and answered. "Hi," I said, still watching the figure go down the street. "Guess what?" "What? You got all your trig homework done?" "No. Think more within the realm of possibility." "You got a tattoo?" "Ha. A car. I got a car.

I can never understand why Londoners fail to see that they live in the most wonderful city in the world. It is, if you ask me, far more beautiful and interesting than Paris and more lively than anywhere but New York—and even New York can’t touch it in lots of important ways. It has more history, finer parks, a livelier and more varied press, better theaters, more numerous orchestras and museums, leafier squares, safer streets, and more courteous inhabitants than any other large city in the world. And it has more congenial small things—incidental civilities, you might call them—than any other city I know: cheery red mailboxes, drivers who actually stop for you at pedestrian crossings, lovely forgotten churches with wonderful names like St. Andrew by the Wardrobe and St. Giles Cripplegate, sudden pockets of quiet like Lincoln’s Inn and Red Lion Square, interesting statues of obscure Victorians in togas, pubs, black cabs, double-decker buses, helpful policemen, polite notices, people who will stop to help you when you fall down or drop your shopping, benches everywhere. What other great city would trouble to put blue plaques on houses to let you know what famous person once lived there, or warn you to look left or right before stepping off the curb? I’ll tell you. None.

and carrying a blue umbrella, stepped on a loose paving stone while crossing Bishops-gate and drenched her left trouser leg in dirty water. If she were the type to swear she might have let rip, and wouldn’t have been alone—the city was full of angry pedestrians, hooted at by angry drivers and sworn at by angry cyclists, while angry buses trundled past full of angry passengers, and the angry sky rained angry rain, and the angry morning would never end. But she kept any fury to herself. Her mind now throbbing with extra tasks—when to get to the dry cleaners, and what to wear on the alternate days of the week she’d earmarked these trousers for

According to the New York Times, last year as one of Google’s new cars approached a crosswalk, it did as it was supposed to and came to a complete stop. The pedestrian in front crossed the street safely, at which point the Google car was rammed from behind by a second non-Google automobile. Later, another self-driving Google car found that it wasn’t able to advance through a four-way stop, as its sensors were calibrated to wait for other drivers to make a complete stop, as opposed to inching continuously forward, which most did. Noted the Times, “Researchers in the fledgling field of autonomous vehicles say that one of the biggest challenges facing automated cars is blending them into a world in which humans don’t behave by the book.”15

To cap off your Trastevere stroll with one more sight, consider visiting Villa Farnesina, a Renaissance villa decorated by Raphael . To get there, face the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere and leave the piazza by walking along the right side of the church, following Via della Paglia to Piazza di S. Egidio. Exit the piazza near the church and you’ll be on Via della Scala. Follow through the Porta Settimiana, where it changes names to Via della Lungara. On your right, you’ll pass John Cabot University. Look for a white arch that reads Accademia dei Lincei. The villa is through this gate at #230. If you’re in the mood to extend this walk, head to the river, cross the pedestrian bridge, Ponte Sisto, and make your way to Campo de’ Fiori, where the Heart of Rome Walk begins.

There are no roads in British Columbia. There are only corners joined together. And nowhere is this truer than in Vancouver. In this city, pedestrians, even those within clearly marked crosswalks -- especially those within clearly marked crosswalks -- are viewed not as nuisances to be avoided but as obstacles to be overcome. Rising to the challenge, Vancouver drivers will attempt to weave through these pedestrians without knocking any over -- and, here's the fun part, without ever applying the brakes. Swoosh, swoosh: downtown slalom. Pedestrians, in turn, try to keep things interesting by crisscrossing the streets at random, like neutrons in a particle accelerator. They cross the street like this because, being from Vancouver, they naturally have a sense of entitlement. Either that or they're stoned.

