- Nigel O’Sullivan: Mrs. Williams, what are you doing there?
- Ye Thuza: I’m removing the child safety brakes from this roundabout.
- Nigel O’Sullivan: I’m pretty sure this is illegal.
- Ye Thuza: No taxation without acceleration!
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- Nigel O’Sullivan: Mrs. Williams, what are you doing there?
- Ye Thuza: I’m removing the child safety brakes from this roundabout.
- Nigel O’Sullivan: I’m pretty sure this is illegal.
- Ye Thuza: No taxation without acceleration!
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Zelda faces of evil reference…
That is illegal you know.
I see an epic Ace-Attorney level court battle incoming. Either that or the blood between O’ Sullivan and Ye Thuza is going to go bad.
However, gotta say I’m with Ye Thuza on this one. You don’t want your kid to get hurt? Okay, either have them not go on the thing or just don’t spin it like crazy. Problem solved! Just because you don’t know how to ensure your special snowflake’s safety on the playground (it’s a joint effort, people!) doesn’t mean you can just spoil the experience for the hundreds of other parents’ special snowflakes who have parents that know how to let them have fun safely who also outnumber your special snowflake by many to one by appealing to politicians who will only grant your request to make themselves look good and get re-elected. I’m sure none of the people that woman lobbied had kids of that age nd would actually understand the situation.
Oh fer pete’s sake!
Should have just said, “oh, it wasn’t working right and I just had to fix it.”
No problems, and the policeman walks off thinking “what a good citizen she is.”
horerczy wrote:
But safer how? Also, what is going on with this rubber ring? I haven’t seen a real roundabout in a long time, so I’m not exactly sure how that gets set up in practice. (Of course I have two different models in my head, one more reasonable than the other, but still.)
@ Boss Tigger:
I’m getting a Rush from your filking. ^_^
Why did I get ZERO emails about updates to this comic over the past month? The last one I got was for November 7th, then totally zip until I got the update for this one today!
@ Night-X:
Did you go outside today? Did you drive a car! Well, aren’t you fond of special pleading.
Crazy Roth wrote:
It’s basically just taking advantage of friction. Based on the age of the particular one I last remember looking at it’s a retrofit to bring in up with current safety regulations but it is quite overboard really. The thing would grind to a halt before a single good rotation. It’s speed was nowhere near 13ft/sec (8.86Mph or 14.26kph) and it was frankly quite depressing.
That said regulating speed lowers the amount of kinetic energy a rider is experiencing so if the rider were to be thrown from a roundabout that’s less energy to force against them when they make that sudden stop. In contrast more sand will ultimately do little to cushion the blow and will always “hit back” with a force equal to the force of anyone thrown from the ride into it.
Of course there is more to it than that; the angle of incidence at which one lands, whether or not one is able to roll with the force or is made to stop immediately, if someone else is there to catch the rider be it intentional or not on the part of the person doing the catching all of these things and more come into play in the end.
Out of all the factors that exist the roundabouts speed is the easiest and most effective to regulate so when Mr. and Mrs. Jones cry that their little snowflake Joey broke his arm on the roundabout the company creator/government/school/whoever happens to own the darn thing need to find a quick, effective, and inexpensive way to fix the problem before the lawsuits start to pile on.
This is the same reason why soccer goals have tighter mesh netting than say a decade ago. Some kid gets their head caught in the net so the company has to make a new net that’s too small for children to get their heads caught in and do a recall on the larger mesh nets. I really wish I was joking with this example but I remember seeing the notice on it at work a few years ago. Not that anyone had to send in the old nets the instructions were more allong the lines of discontinue use of old net, contact the company, get new net sent to home free of charge. This is, of course, a slightly different matter but the overall reason why is the same.
… Good lord that’s a long post.
This whole thing reminds me of how it’s almost impossible to find a swingset that isn’t just for infants in my area unless you use a public school’s swings. They’ve all been taken out over safety concerns because older kids (AKA, anyone over the age of 8) jump off of them like they aren’t supposed to. Or they play stupid games like “suicide run” (what we call it here, there’s two versions, running under people who are swinging or running through a set of moving swings without stopping) and get hurt by using things wrong. So all the swings that aren’t the little baby-cup-seats have been removed from basically all the public parks. It’s dumb.
Will she use a tow truck to pull it like the Russians did for fun? (You should see that video.)
