The Saturday Strangeness

24. Haunted Roads For Halloween!

Despite London’s congested roads and the daily chorus of thousands of beeping horns, ghosts of the cities roads are in fact sporadic. Look through any catalogue of phantom hitchhikers or ghostly vehicles (for example http://www.roadghosts.com/) and you’ll notice a distinct lack of activity within the capital pertaining to tarmac terrors. Why this is we’ll never know – maybe it’s simply down to the fact that elsewhere in the country, where such spooks are in abundance, there is always the quiet dark lane, the wood enshrouded B-road and other perfect settings for such hauntings.

On Gloucester Drive in Finsbury Park, ghostly children have often been heard running up and down the street. Highgate’s very own ‘vampire’ has company, as in the village there have also been reports of a phantom cyclist. Meanwhile at East Heath Road, in northwest London, a grinning old gent has been seen.

However, the eeriest of London’s road-associated ghosts haunt Enfield, Stanmore and the Blackwall Tunnel.

At Enfield, a witch, rumoured to have been executed in 1622, is said to prowl Hadley Road on misty nights. Also as sinister is the Bell Lane black coach, last seen in November 1961 as it drifted off the ground!

In Stanmore, a ghostly wind is said to swirl along Honeypot Lane, whilst on the A41 during October 1985, a motorist claimed to have hit a man walking his dog. Both bodies hit the bonnet but were nowhere to be seen upon investigation.

The Blackwall Tunnel is haunted by a phantom accident as well as a hitchhiker who may well have been a motorcylist who died during an accident in the ‘70s.

US Navy covering up swastika barracks

Seen here is a Google Earth image of US Navy barracks in Coronado, California. The US Navy has now budgeted $600,000 to cover up the swastika shape through the installation of solar panels and various landscape modifications. They were encouraged to do the modifications by several parties, including US Rep Susan Davis, Anti-Defamation League regional director Morris Casuto, and radio talk show host Dave vonKleist.

Navy officials say the shape of the buildings, designed by local architect John Mock, was not noted until after the groundbreaking in 1967 -- and since it was not visible from the ground, a decision was made not to make any changes...

"I don't ascribe any intentionally evil motives to this," Casuto said, referring to the design. "It just happened. The Navy has been very good about recognizing the problem. The issue is over."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

UK police using hovering camera for surveillance

Police in Britain are conducting trials on a small battery-powered, radio-controlled helicopter called the Microdrone that comes with a camera and a loudspeaker. The manufacturer's demonstration video points out that the copter works as a peeping tom device. (Not that the police would ever misuse it.)

It's battery powered, so it's quieter -- apparently at 350 feet it is rarely noticed from the ground -- but more limited in terms of performance. Although it might seem flimsy, the video shows how stable it is in flight. It is said to be quite rugged and can return to base even if it loses two of its four rotor blades. One unusual feature is a speaker so that police can give instructions to those on the ground.

The video ... contains some footage shot from a Microdrone, which gives an impressive display of its powers. Zooming in on a sunbather in a bikini as a demonstration is not likely to allay fears about how intrusive this technology might be. And the ability to hover outside a window and peer in is one which is equally open to use and abuse.

Link

As the roads should be...

I can only dream

Sacha Baron Cohen moments on MTV awards

5:41 - Sacha Baron Cohen (looking handsome as ever) berates Will Ferrelll for not calling him after their tender on-set moment in Talladega Nights. He pulls Will Ferrell in for a long, shameless lip-lock that leaves them both rolling on the floor like fictional teenagers in a fictional meadow.

6:07 - Sacha Baron Cohen announces that unfortunately Borat couldn't be here because the pressures of being a celebrity have taken a toll on him and he's entered rehab. "He crashed his car into Jewtown," SBC explains. "He was caught driving drunk on fermented horse urine. Also, he had more than the legal limit of roofies in his car. And he actually went on a chat show and made pro-Jewish remarks." SBC thanks the crowd and finishes his speech with, "I can still taste Will on my lips!"

