I’ve reached the conclusion that in order to own any Apple device you have to be an annoying and pretentious bastard at the genetic level. I just saw this latest advert for the iPad Air (click the Esa-Pekka link) and it is already driving me mad. It also seems to help if you’re immature and enjoy making a noise just for the sake of it – as the recent iPhone advert shows.
In my experience, the vast majority of iPhone owners have scratched or cracked screens, and the early stages of carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of such erudite exchanges as:
I knw u wld rather spk 2 evr1 lk thiz n stead of rglr tlk cuz it mch ezr 2 type it all up
dnt b lk tht m8. :l
roflmao 😉
I’d say that about 99.998% of all Apple users aren’t composers or musicians (if you exclude rap and hip-hop from the term “music”, which you would if you had any sense). Clearly, 99.998% are as thick as two short planks!
Darren William Jackson, 21, raced through a red traffic light and smashed into a metal railing. The car was effectively written off. Jackson apparently did something else, and a witness reported it to police, who found him sitting in the car. He drove off but was traced a short time later. He failed a roadside breath test, but refused to give further breath specimens when at the station.
He only held a provisional licence and was therefore uninsured.
In court, his vehicle was confiscated and he was jailed for six months. He was further banned for two years, and ordered to take an extended test after that.
Mind you, it appears that pleas in mitigation are as lame in Scotland as they are anywhere else.
Solicitor Anika Jethwa admitted that Jackson had a record of previous offences for road traffic matters, although none for drink-driving or driving dangerously.
She said: “His last road traffic offence was in 2010. He bought the car and was taking driving lessons twice a week. He wanted to pass his test to try to find employment.”
His solicitor asked for a “community based” sentence on the strength of this:
…Ms Jethwa said Jackson has two children and appears to offend mainly when he has been consuming alcohol.
“He had stopped drinking but on that day he had been at his friend’s father’s funeral and alcohol was taken,” she said.
I like it. He’s “stopped drinking”, but was pissed and could have killed someone. Like I say, Scottish justice is much better than ours.
Don’t worry – it’s not in the UK. The Bangkok Post reports that the new multiple choice test introduced a few days ago is showing a greater than 90% failure rate in the first set of results from Chiang Mai.
It seems that the new multiple choice test introduced last Sunday – which requires 45 correct answers out of 50 – is similar to the one we use in the UK. The recent change has increased the number of questions from 30, and set the pass rate at the higher level of 90%.
The department has enforced tougher measures to obtain driving licences after it found that many road accidents were caused by a lack of drivers’ ability.
I wonder if Thailand’s driving instructors are blaming the authorities yet? After all, that’s what many of them do over here when one of their little darlings fails the UK theory test.
Thailand is also piloting a system it calls “E-driving”.
Instead of having an examiner sitting in the car with them, test cars will be equipped with computers and cameras to monitor drivers.
“The E-driving system provides accurate and precise results and will do away with problems in the old system, which relies on a committee to assess results,” says Department chief Asdsathai Rattanadilok Na Phuket.
I’m not 100% sure what this chap is saying – is it the old method which requires a committee decision, or the E-driving one? Who will decide now? Just one person? But he adds:
It will also bring a drop in the number of applicants passing the test, from 70% to only 30%.
Once upon a time, you could watch a BBC science documentary in the comfortable knowledge that it was written by scientists, and checked by scientists. The dialogue may have been presented by a famous suit, but the words would be kosher and relevant to the subject in question. All the visual stuff would also be relevant – no pointless fillers.
Now let’s skip forward a few decades to this article I saw on the BBC website today. And this is the World Service we’re talking about – another thing which was once considered an Oracle throughout the World. The title itself is bad enough:
Nitrogen: The bringer of life and death
This is misleading. Nitrogen itself is not poisonous, although that title would obviously imply that it is to any of the target audience. Humans need oxygen to survive, and it they don’t get it – in other words, breathe ANY pure inert gas that doesn’t have oxygen mixed in with it – they will suffocate and die. Even breathing pure oxygen for long periods is dangerous to most animals on earth.
Then there is the graphic, shown above. The introductory paragraph trumpets:
And yet this colourless, odourless gas, making up 78% of the atmosphere, has a highly explosive nature.
Nitrogen is not explosive – another conclusion the average reader will draw from this nonsense. It is relatively unreactive, though not actually inert, and it is its compounds which are explosive – and even then, only some of them (and not just because of nitrogen, either). The article mentions nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluene (TNT). The molecules of these two look like this:
Years ago, this is what they would have shown you on any TV – or online, had it been available – show. But not any more. Nowadays, it’s puerile and inaccurate analogies that are used instead.
It’s worth pointing out that both od these molecules also contain carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. In fact, nitrogen only accounts for about 19% of both in terms of their respective molar masses. Oxygen accounts for much more in nitroglycerin, and both oxygen and carbon account for more in TNT.
It is the extreme stability of nitrogen in its molecular state (N2) which partly accounts for the explosive nature of some of those compounds. In the case of TNT, other by-products include CO and CO2 and both of these are also stable. In the case of nitroglycerin, the -NO2 groups act as powerful oxidisers and by-products of combustion are N2, CO2, CO, H2, and O2 – the stability of all of these contributes to the explosive nature of the material. Going even further, the explosion of nitroglycerin is represented by this equation:
There’s a lot more CO2 and H2 produced than there is N2. The article also refers to both TNT and nitroglycerin as “solids” when nitroglycerin is actually an oily liquid. Furthermore, compounds with nitro (-NO2) groups are rare in nature, but they do exist – and they’re not explosive.