“Hello, is this NASA? It seems that our neighborhood round-about was adjusted last night and now I’ve accidentally sent my 4-year old into orbit…”
@ Dervalanana:
Good that it reads Brakes then.
Feather Quill Inkpot wrote:
http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=639
“Your narcs don’t have the guts!”
(She’s right. They don’t.)
If you use sand to provide a “soft” impact you introduce two new problems:
1) sand in the eye, from impact or from throwing;
2) catshit. Cats shit in sandpits, flower beds and pretty much anywhere else the ground is easily kicked around. Children at playgrounds are often accompanied by mothers. Mothers of children at playgrounds may be pregnant with further children. Pregnant women are supposed to stay well clear of catshit.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3515034/
Fight the deceleration!
@ Fluffy:
Back then we didn’t have a problem with these. We just used them standing up. Which is probably even more unsafe than with regular swings because your foot can get caught in the cup. And that handily illustrates the beef I have with overdoing “safety” to the point that makes things unusable: People will find ways to make it usable again, and these can be pretty darn unsafe.
@ Sableagle:
Cat shit is only a problem if they didn’t have contact with toxoplasmosis before. And if they either own cats or like their steak bloody, it is very likely that they did and have no reason to worry. You can get yourself tested for the antibodies, if you want to be sure.
In panel 1, the cop is eating a donut. Isn’t that a cliche?
Go ahead Ye Thuza. Murder all those children just so yours can have fun.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20141205/park-slope/parks-dept-puts-stop-spinning-playground-equipment-after-injuries
So you thought it was a joke?
Kaprekar wrote:
It’s kind of cute that he thinks he can stop her.
Ashlyn S. Hibbs wrote:
Me and you both!
Seriously though… It’s like that cop knows Ye Thuza for a reason…
After a second look at this, I must say….Ye Thuza is becoming a bit of a Canon Sue.
Granted, in one instance, Dorothy Cambridge was basically asking for it by treating Cloud like crap, but abduction is still a morally questionable act. This here is an act of vandalism, one that can actually harm any kids who may wander on the playground without supervision, and get carried away with the roundabout. When flung from that thing, children can hit things pretty damn hard on impact.
Either way, I’m expecting Ye Thuza to get away scot-free with this, like she always does. It’s kinda hard to root for somebody who always wins, sorry.
Also, that last line makes me lose a quite a bit of sympathy for Ye Thuza, because it implies that she thinks that being a freedom fighter in a foreign country gives her the right to do what she wants. Oh, a cop is telling you what you’re doing is illegal and wrong, but that’s just the government oppressing you, right? The wording also irritates me, because I have personally run into people that think they should call the shots and treat people badly because ‘they pay taxes’. They are the WORST type of people to run into when you have a government job, because they feel morally superior to you.
@ El Rodrigo:
They are the WORST type of people to run into when you have a government job, because they feel morally superior to you.
Indeed, but just occasionally, they are.
I’ll leave it to others to decide whether this is one of those cases.
@El Rodrigo: Hmm, you know, maybe we’ll get some interesting plot development to make her character interesting again. The kid from the other day might be allowed to play on the equipment now, since it’s supposed to be safe now. Instead it flings the kid from it and cripples or kills her. Ye Thuza now has to live with the guilt from that, and winds up maturing a bit.
El Rodrigo wrote:
The problem with making Ye Thuza behave is that you lose the entertainment calue and their character. What good is a character who doesn’t get in trouble? What good is a character that just stands around and allows themself to be pushed around? Ultimately, all characters have their flaws and that’s what makes them good characters.
Robert wrote:
“Your momma” is a cliche.
You do know that every Monday and Thursday has a new comic? Or do they not have days of the week were you live?
Onward to terminal velocity! That’s 7 miles per second!!! (Your crazy!) Make a jump at that speed and never touch the ground! So don’t let go or gravity will keep pulling you not down but to the side. Other wise known as Orbit.
@ Lathiyades:
I’m not suggesting that Ye Thuza become an outright bore by following the rules, but there has to be a balance. A character who constantly ‘breaks the rules’ without realizing that some of her actions may have consequences is not a well-rounded character. I see this moment as a downturn for her character. Her doing this can endanger the lives of other children just so she and Yuna can have fun. It’s somewhat selfish.
Contrast this to when she actually punishes Yuna for tearing apart Cloud’s action figures for her experiment. Yuna’s actions (taking apart somebody else’s property) directly affected somebody else. She didn’t get away scot-free there.