[Hyun Song Shin] most accurately portrayed the state of the global economy. 'I'd like to tell you about the Millennium Bridge in London,' he began…'The bridge was opened by the queen on a sunny day in June,' Shin continued. 'The press was there in force, and many thousands of people turned up to savor the occasion. However, within moments of the bridge's opening, it began to shake violently.' The day it opened, the Millennium Bridge was closed. The engineers were initially mystified about what had gone wrong. Of course it would be a problem if a platoon of soldiers marched in lockstep across the bridge, creating sufficiently powerful vertical vibration to produce a swaying effect. The nearby Albert Bridge, built more than a century earlier, even features a sign directing marching soldiers to break step rather than stay together when crossing. But that's not what happened at the Millennium Bridge. 'What is the probability that a thousand people walking at random will end up walking exactly in step, and remain in lockstep thereafter?' Shin asked. 'It is tempting to say, 'Close to Zero' ' But that's exactly what happened. The bridge's designers had failed to account for how people react to their environment. When the bridge moved slightly under the feet of those opening-day pedestrians, each individual naturally adjusted his or her stance for balance, just a little bit—but at the same time and in the same direction as every other individual. That created enough lateral force to turn a slight movement into a significant one. 'In other words,' said Shin, 'the wobble of the bridge feeds on itself. The wobble will continue and get stronger even though the initial shock—say, a small gust of wind—had long passed…Stress testing on the computer that looks only at storms, earthquakes, and heavy loads on the bridge would regard the events on the opening day as a 'perfect storm.' But this is a perfect storm that is guaranteed to come every day.' In financial markets, as on the Millennium Bridge, each individual player—every bank and hedge fund and individual investor—reacts to what is happening around him or her in concert with other individuals. When the ground shifts under the world's investors, they all shift their stance. And when they all shift their stance in the same direction at the same time, it just reinforces the initial movement. Suddenly, the whole system is wobbling violently. Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King, Jean-Claude Trichet, and the other men and women at Jackson Hole listened politely and then went to their coffee break.

There was every type of the genus sporting man; stout, square farmers, with honest bull-dog physique, characteristic of John Bull plebeian; wild young Cantabs, mounted showily from livery-stables, with the fair, fearless, delicate features characteristic of John Bull patrician; steady old whippers-in, very suspicious of brandy; wrinkled feeders, with stentorian voices that the wildest puppy had learned to know and dread; the courteous, cordial aristocratic M.F.H., with the men of his class, the county gentry; rough, ill-looking cads, awkward at all things save crossing country; no end of pedestrians, nearly run over themselves, and falling into everybody’s way; and last, but in our eyes not least, the ladies who had come to see the hounds throw off.

But there is also the HUMPED ZEBRA CROSSING, which sounds like a zoo genetics experiment gone horribly wrong. (Really it's just a pedestrian right of way path with a sleeping policeman–also known as a speed bump–in the middle).

There’s no need to say anything to Mr. Turing. I was the one who wasn’t watching where I was going” “You were the one?” Mavis said indignantly. “Turing never pays the slightest attention to where he’s going. He simply plows through pedestrians” Elspeth nodded. “Someone needs to tell him he must be more careful! He could have injured you!” And I could have injured him, Mike thought. Or killed him. If Turing had lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a lamppost instead of the curb, or into a brick wall… Mavis said, “I’ve a good mind to tell Cap—” “No. There’s no need to tell anybody. I’m Fine. No Harm done. Thank you for picking me up and dusting me off.” He picked up his bag, which Mavis had carried in… “Watch out for Turing on your way there,” Joan cut in. “And for Dilly,” Elspeth said. “He’s even worse about not watching where he’s going, and he has a car! Whenever he comes to a crossing, he speeds up.” “Dilly?” Mike said hoarsely. “Captain Knox,” Mavis said. “We work for him. He has some sort of mathematical theory that by going faster he’ll it fewer people, because of being in the crossing a shorter time.”... “I refuse to accept lifts from him anymore,” Elspeth was saying. “He forgets he’s driving and takes both hands off the—are you alright? You’re pale as a ghost.

answers) 8.There is no crosswalk and you see a pedestrian crossing your lane ahead. You should: Stop and let him/her finish crossing the street. 9.It is illegal to listen to: Listening to music through headphones that cover both ears. 10.Always stop before you cross railroad tracks when: You don't have room on the other side to completely cross the tracks. 11.When you tailgate other drivers (drive close to their rear bumper): You can frustrate the other drivers and make them angry. 12.Should you always drive slower than other traffic? No, you can block traffic when you drive too slowly. 13.You see a signal person at a road construction site ahead. You should obey his or her instructions: At all times. 14.If you plan to pass another vehicle, you should: Not assume the other driver will make space for you to return to your lane  

