{"id":4116,"date":"2018-05-03T21:14:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T20:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/?p=4116"},"modified":"2018-05-03T21:32:23","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T20:32:23","slug":"in-which-science-imitates-life-number-365-zones-of-death-in-public-transport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2018\/05\/03\/in-which-science-imitates-life-number-365-zones-of-death-in-public-transport\/","title":{"rendered":"In which science imitates life, number 365: zones of death in public transport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was waiting for the bus this past weekend, ridiculously early to get my son to his swimming lesson across town. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n<p>We waited, and waited, and Joshua jumped up and down anxiously, looking adorable with his lobster rucksack bouncing on his back, asking over and over, &#8220;Mama, why isn&#8217;t the bus coming?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Quite. We were rapidly reaching the point of no return, so I pulled out my phone to view the live map. There, I could see a swarm of buses studiously avoiding our position in a way that was strangely familiar:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4119\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2018\/05\/03\/in-which-science-imitates-life-number-365-zones-of-death-in-public-transport\/busmap\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4119\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4119\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4119\" src=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2018\/05\/BusMap.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2018\/05\/BusMap.jpg 300w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2018\/05\/BusMap-169x300.jpg 169w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4119\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Was it something we said?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Where had I seen that pattern before? And then I had it:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4120\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2018\/05\/03\/in-which-science-imitates-life-number-365-zones-of-death-in-public-transport\/plate\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4120\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4120\" src=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/files\/2018\/05\/plate.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4120\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4120\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Kirby\u2013Bauer disk diffusion assay (via <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antibiotic_sensitivity#\/media\/File:KB_test.jpg\">Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My son and I were the antibiotic, and the buses were the bacteria. And the swathe of nothingness between&#8230;was about to make us very late.<\/p>\n<p>I called up an Uber &#8211; which arrived just as the bus lumbered past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was waiting for the bus this past weekend, ridiculously early to get my son to his swimming lesson across town. Or so I thought. We waited, and waited, and Joshua jumped up and down anxiously, looking adorable with his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2018\/05\/03\/in-which-science-imitates-life-number-365-zones-of-death-in-public-transport\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,34,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joshua","category-scientific-thinking","category-silliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}