Here, we have Ye Thuza taking apart somebody else’s property, and it’s something that can affect other people. A cop is telling her here it’s blatantly illegal. Her response is to go VIVA LA REVOLUCION!! Double standards, much?
@ El Rodrigo:
The cop said it was illegal, not that it was wrong. We will just have to wait to find out his opinion.
@ El Rodrigo:
She isn’t making any new modifications to the roundabout, just removing a new one to return it to a prior state. If she was putting rockets on that thing… Nah, I still wouldn’t agree. Yuna would ride it once before it ran out of fuel, so then it would still revert to normal.
Sableagle wrote:
Is it wrong that I want to reply with “Your reply is a cliche”?
Probably.
Is it correct?
I have no idea.
Is the cop-doughnut love-story an overused gag?
ABSOLUTELY.
Does that make it funny?
Maybe. ^.^
Should I stop writing now and get back to work?
unfortunately.
@ Ashlyn S. Hibbs:
SAME
@ Stuff’n’things:
TWO sides at least, or it’s not balanced. Fast as it needs to go, technical limitations must still be respected for the fun to continue.
@ El Rodrigo:
Some could say that overdoing restrictions in the name of “safety” are being selfish in their own way. Lets be honest, out of the majority of parents who clamour for censorship or try to put too much restrictions on playground, how many of them actually raise their child?
I mean it’s arguably less about safety and more about wanting to leave their child unattended so they can do their own thing.
Far wrote:
I’m guessing he knows her a little bit too well for that to work. 😉
darkrai444 wrote:
darkrai444 wrote:
“Where” not “were”
“You’re” not “your”
“Otherwise” not “other wise”
One exclamation mark is plenty.
Actually you would touch the ground again, because going fast enough to be in orbit 1,000km up does not mean you’re already up there. Down here on the surface, we have more gravity, a smaller radius and air resistance, which would slow you down again.
Terminal velocity isn’t the same thing as orbital velocity anyway. Terminal velocity for a human in atmosphere is about 100km/h to 200km/h, depending on posture.
Gravity does pull you downwards when you’re in orbit. Gravity always pulls things together in straight lines. The reason orbits work is that an object travelling in a circle is constantly accelerating inwards at the square of its linear velocity divided by the radius of the circle, equal to the square of its angular velocity multiplied by the radius of the circle, and an object in circular orbit is travelling at a speed and radius such that its inward acceleration due to gravity equals v2/r.
With g of 9.80665 m/s2 at 6,378 km, and knowing g is inversely proportional to the square of r, and also knowing that the rotational speed of the Earth is (7.2921150 ± 0.0000001) ×10^−5, we can calculate that a satellite in geostationary orbit, remaining above a single spot on the Equator, must be moving east with that same angular velocity at radius r such that
((7.2921150 ± 0.0000001) ×10^−5)^2 r = 9.80665 / ((r^2) / (6378000^2)) = 9.80665 (6378000^2) / r^2
so ((7.2921150 ± 0.0000001) ×10^−5)^2 r^3 = 9.80665 (6378000^2)
so 5.3174941173225 ×10^−9 r^3 = 398923577778600
so r^3 = 398923577778600 / (5.3174941173225 ×10^−9) = 75020972092672225235696.14837
so r = 42175563.6872m, meaning the satellite is 35787.5637km above sea level, and travelling east at (7.2921150 ± 0.0000001) ×10^−5 × 42175563.6872 = 3075.4906m/s
……. according to Princeton it’s “at an altitude very close to 35,786 km (22,236 mi)” with “an orbital velocity of 3.07 km/s (1.91 mi/s)” so I got pretty close, eh?
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Geostationary_orbit.html
Gravity. It pulls down.
Oh, good. I like this character. Is she based on anyone living?
No Rotation without Acceleration.
Hazama wrote:
Strawman much? Where is the personal responsibility of the parents of these “murdered children” you speak of? All they really want is to make sure that everyone is as miserable as they are and that their special little meat sack can’t get hurt while they’re sipping their Grande Chai Tea Skim Milk No Foam Extra Hot Latte, ignoring the little snowflake as they tweet from the nature-free coffee shop around the corner about their latest designer pantsuit instead of actually having to put their F-ing phone down and interact with their child who is nothing more to them than a status symbol.
See, strawmen are only fun and fair when I use them!