A fleet of restored vintage trolleys ran from the West Village to Downtown. They had adorable names like Rosie, Betty, Petunia, and the Green Dragon. They dinged cheerfully down the green median of a cobblestone path. Griffin took a few shots of Megan and Josh in front of the Green Dragon before we all climbed aboard. As we looped around the neighborhood, I looked out the window and felt the breeze on my face. The West Village was a great cross section of urban Dallas life. Yuppies, families, and empty nesters commingled on the streets. Most days a breeze blew down the corridor, making it bearable, even enjoyable, to sit outside the cafés year-round. A dog-friendly café with an adjoining dog park was down the block, and a parade of pups dripped down the street, tails wagging, sopping wet from doggie pools. A couple on roller skates did tricks for pedestrians before they skated away, hand in hand. It felt vibrant and magical. Homey.

The other traffic issue concerned the park’s users. Vaux and Olmsted came up with three categories of roadway that they simply called the “Walk” (for pedestrians), the “Ride” (for horseback riding), and the “Drive” (for carriages). All together, there are today about seventy miles of Walk, Ride, and Drive wending through the park. In the master plan, none of these paths ever touched. If the Drive crossed the Walk, a bridge was constructed to pass pedestrian traffic below the carriages. Similarly, the Ride was kept separate from the other paths so that horseback riders would never have to rear up suddenly when confronted with an obstacle.

Research on jaywalking pedestrians tells a similar story. Most of our decision-making is based on how far off a car is. We’re not so good at factoring in the speed. Experimental evidence suggests that full looming sensitivity doesn’t develop until adulthood. A young child on the side of the road and a car traveling faster than 20 mph combine to encourage, quoting a team of European psychologists, “injudicious road crossing.” Hence the need for injudiciously punctuated slow children signs. It’s not just that kids aren’t looking when they cross; they’re also not seeing.

But I also buy the opposite argument that regulating street signs does not seem to reduce risks; drivers become more placid. Experiments show that alertness is weakened when one relinquishes control to the system (again, lack of overcompensation). Motorists need the stressors and tension coming from the feeling of danger to feed their attention and risk controls, rather than some external regulator—fewer pedestrians die jaywalking than using regulated crossings.

David pulled a U-turn and re-traced their previous route to the church. Traffic on Queen Anne Blvd was heavy; making a left turn would be difficult. David hit the lights and blasted the siren a twice to safely navigate the left turn, and headed north up the steep hill. He gunned the Charger, and activated the siren several more times to clear slow cars ahead. Traffic moved to the right. A pale Dustin sat quietly on the passenger side. They crested Queen Anne hill, passing by Olympia’s Pizza on the right. A few drops of rain splattered on the windshield. David eased off the accelerator as pedestrians failed to notice their red and blue strobe lights and crossed the street in front of them. Another yelp of the siren startled a teenager in a mini skirt.

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” —Matthew 5:16 (NRSV) For more than a year, I’ve dedicated an hour a day to an eight-year-old neighbor with special needs. She’s afraid of my cat, so we play outside. Last spring I stood at the bottom of the front steps and waved my hands like a choir director. “This Little Light of Mine,” she belted from the landing. Then, “Miss Evelyn, now you!” We switched roles. Later I donned her backpack, and she walked me to the bus stop. Oh, what are the neighbors thinking? On summer days, in the only available shade, we strewed the public sidewalk with puzzles and pencils. Like a gatekeeper, she asked every pedestrian, “Where are you going?” Most people smiled; everyone gave us a wide berth. In the fall, we crossed the street to collect acorns and rake leaves before the maintenance crew swooped in. Over the seasons, it’s become increasingly obvious that the neighborhood sees her need and notices our routine. Late August, as I walked around the block, a man I hardly knew handed me a bagful of school supplies “for that girl you work with.” Remembering the kindness, she and I signed a handmade Christmas card to “Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor” and slipped it inside their mail slot. A few days later I found a package at my door. “Miss Evelyn, Merry Christmas.” The signature on the card cited the house number of the strangers. I unwrapped a selection of fruits and a necklace that left me speechless: a delicate gold cross. So this is what the neighbors think. Lord, my neighborhood needs this little light of mine. Help me to let it shine. —Evelyn Bence Digging Deeper: Mt 5:13–16; Lk 8:16–17

My recommendation to the city was that they make this a two-lane street. With roundabouts at the key college entrances, traffic would flow just fine, albeit much slower than it does today. Such a design, with 10-foot lanes, would be easy for pedestrians to cross, especially with a nice, wide median and periodic jut-outs of the median and walk to shorten the distance people have to cross. You could put large walks along both sides and they would actually be used as the slow-moving cars would not threaten pedestrians. You could also skip the bike lanes as the bikes could actually ride right in the traffic stream.

