How The Other Half Deal With Transport Woes

EVERY TIME I start to moan and bitch about the public infrastructure and transport woes in this country (which in fairness has been getting better over the years gradually, with the exception of traffic which continues to degrade miserably year on year) I come across something which reminds me of just how lucky we are, even with the current woes.

The following sets of photos are a selection of images which show how the ‘other half’ deal with transport woes. Some are absolutely scary, and others are just pure dangerous, but all of them share a common thread, namely that the need to get from A to B outweights any risk getting there. Enjoy

Beer & Rental

I’M OUT ON THE BEER this evening, so I won’t get time to post any interesting articles (unless of course I stumble in this morning sometime and start writing stuff at the screen, only to wake up the next day and wonder what the hell happened!).

In the absence of a more informed post I present to you my latest renter and weekly featured site: The Zeroboss. It’s a site run by Jay Andrew Allen which was initially focused on parenting and fatherhood, but which seems to have broadened it’s topics to cover lots of other weird and wonderful things. Check it out and see what you think.

As for me… time I was snuggling up to a bar

“Strong Angel” Exposes US Cyber Terror Vulnerabilities

IMAGINE THE FOLLOWING SCENARIO: It starts with a worldwide virus outbreak that had cities under quarantine, emergency workers overwhelmed and government agencies unable to cope. It would be compounded by cyberterror attacks that cut off power, phones and Internet access.

This is the scenario posed by a joint government/military/interested IT parties five day exercise entitled “Strong Angel III” in San Diego recently, designed to test the latest implementation of disaster tools. Unfortunately for the US, the results of the simulated cyber terror attack were not very good and basically pointed out some severe limitations and issues with the technology stack.

Examples of said issues included a crucial back-up wireless network which failed to work and hundreds of computers and mobiles which didn’t work and then of course there was the minor issue of the network being clogged as too many high-bandwidth applications struggled for attention.

I reckon the designers could have spent a bit more time in the testing cycle prior to going to such a public display of technology related screwups. I fail to see how these types of issues could get past any decent testing regime.

Oh well – maybe the powers that be should have spent more money on testing this stuff instead of throwing it at what appears to be some fairly scary science projects including remote controlled sharks, nanobombs, pain guns and even radioactive scorpion venom

Foreign Flags Get US Teacher Placed “On Leave”

I HAD AN INTERESTING DEBATE over the weekend with my 22 year old niece. She’s Canadian by birth, but holds an Irish Passport as well and has decided to spend a year in Ireland on a bit of a ‘fling’ between college years. Anyhoo – over a nice lunch the conversation turned to politics and a heated debate ensued. She made me wonder if my views on the implosion of America were more biased in rhetoric then fact; I argued that my views came from listening to both sides of the equation from online and real-life American collegues and friends as well as taking the ‘outside looking in’ angle.

I tried to explain to her that most of my observations come from America itself; that the stories and evidence of just how much Bush & Co. have changed the social, political and economic landscape eminate from news stories, personal accounts and such. Just as I was starting to question my percieved this evening bias I came across yet another example of how much America has changed in recent times. In this case I refer specifically to the case of a 7th grade Teacher called Eric Hamlin, who was placed ‘on leave’ by his employers because he hung some foreign flags in the classroom and refused to take them down when ordered to do so.

He hung the flags up because he was intending to teach world geography to his students. He had been doing this for the past four years in the same school district (Jefferson County), but in this instance it was his first time to do it at this particular school – and the school administrators kicked him out for his troubles.

So – which offensive flags did he happen to have on display? China and Mexico.

Why did the administration order him to take them down? Because it breached a Colorado law that makes it illegal to display foreign flags permanently in schools.

However the teacher reckons there is more to this than meets the eye; he believes the national debate surrounding immigration and the Mexican flag has contributed to the controversy and wonders if he would have caused such a stir if he had hung flags of Switzerland or Australia instead of Mexico.

What chance does America have in the future if it’s students of today continue to be denied the most basic access to a world outside their religious and political national boundary?

The implosion continues, unfortunately.

Hacker Hunts Down Paedophiles In Spare Time?

