I'm on a flight back from an extended set of biz trips + vacation time spanning Seattle + Boston + NYC.   NYC is the town God intended me to live in but alas, he forgot to put in a *real* tech / products sector there.    The social scene here is second to none - and I've travelled all over the world and spent time in many many noble cities.  London is up there but NYC still edges it out.... a North American city that is often overlooked is Vancouver.   Many of the Asian cities are more bustling but I think my sensibilities are far too Western to really consider them.  

I know, I know, there are a lot of techies there working on some really cool stuff (AND, for that matter, making some serious serious $$$ every year) but, call it a deep personal preference, the sort of game *I* need to play just doesn't happen here.

NYC's tech sector is dominated by the financial software biz.   My world is software products that eventually have some horizontal consumer / business impact.   The small ISV space has some interesting NYC-based candidates (for ex., Spolsky's Fog Creek Software which powers my blog) but the space is too 'vertical' for me.   The Bay Area is gonna be home for the forseeable future and I'm just gonna have to get used to it.   It certainly ain't a bad second place.    ;-)

So on my flight back to SFO, we went through the inevitable air turbulence, followed by inevitable "return to your seat and fasten your seatbelt" advice from the staff, and then the inevitable dude who blithely ignores this and proceeds to the "lavatory" anyways.  This pattern happens so often and consistently that I think it reveals something very innate about human nature in it's own small way.

Perhaps it's the assertion of the individual against the creeping nanny-state that is the airline experience -- a mindset that goes along the lines of "BUT, I don't feel like this turbulence is so bad.   I can handle it."  It's empowering to make the decision to walk down the aisles for yourself  (there are certainly major structural reasons why you can't "drive").   It's a recognition - in a very small way - that there really is an individual optimization point between convenience and safety.   Thus it's probably also indicative of a more general breakdown in structural authority.   It argues that the airline's liability concerns have gone too far.  And that tort liability has truly outgrown the bounds of the real day-to-day human experience & standards of reasonableness.

Or maybe it's just someone who really needs to go   ;-)

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UPDATE: just read Mr. B's comment and thought I should mention that I *NEVER* get up when the seatbelt light is on ;-) I think it's obnoxious and I'm by default a bit of a law-and-order type. Still, I think it's socially significant that so many folks nevertheless do......

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