Interesting examples of "To put it in perspective" things

On the contrary. I have several times had to consult a lawyer usually because of some serious problem. I have had some bad experiences. Often my advisor had been an unfeeling monster who doesn’t give a damn about helping me, he only cares about the exorbitant fee he charges. And too often they do a very bad job. They screw up what they do I have been let down badly when I was already in a bad situation.

I could tell you stories, but it would totally hijack the thread.

But you must agree that your experiences aren’t typical. I have attorney friends, had to use a handful of lawyers for personal reasons and worked with dozens (perhaps hundreds) in various professional settings, and it’s rare to encounter any such as you described. Sure there are the ones that seek out the “trip and fall” cases and launch “nuisance” lawsuits, but they are not representative of the whole.

Wil Wheaton (“Wesley Crusher”, the annoying wunderkind on Star Trek - The Next Generation) is now older than Patrick Stewart was when he originated the role of Jean-Luc Picard.

eta: someone else beat me to that one.

I think they are very typical. I think a great many people have had experiences like mine. I think similar experiences are the reason for the lawyer hate memes.

You presume much. None of my legal problems have been that sort of thing.

Oh - and mass transit / car culture / lack of former due to latter is kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing.

Living in a city where adequate mass transit exists tends to come with very, very high housing prices. Even with the cost of a commute, you can get better housing further out for less money

When I lived in Manhattan in the early 1990s, my rent for a 1 bedroom apartment was higher than the payment for our townhouse in suburban Virginia. But we NEEDED a car in Virginia - whereas I think you’d need to be clinically insane to keep a car in Manhattan. And even if you can take transit into the city for your job, you still need a car for everything else. Our brief experience living in DC (a couple years before Manhattan) was similar.

I didn’t hate lawyers, until I needed one. I just had a simple bit of probate work, something I wasn’t sure of, but a professional could clear up in an afternoon. I could not get most lawyers to even return my call, and the one that did, was useless (and maybe drunk). I ended up doing it myself, and I think I got it right, The judge didn’t ream me out, and I’m not in jail, so maybe.

We can resurrect this thread as a zombie in 15 years and note that the post pointing out that Will Wheaton is now older than Patrick Stewart was when he started playing Picard is now older than Wiill Wheaton was when he was in Stand By Me.

My lovely and kindhearted niece is a lawyer, so I’m basically pro-lawyer. And her specialty is one that any social liberal would heartily approve of – she specializes in labour law, and typically represents unions when they battle evil corporations.

The statistic about the number of lawyers in the US is just an interesting neutral observation, reflecting more than anything else how litigious the place is.

Is this about the million dollar thing? I apologize if I’ve mixed you up with someone else.

The ‘million dollar thing’ was an attempt to prove to certain forum members that their hero was lying to them. It turned out that they already knew that, and like being lied to. Lawyers weren’t involved.

To be fair, it’s been slightly easier since Manhattan went from twice-weekly to once-weekly street cleaning. (Now you only have to be certifiably insane.)

Well, on the East coast, the towns are moderately close together - although our place is 5 miles away from the ‘town center’ of our town [ok, the crossroad that has a single IGA grocery, a small one, a gas station/convenience store, the town hall, the school, a bank and a couple restaurants] and our town is considered 15 miles in either direction of the crossroads from any other town. Our property out in Nevada is 45 miles from the nearest other community, and has a cantina and a gas station/convenience store/ RV recreational park. OK, it also has a public hot spring about 15 miles away from the geedunk that the community is centered around.

When towns are 5 miles apart, one might have a bus line that goes through successive towns. If one looks at the map of Eastern Connecticut [go ahead, I’ll wait] I really challenge you to figure out economical bus routing to get from Canterbury to 600 Connecticut Blvd in East Hartford. Go ahead, I’ll keep waiting. That would have been my daily commute in my last job. It did have a bus from the city center bus depot in Hartford, which one could get to using a Peter Pan bus lines bus. The problem is that 20 miles from the house to Willimantic in the morning, then the 20 miles from Willimantic to the house in the afternoon. In the absolute theoretic sense, as I am handicapped, I could theoretically call for a ride on the mobility van, if it were to get to a medical appointment. I could call for an uber, at $25 each direction to get into and out of Willimantic. Or I could just own a freaking car of my own.

Not sure why you’re taking my comment so personally, it’s no skin off my nose if you drive to work. Hell, I own two cars myself. But the point is (and your comment basically supports this) that public transport is so woeful in most of the US that millions of people simply have no option than to invest in an expensive car.

I don’t think aruvqan took your comment personally. The way you phrased it seemed to indicate you thought it wouldn’t be difficult to switch to a mass transit system you’re more accustomed to, and that’s so not the case in the US.

There’s no mystery as to why underpopulated places don’t have good public transport. But the fact remains that even US cities have poor services compared to European counterparts. Canada has the same issue of scale, and vastly better investment in public transport.

There’s plenty of articles out there, here’s one:

“Canada just has more public transit,” says transit consultant Jarrett Walker. “Compare, say, Portland to Vancouver, or Salt Lake to Edmonton, or Des Moines to Winnipeg. Culturally and economically, they’re very similar cities, but in each case the Canadian city has two to five times as much transit service per capita, so there’s correspondingly more ridership per capita.”

That’s because geography is a huge factor. Europe has mountain ranges aplenty, and naturally adapted train travel to negotiate passage. Roads require more flat area, and the US only has a few mountain ranges in comparison.

A friend showed me footage of his Switzerland trip, and he was riding a carriage that served wine and had all the comforts of home. Europe has superior rail travel because of restrictive geography. The US has plenty of level real estate, so building cars is more practical.

Maybe now you can dial back the condescending attitude a bit.

Well, the Swiss railroads were at least as hard to built as the Swiss roads, so I don’t understand your argument here.

ETA: to be clear, I totally understand the wider argument that the sparse population and long distances in the US speak against a well developed train system.

Heart disease isn’t infectious.

I can’t make any sense of this. Why do roads need more flat area? Why are trains better in mountains?

Europe has extensive train routes because trains came decades before cars (and about a century before cars were in reach of the average working class family). It’s not much more complicated than that.

I was a little confused by that too, Gradient is a much bigger issue for trains than cars, you don’t want to change gradient rapidly in a train if you can at all avoid it and that limits where you can go and how easily you can do it.
Need to get up or down a big slope in a car? build a set of hairpins. Need to do the same in a train? You can’t very easily, you’ll have to tunnel through the mountain or take a gradual gradient run around it, or use rack and pinion (or similar).

Here’s a view of Austria, Carinthia to be exact, an area I know well. Look to the north of the road and you see huge arched viaducts for the train lines. Why are they there on the side of a mountain instead of running on the lovely flat valley floor? Because the line runs through the mountain from the Gasteiner Tal at about 1200m and it is impossible to change gradient rapidly enough to run the line into the valley and go precisely where you want to go.