Bicyclists attacked in Cambridge, Arlington

When you're on foot, you're a perfect pedestrian.
When you're on a bike, you're the perfect cyclist.
When you drive, you're the perfect motorist.
And when you post on uhub, you're perfectly rational and civil.

And did I mention totally believable?

I'd tip thou a hapenny but I don't know how to insert it into mine own glowing portal.

They kind of outrank speculation by a blogger. So does information on a law firm website: http://www.bwglaw.com/pedestrian-accidents.html

Pedestrian accidents typically occur while crossing streets, but can occur while walking on the side of a street, in parking lots, recreational areas, and when cars crash onto sidewalks. Pedestrians can be injured by cars, trucks, motorcycles, or even bicycles. Massachusetts law favors the rights of pedestrians over vehicles of any type. Usually pedestrians have the right of way, but the right of way is not absolute. A pedestrian crossing a street in a crosswalk, or at an intersection with either the "Walk" signal or on a green light, has the right of way. Massachusetts General Laws chapter 89, § 11, provides:

"When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk marked in accordance with standards established by the department of highways if the pedestrian is on that half of the traveled part of the way on which the vehicle is traveling or if the pedestrian approaches from the opposite half of the traveled part of the way to within 10 feet of that half of the traveled part of the way on which said vehicle is traveling."

TL/DR: if you have the signal or light in your favor, you have the right of way when using the crosswalk (turning vehicles must yield). If you are obliviously stumbling into the street against a red light, or just obliviously stumbling into the street away from a crosswalk, you do not have the right of way.

Pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way at unsignalized crosswalks. I have nearly been plowed down on my bike and screamed at in my car by oblivious/aggressive motorists when stopping for them. This part seems particularly difficult for motorists to understand.

Feel free to ignore if you're just here for the bike argument...

The point of the Schrödinger's Cat thought-experiment is to describe a system where the cat is actually both alive and dead at the same time.

It's intended as an example of quantum superposition working on a large-scale system. A cat is in an enclosed box with an aparatus made up of a Geiger counter, a radioactive source, and a bottle of cyanide. If the counter registers the decay of one of the atoms in the source (a quantum event), a hammer breaks the bottle and the cat perishes.

If the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum superimposition is correct, then the experiment creates a universe in which the state of the radioactive source - and therefore the cat - is not just unknown, but is actually undetermined - until observed. What constitutes an 'observation' is still a matter of spirited investigation and debate.

This thought experiment has been amazingly fruitful, with physicists coming up with many alternative theories that attempt to resolve the paradox of the Copenhagen interpretation - because trying to imagine a cat that is both dead and alive makes our monkey brains hurt.

I'll end this here because I could easily go on for a page or two just covering the basics of these, and that would suck when there's righteous bike/ped anger to be thrown about!