On The Off Chance Any Wack-Ass Islamic Fundamentalists Happen To Pick Up The New York Press: Put Away The Gasoline And Step Away From That Consulate — The Cartoons Have Been Nixed!

Four staffers from the New York Press have resigned after the publisher pulled an article that reprinted the infamous Danish cartoons that have had parts the Muslim world rioting:

Three editors and a reporter quit yesterday after The New York Press decided at the last minute to yank a story that would have featured the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that have unleashed a wave of violence across the Arab world.

The four quit in protest when the publisher of the free alternative weekly killed the piece, WCBS/Channel 2 reported.

The cartoons have already been published by The New York Sun.

In an e-mail, Press editor-in-chief Harry Siegel said after being “ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons . . . the editorial group — consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man City Hall bureau Azi Paybarah — chose instead to resign our positions.”

The staffers’ side of the story is here.

Being Thrown Or Falling In Front Of An Oncoming Subway Train — And Surviving!

After the luckiest man in New York escaped death by rolling into the subway track trough, the Times investigates all manners in which one can protect themselves in the path of an oncoming subway train:

Short of “stand away from the platform edge,” there are no hard-and-fast official guidelines to survive an oncoming New York City subway train. “There really is no one thing we can tell people that would work in every situation,” said Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Depending on the station, one can seek refuge from an oncoming train in a few ways. None are foolproof.

A police detective with experience in the transit bureau recalled his training in last-ditch methods for surviving an oncoming train.

“They told us, ‘Get to the cutouts or be able to roll underneath the platform,'” he said, referring to niches cut into the subway tunnels and the space under some platforms themselves, where homeless people have been known to sleep.

A quick-thinking person may also find safety beneath the train, in the so-called trough between the tracks, which offers up to two feet of space below a train.

In 2003, a researcher for an Internet brokerage firm, Brandon Crismon, was pushed into the path of an oncoming No. 5 train at the Union Square station. He scrambled into the trough and lay flat, in what his half brother described as “kung-fu mode.”

The train stopped after two cars had passed over Mr. Crismon. He suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises. He was lucky: The depths of troughs vary, Mr. Fleuranges said.

Finally, and no less a long shot, a person could try outrunning the train to the end of the platform, where it would presumably stop. In this and all situations, falling on to the electrified third rail could be fatal.

Meanwhile, researchers are collecting data about 12-9s, as they’re known in subway parlance*:

It is a fleeting fear surely shared by many a New Yorker who has leaned over a station platform searching for the dim headlights of an approaching subway car. One slip of the foot or one well-timed push is all it would take to land in front of a moving train.

Now, a group of doctors has examined the fate of those who ended up on the tracks and made it to the hospital.

The findings of the study, which looked at more than 200 injuries suffered by people brought to Bellevue Hospital Center during a 13-year period, are at times grisly and sometimes macabre, and often tragic, but undeniably fascinating for those who travel beneath the city.

The study, to be published in the March issue of The American Journal of Public Health, is hardly conclusive: According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, there were 702 cases of people on the tracks between 1990 and 2003, the same period as the study. Roughly half of them resulted in death. But this is the first time a single hospital has tried to determine what can be gleaned from its cases.

Many of those taken to Bellevue were only slightly injured, with more than half of them leaving the hospital without requiring follow-up care. Only one of every 10 victims who made it to the hospital died, a credit to both the medical care they received and the response time of emergency workers.

*See here for “12-9” lingo.

How To Survive A Fall Onto The Subway Tracks

If you find yourself on the trackbed in the headlights of an oncoming subway car, roll into the trough between the rails. Just ask this guy:

Being a subway buff saved Daniel Silverio’s life — he knew exactly what to do when he stumbled from a downtown Wall Street subway platform into the path of a No. 2 train.

“I was walking on the platform when I hit something or bumped into something — I really can’t recall,” Silverio, 29, said yesterday from a bed at Bellevue Hospital, a day after his harrowing brush with death.

“I remember being airborne, and the train coming my way.”

Silverio, a stockbroker from Brooklyn, had the presence of mind to roll into the trough between the track rails — and luckily for him, the skilled train operator hit the brakes in the nick of time.

“The next thing I knew, I wake up and look over and see the third rail,” Silverio said.

“When I was down there, I knew not to touch anything.”

. . .

When he was a kid, his pals teased him about his being a transit nerd. “I used to be ridiculed,” Silverio said. “For once in my life it came in handy.”

The Other Strike

Did you know that NYU graduate students are still picketing? It’s true:

On Jan. 17, as New York University students returned to classes, the university’s striking graduate teaching assistants returned to the picket line.

The Graduate Student Organizing Committee took a break from picketing over the holidays while N.Y.U. was in winter intersession.

The strike, which began on Nov. 9 of last year, was in reaction to N.Y.U.’s refusal to renew the union contract. GSOC was unwilling to work without the security of a contract, despite N.Y.U.’s promises to treat the teaching assistants fairly.

Here’s an Inside Higher Ed story from November to refresh your memory (scroll down for heated comments!).

By The Numbers

The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released its life-and-death statistics study, and the Post summarizes the data.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have a baby: Borough Park, Brooklyn, with 4,523 births in 2004 (24.4 per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are least likely to have a baby: Bayside, Queens, with six per 1,000 residents (700 total).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to be dead: East Harlem (10.9 deaths per 1,000 residents).

Neighborhoods where you are least likely to be dead: Queens Village (4.6 deaths per 1,000 residents), Bayside (4.7 per thousand) and Greenwich Village (5.3 per thousand).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have cancer: Throgs Neck in The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to have heart disease: Coney Island.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to get murdered: Brownsville (28.1 murders per 100,000 residents).

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from using drugs: Hunts Point, The Bronx.

Neighborhood where you are most likely to die from AIDS: Morrisania, The Bronx.

Meanwhile, the Post profiles a “typical procreative” Borough Park couple:

Faye and Shlomo Cisner are a typical procreative Borough Park couple: They have eight kids, and more could be on the way.

“It is a possibility,” Faye Cisner. “Thank God. God gives. We accept.”

Faye is 33, Shlomo 35.

They have six boys and two girls — including a set of twins.

The youngest, Chaim, is 10 months old. There’s also Joseph, 2; Reuben, 4; Rachel, 5; Meir, 7; Jacob, 8; and twins Nisson and Yocheved, who are 10.

The Cisners, who are Orthodox Jews, said they are carrying on the Jewish tradition of having many children. And that’s what many do in Borough Park.

. . .

Faye starts every morning doing the never-ending load of laundry for 10 people.

The kids eat in two shifts, and she likened the experience to serving people in a restaurant. The six older children board four different buses to get to and from school.

“There’s juggling. It gets a bit overwhelming. But it’s an amazing experience,” Faye said.

See also: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s “My Community’s Health” Pages.