Happy Christmas From Howl @ The Moon!

SatNav Stupidity

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS… my telephone line is back in action, which means I’m also back on the air from an Internet perspective. Now the bad news… to celebrate my online-ness I started browsing some possible Satnav (Satellite Nagivation) possibilities out of curiosity (someone in work had been talking about systems finally being 100% mapped for Ireland) and I came across an amazing story concerning what I can only call SatNav stupidity.

Some European motorists seem to have a difficulty discerning between reality and the sultry voice of the SatNav lady. To be more specific, here are some cases of pure stupidity due to SatNav fixation:-

In October this year a 53-year-old German, obeying his satnav’s command “Turn right now!” jerked the wheel over and crashed into a roadside toilet hut 30 metres (yards) before the crossing he was meant to take, causing 2,000 euros ($2,600) damage.

Earlier in November another German motorist ignored the ‘road closed for construction’ signs and instead obeyed the instructions of his SatNav, resulting in his car buried in a large pile of sand on a construction site.

It’s not just the Germans either - In England a woman was caught driving at 120Kph on the wrong side of a motorway outside Portsmith. She claimed she was only following the SatNav instructions!

Just how dumb do you have to be to take the SatNav instructions over your own common-sense judgement?

Gremlins Ate My Telephone Line!

I’VE BEEN out of action (at home) for the last two days because my phone line seems to have vanished completely. No dial tone, no services, no internet… basically it’s kaput. Personally I blame the telephone gremlins… you know those little bastards you can hear scratching about in the background while you are trying to have a proper conversation with someone.

Anyhoo - bottom line is that updates here will be low and slow until I get this issue fixed because I’ve no access from home and precious little time in work to be doing site-related things. So let’s hope the issue gets corrected soon before I have to revert to single player games again.

Right so - off to hunt those little shaggers and see what they’ve done with the sodding connection.

Fog Stops Country

HARD TO BELIEVE this, but in 21st Century Ireland a “bit of a fog” can stop the whole country. Here we are decades later, having invested billions into public infrastructure and services (still not enough of course, and most of those projects ran over budget and time!) and given birth to the so-called “Celtic Tiger” economy, and we still can’t get over a bloody bit of fog. this, but in 21st Century Ireland a ” can stop the whole country.

Here we are decades later, having invested billions into public infrastructure and services (still not enough of course, and most of those projects ran over budget and time!) and given birth to the so-called “Celtic Tiger” economy, and we still can’t get over a bloody bit of fog. It looks like we’re heading for a record year in road deaths this year anyway, but in the run up to Christmas it was reported in recent days that there is an average of one drink-driving offence/arrest every 30 minutes. Just think about that for a while. Every 30 minutes someone is caught driving on the roads, over the legal limit. Just how stupid are we for fucks sake?

Add to that the fact that the country came to a standstill yesterday (and to some extent this morning) because of fog and you begin to get a clear picture. Last night the radiios were full of advice to drivers about the use of their fog lights - as if it were some alien device attached to cars which needed explaination. Even the airports killed off a bunch of flights because of this strange alien occurance known as “the fog”. This morning the fatherly advice continues because the fog had the audacity to hang around for a bit.

It’s as if no one has ever encountered it before now; like the typical Irish winter (cold, damp, foggy) never occurred until last night, for the first time, ever.

And the reaction will be the same next year when it happens; just like when it rains, or snows in this country. Roads will jam up. Services will close down. Flights will be cancelled…. and the whole country just stops for some reason.

Bring on the 22nd century - maybe someone will have figured out a radical approach to dealing with fog by then

Smile For Shanghai!

AS WEIRD AS this is going to sound, I can believe every word of it, having spent a month or so wandering around China a few years ago. In advance of the 2010 World Expo Shanghai is sending teams of “smiling volunteers” onto the streets to teach stony-faced citizens to beam at strangers. Recent studies into the area have shown that only 2% of locals actually smile at foreigners, so fourty students have signed up for an experimental programme to go into the streets of Shanghai and try to promote the smilining philosophy, and more are planned in the future.

This of course could (and probably will) have some weird and wonderful side effects, but it’s just the sort of advanced planning and detailed logic that the Chinese use for such occasions. While I was there I heard a story about another city which wanted to ween it’s citizens off their bicycles and in to cars, but they elected to test out motorbikes first to see how people would get on. 300 motorcycles were purchased and distributed freely to a selected bunch of locals in a sleepy city which thus far had depended on normal push bikes for their transport. The result was inevitable… 299 deaths and one survivor within the first month of the programme. They stuck to push bikes after that

As for Shanghai’s attempt to warm up its locals to foreigners… well lets just say I’m not holding my breath. Previous attempts at such extrovert tactics have not always yielded the intended outcomes. In October, volunteers offering “free hugs” to people in a busy shopping street in Beijing were detained by police for questioning!

Still, as weird as China is… it’s still one of my favourite places on this planet. Good luck to ‘em.

The Night Before Christmas

Weekly Featured Site: Jewish

THIS WEEKS featured site is a bit of an eclectic mix from what I can see. A quick browse of the types of postings at the site range from song lyrics to gift selections to observational humour and beyond. The site is called Jewish and is run by a lady called Tisha from Brussels, Belgium. I think I can honestly say that I’ve never encountered anyone who describes themselves as a “Puerto Rican African Indian American Princess“ before.

Anyhoo Tisha has rented a slot here at Howl @ The Moon! for a week so if you’re up to it, why not stop by her site and check it out. You never know what you might find there.