Satan Starbucks

I know I shouldn't laugh, but Charles Clover's piece in today's paper regarding the evil Starbucks put a smile on my face.

Too much guilt: are we really what we buy?

Not that I don't agree with him, but it put me in mind of another more notorious critic of the coffee chain: the Reverend Billy, pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, pictured here being arrested earlier in the year at a Starbucks by the New York Police Department.

The Rev. Billy believes Starbucks to be so evil, he regularly goes about performing 'exorcisms' in them, trying to cleanse those who run and frequent them (well, he is as much performance artist as activist).

A friend of a friend who experienced one such exorcism at a south London Starbucks - complete with a rip-roaring performance by the holy-roller 'Stop Shopping Choir', said it was one of the most extraordinary and wonderful things she had ever seen.

(By the way the Rev Billy will also perform the same service for you on your credit card if you desire).

Anything that makes you laugh and think at the same time can't be bad, but joking apart I wonder whether having to worry about everything from where your morning coffee comes from to the diamond in your engagement ring isn't going to backfire at some point.

How much guilt can one person experience before they tie themselves in knots and give up?

It all used to be so straightforward in my youth: no products from South Africa or Chile and no student at university ever joined Barclay's Bank. Now there are so many things to potentially feel guilty over - the logical conclusion would seem to become a Jainist (the religious people you see in India walking with a cloth over their mouth, lest an insect should fly in and be inadvertently killed).

I am not one given to eco-guilt, but since looking into the details of coffee production, it is something that I think about every morning when I go for caffeine re-fueling after my morning bike ride at the local Starbucks.

Yes, it probably used to be the local baker's shop and is now a big chain, but this coffee shop has also become the hub of our area.

Teenagers can go and meet with friends there, hordes of mums who stay at home looking after their children go for a treat and a chat with mates, to set them up for a day of household duties. Local writers pitch up with lap-tops and at the weekends you'll see plenty of dads taking the kids out, giving mum a well-deserved lie-in.

This isn't to eulogise Starbucks, it's just to say that people are so bombarded with ethical questions these days that I wonder if it isn't all going to become a turn-off, or, whether big businesses will just pay lip service to the demands of consumers by putting labels and certifications on products that have not been thoroughly checked out by independent sources in order to keep people quiet.

I don't feel 'eco-guilt' because I try to do what I can and I also feel that a lot of policy change needs to come from government and big business (although that is not to say there isn't room for improvement by me).

But there is also the wider question of what it actually means to live an 'ethical life', which has nothing to do with responsible consumerism.

My parents passed on to me (and I try to instill the same in my own children) the philosophy of 'do no harm'.

You can try to do no harm to the environment but there is still the question that we are social beings: Are we good neighbours, do we offer to help older people around us? Do we help our family with good grace when they ask? Would our workmates say that we are a generous colleague or team player? Do we give back anything to the community we live in by finding time for even the smallest bit of 'one-off ' voluntary work?

Those are the wider ethical questions I occasionally ask of myself when I'm swigging my 'unethical' coffee.

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it...Oh, and dream a bit

This quote by Amy Webster could make you more paranoid about riding on the street: "The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked."

This quote by David Perry makes sense if you have ever had a car door open in front of you: "What do you call a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet? An organ donor."

As much as I love and promote biking (even in Los Angeles), there is nothing more stressful than riding a bike in the street with parked cars on one side and speeding by cars on the other. It's just not fun on some streets, even those with Class II Paths (bike lane on a street)

The shot above is a nice dream though...

Okay, so that picture is from a Kaiser Permanente commercial. And the title is a quote from Mark Twain in Taming the Bicycle

You, You, You -- you really are special

This is a very amusing article...and somewhat concerning..

Here is the opening text..written by

By Jeffrey Zaslow
From The Wall Street Journal Online

You, You, You -- you really are special, you are! You've got everything going for you. You're attractive, witty, brilliant. "Gifted" is the word that comes to mind.

Childhood in recent decades has been defined by such stroking -- by parents who see their job as building self-esteem, by soccer coaches who give every player a trophy, by schools that used to name one "student of the month" and these days name 40.

