Sabbath elevators, Discmans and memory revision
It seems that my most recent additions have been unworthy of comment by the audience, either due to lack of visitors, lack of interest or leaving people with nothing to say: the last comment was a facetious one made by a certain "Al K." on 3 October at 17:27.
A few items of note (at least to me) of late, all of which can neatly be compartmentalised into the "Random thoughts" category.
First of all, I encountered something for the first time yesterday: a Sabbath Elevator. I wasn’t aware of their work, but here’s the deal. They automatically stop on every floor between 4pm Friday and 10pm Saturday to save Jewish occupants from ‘working’ the elevator by pushing the buttons.
On reading the above link, it’s also fascinating to note that the regenerative brake is also deactivated. The regenerative brake basically stores up some of the lost kinetic energy as the lift decelerates. It is disabled as otherwise, the occupants of the lift would be doing ‘useful work’, which contravenes the rules of the Sabbath. I find this sort of stuff fascinating, although some of the workarounds for not doing useful work seem at odds with the essence of the religion (e.g. putting lights on timer-switches).
Last night on the subway, I saw a guy revising from a textbook. His subject of choice: memory. Good luck!
Finally, with the plethora of iPods of various styles adorning every other subway rider at the moment, I’ve also noticed an increase in the number of people with Discmans, which seem oddly retro. I even spotted a girl with a Walkman the other day, too cool for the latest trends.
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2 Responses to “Sabbath elevators, Discmans and memory revision”
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These Sabbath elevators sound like utter bollocks:
1. dictionary.com (which I don’t really like, but was the quickest to find) defines work as, “Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.”
You’re telling me someone has designed this elevator so the occupant’s don’t have to ‘work’? By merely stepping into the thing they are working. By even thinking about getting in they are. By rights all these folk should stay home in bed and count from one to one million over and over in the attempt to stop a useful thought entering their heads. Ah, or is that in itself also classed as ‘work’ as it achieves a goal?
2. Most buildings around Manhattan are 30 floors plus, right? Who would stand for being stopped on every floor to their destination on the whim of some religion? I mean, after all, the people using the lift aren’t really sticking to their religious beliefs or they’d be home in bed (see point 1).
3. I’ve got nothing against any specific religion, race, creed or other group, but… that’s as long as they don’t impose their beliefs, silly rules, etc. on any unwilling subjects. Living/working in a building with a lift like this is a sure fire way for these guys to piss people off!
Rob,
Generally, it seems that such lifts are only in large buildings in heavily Jewish communities. So generally, there’s one lift that’s dedicated as a Sabbath lift, while the rest remain in normal mode…