"Oddly Stoic"? What a weird choice of words.

[BurtWorm]

What other way is there to be in the face of "the new normal?" :wtf:


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/international/europe/07cnd-explosion.html?ei=5094&en=58771b68dfe53a77&hp=&ex=1120795200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print


After Bombs, London Is Stunned and Bloodied, but Oddly Stoic

By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, July 7 - Bomb explosions tore through three London subway trains and a red double-decker bus in a deadly terror attack today, killing at least 37 people in coordinated rush hour carnage that left the city stunned, bloodied but oddly stoic.

Only one day after the British capital erupted in joy at winning the 2012 Olympic competition over such cities as Paris and New York, commuters packed in the city's subways - the Tube - were plunged into the city's perennial nightmare of a subterranean bloodbath. The city center was paralyzed. Police in yellow slickers sealed off streets. Bus services halted and the entire subway network closed down as rescue workers and paramedics went deep below ground to look for the dead and wounded.

Above ground, an explosion tore open the roof of a No. 30 double-decker bus with such force that it threw debris 10 feet into the air. The blast was so powerful that, hours later, the police could not estimate the number of dead. Neither, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick, was it clear whether the explosions were suicide bombings.

The attack - deadlier than the 1998 Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland that claimed 29 lives - coincided with the first full day of deliberations among the leaders of the world's most industrialized countries far to the north at the Gleneagles golf estate in Scotland. The tactics in the bombings - a coordinated strike against rush-hour transport systems - bore a close resemblance to the attack last year in Madrid that claimed 191 lives.

[Taxloss]

1. I said "stoic" earlier. I think it's apt.

But I don't see it as "odd".

[meegbear]

2. Stoic ...

One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain.

I think it's perfectly cromulant word, based on the circumstances.

[Maple]

3. The British

'stiff upper lip' that they're noted for.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Yeah, rather than "oddly stoic"...

isn't this writer just being ridiculously cliche?

[undergroundpanther]

5. Oddly?

Dissociating from trauma might be more apt

[Geoff R. Casavant]

9. Stiff upper lip indeed

I heard an interview on NPR this AM with a Brit who was at the scene, and he mentioned that when the bomb went off, he and his friends started walking away as fast as they could. That gave us at least a chuckle amid all the tragedy.

I was about to type the Bill Cosby line about Englishmen, but under the circumstances it seems in poor taste.

[theboss]

6. The British are just "stoic;" it's not odd at all

It's probably odd for an American though.

[Solly Mack]

7. Watching the coverage I noticed a difference in reactions

of the WTC and the blasts in London.


Stoic? Yes. Odd? Hardly.

[BurtWorm]

8. New Yorkers were stoic on 9/11.

There's no other way to be in the face of such a crisis. There is nothing odd about it. People in Baghdad are probably also stoic every freaking day. What do they expect from us by-standers? Do they think we're going to run panicking through the streets?

[Solly Mack]

10. Yeah - I'm speaking of the man on street type thing

different reactions...

a lot of people around me during the WTC were alarmists...and some on the news

watching reactions on the BBC today, I didn't get a sense of alarmists thinking prevailing.