Now, as this greatest generation grows up, the culture of praise is reaching deeply into the adult world. Employers are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up.

Lost Delivers

How good was "Lost" last night? Damn!

Unlike many of its critics, I was/am happy with this crazy show meandering and wandering and dragging its feet. I don't need to know why The Others are obsessed with babies. I don't bother myself with details such as why the fat guy hasn't lost a pound on that island despite eating better (less greasy, no fast food) and moving around more. And I don't care that we haven't seen a polar bear in years.

I am very satisfied just seeing these interesting characters move around on the screen and weird shit befalls them. Hell, I even like all the new people they bring on board as if this whole thing is just a parade. Seriously, for a show about an island, the amount of people that have ended up with a credit on Lost has got to be nearing 1,000.

Which is why, I think, they need to kill so many people.

The only problem when you do that though is you don't get to answer any of the questions that those who want answers keep demanding.

Which is part of the beautiful mystery of the Lost "plot", and one of the reasons I like it so much. You seriously never know what is going to happen from one episode to the next.

And if you haven't yet seen last night's episode, go watch it on ABC.com because after the jump I'm going to get into some spoilers that will spoil part of the goodness that went down.

Everything was great last night.

We learned about creepy Ben and how he got on the island and what his parents were like and why everyone bows down to him.

We learned about how The Others began their rule on the island, and what happened to the Dharma Initiative peeps.

We learned about the dead guy with the beer cans in the back of the VW.

And we got to see Locke be the badass that we love. He beat the crap outta eye patch guy, he showed Ben up in front of The Others, and he marched right into the lair of one of the scariest semi-invisible creatures we've seen so far, Jacob.

And then we see him get shot!

But if he actually dies, how will we learn how it was that he was no longer paralyzed?

However, Ben alluded to the fact that Jacob still could "save" Locke, which I'm not so sure I want to see. Because if he is a god the way Ben is presenting him as being - a pissed off, bitter, lo-fi god, then why can't he stop the new moms from dying and why can't he cure Ben's spine?

Fie on you, Superheroes and your limitations!

Television Without Pity has an interesting take:

Turns out that Craphole Island really is the Land of Bad Dads. (Do I see a Disneyland ride in the future?) Ben's craptastic father was so awful that he turned Ben away from the peacenik lovey-dovey ways of the Dharma Initiative and towards the dark side of Otherdom. Ben's chosen path was chockfull of evil doings: he not only killed his Bad Dad (remember Roger? The dead guy with all the beer?), but was actively involved in the Purge of the Dharma Initiative off the Island. The nasty hostiles, lead by a hirsute Richard, gassed those hippies right good! To top off his campaign to be most evil shrimp ever, Ben admits that he lied about being born on the Island and then shoots Locke in the stomach leaving him to die in the mass grave where they left the woebegone Dharma Initiates. Did I mention that he had a Bad Dad who didn't love him enough?

I just want to see more from Ben's daughter now.

Because we haven't learned to love enough characters yet.

Photos via ABC.com

Yetti LA

The Yeti boots are rebelling against me. They have mutated, grown wheels, and are preparing to take over Los Angeles. Take cover people. This is your warning.

Microwave popcorn is the new asbestos

Diacetyl, the buttery-flavored chemical used in microwave popcorn, may be banned in California by 2010. The fumes from it cause terrible lung-disease in people who work around it.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D) has introduced a bill to ban diacetyl use by 2010. The chemical is an artificial butter flavoring most commonly used in microwave popcorn. Numerous study have found links between the chemical used by flavor workers and a rare disease called bronchiolitis obliterans. For those of you who aren’t 2000 yr old Romans, that means that the bronchioles and some of the smaller bronchi are obliterated by masses made up of fiberous tissue. It’s like sticking marbles into the networks of tubes in your lung that connect fresh air to the alveoli, the little sacs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged with the blood. As you Romans can imagine, that’s haud sanus. According to the WaPo, flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million due to health lawsuits. An excellent case study and background to this whole mess can be found at Defending Science.