The whole article leaps from one thing to another without properly explaining any of them. It talks as if nitrogen is the limiting element in plant growth, when in fact this role could equally be (and usually is) assigned to phosphorus. It just seems that the whole story begins with a premise and merely sets out to confirm that premise at all costs.
…more than a quarter of holidaymakers are afraid to drive abroad.
Unless their entire client base consists of authentic Chelsea tractor drivers, I’ll give it 6 months before it goes under (although it is a free course which is being funded from somewhere, so it might survive just a little longer). The article also identifies the “Top 5 Fears When Driving Abroad”:
Not recognising road signs
Getting lost
Going around roundabouts
Trying to navigate
Driving on the other side of road
Errm, well actually, with the possible exception of #5 (and not even then in some cases), that’s exactly the same list most would give if asked about driving on British roads. So it’s hardly the basis for a business plan. If people are too stupid to look up the necessary details about road signs and procedures for the country they intend to visit before they go, it’s going to take a little more than a free course to sort them out.
Of course, it helps if you realise that the company behind it – SkyScanner – describes itself as follows in its “About us” section:
…a leading global travel search site, providing instant online comparisons for millions of flights, as well as car hire and hotels.
It’s not quite as altruistic as it first appears, is it? It’s not even a “school” – it’s a course (with an unspecified number of classes), which is apparently being delivered by driving instructors who have “teamed up with” (i.e. they must be getting paid) SkyScanner to deliver the “free” course. That’s a convoluted way of saying that it is a novel advertising exercise. I mean, there’s no problem with it, but you shouldn’t turn it into something it isn’t.
I can’t imagine there’d be much opportunity for practical sessions, either.
Someone has asked via the Contact Form if they would be able to hire a car in order to travel to Heathrow, having only passed their driving test during the last 3 months.
There is no way to be certain, but there is a good chance you would not be able to hire a car. Here are a few examples from various national and semi-national rental companies.
Enterprise – in the UK, all drivers must be 25 or older. They do appear to have a “youthful driver” option for 18-24 year olds, but when I tried it it simply warned me that many branches have age restrictions and to call the branch in question. They do not appear to have a minimum period for having held the licence, though.
Thrifty – drivers must be 21 or older, and have held a licence for at least 12 months. Those under 30 are restricted to basic models. They also have conditions associated with points on the licence and previous convictions for drink driving, etc.
Avis – you can rent a car from age 17 (they say) but a surcharge applies if you’re under 25 and you are restricted on the models you can choose from. You need to have held your licence for 36 months, though, which means in reality that you must be at least 20.
Hertz – I’ve used these before, but their website is useless and I cannot find their terms anywhere. I’m pretty sure you have to have held your licence for at least 12 months, though.
This is just a sample, but it is clear that their are restrictions on new drivers renting cars from the major companies – a combination of age and length of having held the licence, plus a surcharge even if they offer the service.
My advice would be to either go through the booking procedure online for the respective company, or to phone them up and ask.
Well done to Fabienne, who passed today – at long last – with just 3 driver faults. She’s one of my (now ex-) serial failers, and this was her ninth test, albeit only her fourth with me.
She’s actually a very good driver, but on each previous test she did something different wrong and got a serious fault for it. Her nerves were terrible, and this had a lot to do with her record – on her last test, for example, she made the typical mistake of not maintaining lane discipline on a roundabout, and then not checking her mirror as she exited. And yet this never happened on lessons, before or after. She couldn’t even remember doing it.
Anyway, this was one of the satisfying ones because she was so happy. It meant so much too her, particularly as she is starting a new job and being able to drive will make a huge difference.
One of the leading driving schools in the country has embarked on an expansion plan which will see it cover all the parts of the United Kingdom.
This “leading driving school” is called County Learners Driving School, of whom I had never heard. I had never seen an advert for them, and a Google search only threw up three recent press releases with the exact same text. Their own website – if such existed – didn’t come up at all. Odd for a “leading” company, don’t you think?
If you use the domain name part of the contact email address given at the end of the press release you find what is obviously an unfinished website. Actually, that’s an overstatement – what you find is a barely started website. I has literally no content and no functionality whatsoever. It has what appears to be some sort of countdown timer, which reads:
Anticipate NaN DaysNaN HoursNaN MinutesNaN Seconds
There is no text to indicate who the website refers to.
So you have to wonder how they can call themselves a “leading driving school”. On that basis, I could call my own school “worldwide” or “international” just because I like the words. I think they mean they’re a “new” driving school, and I wonder if the ASA is aware of this misleading hype.
This story came through on the news feeds today. Apparently, the NSA is harvesting photos of people in order to build up its database to be used for face recognition. They are harvesting millions of photos every day according to the latest Edward Snowden leaks.
Coincidentally, I got some new Dilbert books over the weekend, and this strip really made me laugh.
Apparently, the NSA would need to get court approval to get pictures of Americans – unless they email a photo outside the US.
I think what they mean is that the NSA would need court approval if it was going to admit to anything. Previous Snowden leaks suggest that they don’t concern themselves overmuch with petty things like that.
Read some of the inane comments (written in crayon before being transposed by the BBC, I’d imagine) at the bottom of that story and you can see that not everyone is happy.
When Arsene goes, we’ll be in the same kind of trouble Manchester Utd were after Ferguson left. These idiots can’t see this.
Well done to Fabienne, who passed today – at long last – with just 3 driver faults. She’s one of my (now ex-) serial failers, and this was her ninth test, albeit only her fourth with me.