The crossing sweeper, a boy of about eight or nine years, was still busily pushing manure out of the way to make a clean path for any pedestrian who wished to reach the other side. He seemed to be one of those cheerful souls willing to make the best out of any situation. His skimpy trousers stuck to his legs, his coat was too long for him and gaped around the neck, but his enormous cap seemed to keep most of the rain off his head, except for

...because when I start reading I'm somewhere completely different, I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth. Ten times a day, every day, I wonder at having wandered so far, and then, alienated from myself, a strange to myself, I go home, walking the streets silently and in deep meditation, passing trams and cars and pedestrians in a cloud of books, the books I found that day and am carrying home in my briefcase. Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, never bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes of beer and grime, yet smiling, because my briefcase is full of books and that very night I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know. On I go through the noisy streets, never crossing at the red; I walk subconsciously unconscious, half-asleep, subliminally inspired, with every bale I've compacted that day fading softly and quietly inside me.

Piff and his colleagues also have found that wealthier people are more prone to entitlement and narcissistic behavior than poorer ones are. Literally narcissistic! In the classic myth, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection. In a study of 244 undergraduates, Piff observed that “upper-class” individuals were more likely than their “lower-class” counterparts to regard themselves in a mirror before posing for a photo they were assured nobody would ever see. This was the case even after researchers adjusted the results to account for differences in ethnicity, gender, and the participants’ previously reported levels of self-consciousness. In another memorable experiment, Piff’s team placed a pedestrian at the edge of a busy crosswalk near the Berkeley campus and watched to see which drivers would stop and let the person cross. They recorded vehicle makes and models and estimated ages and genders of the drivers. It was impossible, of course, to know anyone’s true economic circumstances and motivations, but suffice it to say that Fords and Subarus were far more likely to stop than Mercedes and BMWs were. In a related experiment, people driving higher-end cars were more likely to cut off other drivers at a busy intersection.

The now-famous video of these crows in a city in Japan shows one stationed above a pedestrian crossing. When the light turns red, it positions its nut on the crossing, then flies back to the perch and waits while the light changes and traffic passes; when the light turns red again, it flutters down to safely collect the cracked nut. If no car smashed the nut, the bird repositions it.

I don't remember much about my death. A moment of panic. The screeching of tyres. An ear-shattering bang. Then...nothing. No bright light, no tunnel, no loved ones waiting to greet me, their faces smiling benevolently as they welcomed me to the afterlife. Just the high-pitched beeping of the traffic lights as they changed, signalling to pedestrians that it was now their turn to cross the junction, oblivious to the carnage before them.

fewer pedestrians die jaywalking than using regulated crossings.

Over the years, I did business and became fast friends with Juan Gallardo, the chairman and CEO of a large Mexican sugar and beverage company. In 2008, he brought me a crazy idea. He and some other private investors from Mexico wanted to build a pedestrian bridge across the U.S.–Mexico border that would physically connect a new building in the southernmost part of San Diego directly with the Tijuana International Airport, which, by an accident of geography, sits just five hundred feet south of the States. Nothing like it existed. Turns out more than 2 million people already cross the border back and forth to fly in or out of the airport. And passengers who used the existing border crossings had to take a circuitous route through Tijuana to get there and then wait hours to cross. There was built-in demand.

If I died in a freak accident while hurrying through Shibuya's notorious "scramble" intersection, where thousands of pedestrians crossed from all directions at once when the WALK light shifted to green, I hoped whoever performed my funeral service would know I died satisfied. Shibuya felt like being in the center of the vertical world, with tall buildings flashing advertisements, neon lights, and level after level of stores and restaurants visible through glass windows. So many people, so hurried, so much to look at and experience. Fashionista women wearing skinny pants with stiletto pumps riding bikes down crowded sidewalks. Harajuku girls with pink hair and crazy outfits. Loud izakaya bars where men's conversations and laughter spilled onto the street, and women walking by wearing kimonos with white socks tucked into flip-flops. Young people strutting around dressed in kosupure ("cosplay," Nik translated) outfits from their favorite anime, like it was Halloween every day here. TOO MUCH FUN. I didn't want to die, but if I did, I would tell the souls I met in the afterlife: Don't feel bad about my premature end. I saw it all in my short time down in the upworld of Tokyo.