SOMETIMES THE TRUTH is stranger than fiction, and in this case it certainly qualifies as weird enough to be true. I came across a story concerning the case of a hacker (known as unknownuser1069) who set about distributing some trojan malware into the Usenet newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen back in 2000. His trojan horse program (known as subseven or sub7) allowed him to gain access to others accounts and in doing so he decided to do a bit of ‘hero’ work while there.

In July 2000, he sent an e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department claiming that he had found a child molester on the Net. The e-mail included an attached photograph of what looked like a girl no older than 6 being sexually abused. The police followed this up, arrested a bad guy then approximately a year later in 2001 “1069″ fingered another paedophile and yet another arrest was made.

Now here’s where it gets really weird. In January 2002 the FBI contacted “1069″ and encouraged him to continue his activities, citing that he would not be prosecuted and that he should be ‘proud’ of his work thus far.

For all we know this strange relationship between the hacker and the FBI continues to this day.

Weekend Bible Thumping Back In Vogue?

IT’S BEEN A WHILE since I’ve seen any serious bible thumping on the ground in this country. The decline of organised religion and the impact of the celtic tiger seemed to have pushed most of this kind of activity into the fringes for a while. There was a time when every weekend or two some kind of wingnut would knock at the door preaching their religion-du-jour in my face, but not for a long time now; at least that was until this morning anyway

The doorbell goes off and I drag my ass to the front door to see who is dumb enough to disturb my weekend slumber. As usual my two dogs are going nuts so I make sure they are safe behind internal closed doors and then open the front door to see two well dressed women standing in front of me. One is cowering behind the other, peeping out at me from a vantage point behind her companions shoulder.

“She doesn’t like dogs” I’m informed by the first woman. This instantly reminds me of a previous dose of reality at my front door a few months ago, but I focus on the two women and offer a “Yes? What do you want?”.

The front one offers me a leaflet and leads in with some mumbo jumbo about taking responsibility for stuff and I vaguely hear something about making decisions and taking stock of things. I say vaguely because I’m now trying to read the leaflet which has lots of religious icons and words printed on it, in various fonts and colours, snaking off in different directions across the page making it hard to read without turning the leaflet around a bit.

I catch some old familiar words on the leaflet; catholic, protestant, jew etc. and at this stage look up and address the still-talking woman “I’m not religious; you’re wasting your time. Here’s your leaflet back. Bye now”.

“It’s not about religion” she tells me earnestly “It’s about making a decision; the decision to let God into your life”.

“OK then…” I replied knowing where this conversation was heading, “I’ve no problem making decisions. Here’s one I made a long time ago – I’m not religious so you’re just wasting your time.”

“But…” she stuttered.

“Now you’re wasting my time. Good luck” I said and closed the door as politely as I could. She seemed confused – can’t think why. I returned to my well earned weekend slumber, but it did give me pause for thought. It’s been years since anyone has tried the bible thumping thing at the weekend here, or at least years since I’ve seen anyone do it.

The mormans used to do a bit of it in the 80s and the Jovos had a brief spell in the 90s, but since the celtic tiger took a grip of this country I haven’t seen any evidence of bible thumping at the doorstep. I wonder if i’m due to be visited by all the other conversion obsessed wingnuts too?

Anyone else out there (in Ireland) noticed an upsurge in these weekend visits lately? Any idea why now?

UK Soldier Chooses Suicide Over Iraq Tour Of Duty

IT’S A PRETTY GRIM HEADLINE, but one worth covering in my opinion as this story indicates the true depth of despair some soldiers are feeling about serving in Iraq. In this case, a young UK soldier choose to commit suicide rather than go to Iraq because he feared having to shoot child suicide bombers. He was 19 years old.

It’s reported that Jason Chelsea told his parents, after an overdose, that as part of training for Iraq he had been warned he might have to shoot children. This proved too much for him and instead he took an overdose and died in hospital four days later. He was buried today in Greater Manchester.

Another young life extinguished; and for what exactly?

Earlier this month the UK Ministery of Defence released figures showing 1,541 soldiers who served in Iraq are suffering from psychiatric illness. Last year, 727 cases were recorded, amounting to nearly 10% of the British deployment. It is unclear of Jason Chelsea was suffering from such issues at this point.

There are no appropriate words; there is only tragedy and loss, on both sides of this terrible equation which seems to have no end, no conclusion.