Scary snowman in Harvard Sq. terrifies the locals. Brilliant stuff.

[happyslug]

11. This is DANGEROUS, someone might get killed, it should be stopped.

Last edited Thu Dec 5, 2013, 10:36 PM - Edit history (1)

In one of the cases, a Woman ran into the street, if a car had been going by she would have been hit and killed. She was lucky no car was going by

This is enough of a shock to cause a heart attack if done to someone who has a bad heart condition.

The biggest threat, is that the snow man scares a man from the rural south. The men raised in the Rural South tend to opt for attack in such situations, not laugh if off as is the common situation in most of the rest of the Civilized world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_honor_(Southern_United_States)

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep03381391.pdf

In simple language, when frightened Southerns tend to ATTACK (i.e. when frighten they will attack not laugh it off or run away), while other people tend to back off and look for support (which gives them time to laugh off little scares like this one). Various explanations are given for this difference, most start with the fact the original settlers of the South tended to come from the herding areas of the United Kingdom, while Farmers settled the North. Urbanization increased interactions of people, and forced people to back off and laugh about bad interactions as opposed to attacking.

You have to remember that prior to the 1960s every US City had lower then average murder rates, why? Because the Murder rate in the South was that high do do rural men opting to ATTACK in bad situations rather then back off and laugh off the bad situation.

African Americas were overwhelming in the south prior to WWII, now some immigration started before WWI, but it accelerated after WWI and accelerated again after WWII (For example Mississippi went form 60% African American to just 40% during that time period). When African American moved North, they brought with them their "traditions" which included traditions developed and adopted over the previous 300 years, and the main influence on those tradition was the traditions of the Rural South. Thus African Americans brought with them a higher rate of crime, including murder.

Since the 1960s, as African Americans became part of Urban Northern Cities, they slowly adopted the norms of Northern Whites, i.e. the murder rates of African Americans have steadily dropped since the 1960s, when the great immigration from the south ended. Southern While murder rates have also dropped, but it appears to be do to massive movement of Northerns to Southern Cities, when you look at the rural South, they appears to have been NO drop in the murder rates.

Just a comment, that this works in Harvard, the city of upper middle class northern culture. In areas with heavy southern influence, the snow man has a much higher chance of being attacked.

The reason for this higher level to attack among Rural Southerns, in an attack or run situation, is while known, but the cause is debated. Some people call it Genes (but that would NOT explain how rural southern African Americans became equally as violate), other says it was cultural norm the rose out of Slavery (Murder rates were low under slavery, for killing a slave was NOT murder). While some blame instability of government and social standings, that tends to refuted by the fact people in the Mountains were LESS likely to commit such murders (and feuds) then people living in low lying areas where slavery was more profitable.

I suspect it is cultural and came out of the "Need" to control Slaves. It started with the traditions of herding, i.e. you had to defend your head, for by the time help came the people who were stealing the herd would be long gone, with the herd. Farming communities did not have to worry about this, for it was hard to steal crops still in the fields and once harvested could be dispersed (Thus farmers could wait for help against thieves, while herders could not).

From that tradition of herding, the South Developed the need for "Patrols" run by the County Sheriff, "Patrols" tied in with the Militia for it was the duty of every while male in the county to go on "Patrol" once a month. The "Patrol" was a group of men assigned to guard a cross road or other point, at night. and to check who was going down the road. If any African Americans came across a Patrol, they would stop the African American and Check his papers to make sure he was out with his master's permission (or of a Free African American he had papers to show he was NOT a slave, the law presumed all African Americans were SLAVES, and could be arrested and it was up to the African American to prove he was NOT a slave. If arrested, the AFrican American was held by the Sheriff till his master showed up, and if the master never showed up (for example if it was a FREE African American without papers), the Sheriff could sell the African America to pay for the cost of keeping the African American.

Now, to get this system to work, the members of the Patrol had to have some latitude, and that was given by the law, including the right to kill any slave that crossed they path (the Sheriff then had to pay the slave owner for the Slave). Again the reason was to put the fear of getting caught into the minds of any African American Slave who even THOUGHT of trying to escape. In most cases Slaves were just beaten, thus no costs were incurred by the Sheriff, but this rule brought with it a hardening of these Southern males to beating and killing, a hardening that affected even how they interacted among themselves. Thus the high murder rates of Rural Southern Males.

The end of slavery should have stopped this pattern of violence, but during reconstruction the KKK was built on the ruins of the pre Civil War Sheriff's Patrols. Group of men, Five to ten, riding together to keep African Americans in their place. At the end of Reconstruction, the South turned to the Law to reestablish slavery. This time they looked at the 13th amendment and notice it had an exception for criminals. Thus Southern Whites started to charge African Americans with various crimes, including agreeing to work for the someone and the African American NOT doing the work. i.e. any white man could accuse any African American of agreeing to work for him, and the burden was on the African American to show he had NOT made such an agreement. The Courts would rule the African American failed to full fill his obligations under the agreement to work, the Courts would ORDER the African American to work for that white man till the "Debt" was paid off in full. This system needed violence to work, for violence was needed to make sure other African Americans did not get to the court to testify no such agreement was ever made, you also needed to use violence to keep the African American from running away (unlike pre Civil War slaves, more and more post Civil War Freedmen knew that all they had to do is cross the State line not the Ohio river, ALSO they knew how far the Ohio River was AND more and more of these Freedmen knew how to read and write, and thus could explain these concepts to other Freedmen). Thus to keep these Freedmen in Criminal slavery took more violence then pre-Civil War slavery.

By 1900, imprisonment for debt started to go out of favor even in the South, the Federal Government even started some feeble attempts to enforce Federal Law forbidding imprisonment for debt. At the same time the KKK was reborn and segregation became the rule of the South. This saw a further increase in violence to make sure African Americans stayed in their place. This tendency to violence INCREASED when the Civil Rights Movement started its big push in the 1950s and continued till the 1970s.

Since the 1970s, violence has been down played in the South, it is still on going, often race related, but also as often NOT race related. It just reflects the greater tendency to Violence Southern Males have compared to other groups. The above explains HOW it occurred and why it did NOT drop, as the South went from Herding to Cotton farming and slavery (Pre Civil War), to Cotton Farming with no legal slaves (Post Civil War), to Cotton Farming and segregation (1900 to 1950), Cotton Farming Desegregation and mechanization of Cotton Farming (1950 to 1970), and finally today. Each period had its own reason to resort to violence and did so, but those reasons often related to the fact the previous period was as violent (i.e. the problems of today, can be solved the same way it was resolved in granddad's day, with violence).

The South since the 1970s has had a period of peace and political stability that in many ways has NEVER been the case when it came to the South, but it takes several generations to reduce the tendency to violence, as seen in the inner city African American Population, whose murder rate is still much higher then whites, even through most African Americans had in those cities since at least the 1950s (Please note in wide sections of the Rural South you still have majority African American counties, but African Americans living is such rural areas are the minorities compared the the number of African Americans living in Urban Northern Areas).

Just pointing out this stunt is dangerous, not only because it might cause some one to be hit by a car, it might lead to an attack on the person in the Snow man suit. It has only worked do to the location of the Store, in a lower income neighborhood this can become dangerous quickly.