But other times life changes in an instant, with a lightning stroke of good or bad luck, with glorious or tragic consequences. You win the lottery. You step out onto a pedestrian crossing at the wrong time. You get a phone call from a lost love at exactly the right time. And suddenly your life takes a violent swerve in an entirely new direction.

In Sacramento in April 2017, for example, a twenty-four-year-old black man, Nandi Cain Jr., was stopped by police for jaywalking. The stop ended with an arrest, but not before a bystander had filmed police punching Cain eighteen times.7 The beating made national headlines. To make matters worse, it turned out that Cain was not even jaywalking; dash cam footage later showed that he was crossing legally in an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. A follow-up investigation by the Sacramento Bee found that in the year prior to this incident, black residents had received 50 percent of the city’s jaywalking tickets, despite making up just 15 percent of the population.

Carrion crows use passing cars to crush especially tough nuts, such as walnuts, that won’t break by simply falling on pavement. The now-famous video of these crows in a city in Japan shows one stationed above a pedestrian crossing. When the light turns red, it positions its nut on the crossing, then flies back to the perch and waits while the light changes and traffic passes; when the light turns red again, it flutters down to safely collect the cracked nut. If no car smashed the nut, the bird repositions it.

One morning, the moon still high in the sky, Peri watched from her window a female student -- wearing earphones, her cheeks flushed -- running through the quad. She herself had tried it a few times back in Istanbul, despite the obstacles the city peppered along her trail. Here it was a privilege, of sorts, not to have to worry about broken pavements, potholes in the roads, sexual harassment, cars that did not slow down -- even at pedestrian crossings. The same day, she bought herself a pair of trainers.

Because we can choose our actions, because we decide, we also can be blamed. Accountability comes with choice. Being forced at gunpoint to hand over money doesn’t make us culpable, but robbing a bank does. Crossing a street while sleepwalking will not lead to punishment, but deliberately running over a pedestrian will. Responsibility is the flip side of agency; it’s part and parcel of making choices.

The Babel fish,” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a fina and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. “The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

Roppongi is an interzone, the land of gaijin bars, always up late. I’m waiting at a pedestrian crossing when I see her. She’s probably Australian, young and quite serviceably beautiful. She wears very expensive, very sheer black undergarments, and little else, save for some black outer layer—equally sheer, skintight, and micro-short—and some gold and diamonds to give potential clients the right idea. She steps past me, into four lanes of traffic, conversing on her phone in urgent Japanese. Traffic halts obediently for this triumphantly jaywalking gaijin in her black suede spikes. I watch her make the opposite curb, the brain-cancer deflector on her slender little phone swaying in counterpoint to her hips. When the light changes, I cross, and watch her high-five a bouncer who looks like Oddjob in a Paul Smith suit, his skinny lip beard razored with micrometer precision. There’s a flash of white as their palms meet. Folded paper. Junkie origami.

The integration of loose elements into a larger whole is the normal way in which people process impressions and information. Intuitively we are aware that one observation can admit of different meanings and that we need to start from their association in order to grasp the true meaning of what we are observing. Take again, the example of a red light at a pedestrian crossing showing 'DON'T WALK'. What does it mean? What does a red light signify on a pedestrian crossing? An easy question: you instantly think of `stop', an obvious reaction. But does the red pedestrian light always mean 'stop'? Do you need to stop every time the pedestrian light is red? Is there only that one meaning? No. The meaning of a red pedestrian light depends on the context. More specifically, it depends on where you are relative to it and in what stage in your act of crossing the street. If you find yourself on the sidewalk and you have not yet started to cross, the meaning of the red light is indeed: `stop' and `stay where you are' or `don't move'. However, if you happen to be halfway across the crossing when the red warning light appears, it is seen in a different context and thus assumes a different meaning. It no longer means 'stop' or 'don't move'. On the contrary, in that context the red light urges you to move a little faster, telling you to hurry up since there are cars coming at you. Nothing to induce us in that case to obey the first meaning and to stop in our tracks. A red light thus means `stop' at one time and `hurry up' at another. Everything depends on the context.