Link

W.W.G.W.B.D.? flow chart

This chart nicely sums up the Bush presidency. Link (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

FBI and MPAA train Swedish copyright cops

The MPAA and the FBI have gone to Sweden to train six cops in the art of fighting copyright infringement. Sweden is home to the Bittorrent tracker PirateBay, and is the birthplace of the Pirate Party, an international political movement dedicated to destroying the entertainment industry. The Pirate Party arose in the wake of a raid on the PirateBay's ISP, instigated by a Member of Parliament. The MP acted illegally in ordering the raid, and he did so at the behest of the MPAA and the US State Department.

This US meddling in domestic affairs so outraged Swedes that they sided with the Pirate Party in great numbers, throwing their lot in with local rogues in favor of American bullies.

Apparently, the MPAA hasn't learned its lesson: when you intervene in local politics in Europe, locals see you as an evil representative of American hegemony. It's like they want the pirates to win!

In an effort to help stamp out pesky Swedish pirates, FBI agent Andrew Myers and the MPAA have given a group of six Swedish police officers extensive training on how to effectively combat piracy and catch people who engage in illegal downloading from the internet...

Together, Agent Myers and the MPAA's instruction to this new Swedish anti-piracy unit ranged from rules and regulations governing copyright enforcement and piracy, to examples of anti-piracy initiatives in other countries that have already proven effective. The most shocking revelation is a report of a lecture given by the MPAA in which officers were shown the ins and outs of movie camcording, or "CAM-ing."

When the police were asked about possible conflict of interest by having a private interest group such as the MPAA involved in the training of enforcement personnel, they apparently saw none.

credit Cory Doctorow

An American hero is dead

A great American passed away at the weekend. A man who shaped the way this nation conducts itself, symbolises what it stands for and provided an essential tool for living that, on average, each US household has four of.

Ah the remote control...where would we be without it?

Without him, Americans would be a few pounds lighter, some marriages might have lasted longer and those old coins stuck down the sofa would have remained undiscovered, along with dog hair and peanuts from Christmases long ago. I am talking, of course, of Robert Adler, inventor of the television remote control, who flipped channels for the last time in a nursing home in Boise, Idaho at the age of 93.

There is no truth in the rumour his remains were lost somewhere in the couch or that he was cremated and his ashes immediately misplaced. Millions of couch potatoes hit the mute button for a few moments of solemn remembrance. Books called "TV and the Remote Control: Grazing on a Vast Wasteland" and "Remote Control: A Sensible Approach to Kids, TV, and the New Electronic Media" had already examined his legacy.

But really, Bruce Springsteen's "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" () told us all we needed to know. Except that it's about 300 channels now, Bruce. Adler himself didn't fully enter into the spirit of the thing and continued to be an avid hiker and skier. "First and foremost, I hardly ever turn the TV on," he said in a 1996 interview. "And I certainly never channel surf." His wife said: "He was more of a reader."

On another occasion, he remarked: ""People ask me all the time -- 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

This seems to me to be the same kind of approach taken by Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of that other gadget that defined the 20th Century - the AK-47 - who shrugs when asked if he feels responsible for the war and death his weapon has been associated with.

Has a remote control ever killed anyone, I ask you say? I seem to remember a story about an obese woman who had to have a remote surgically removed from a fold in her stomach which had grown over it after it got stuck in there. Or perhaps this was an urban myth (aka urban legend).

I'd be surprised if there hadn't been a murder or two over custody of the remote. I know my wife has contemplated it at least a couple of times. But none of this takes away from Mr Adler's contribution to the American Dream - the God-given right to sit around doing sod all but watching crap television and getting fat.

Credit: Telegraph

Teacher faces jail time over "accidental porn" in classroom

The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom -- unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC -- may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help.

From the New York Times story excerpted below, it sure sounds like the school administrators bungled the hell out of this one, and are now scapegoating Julie Amero instead of fessing up to their own failure to protect children:

Ms. Amero’s husband, Wes Volle, was emphatic in saying she was clueless about computers and was in over her head once the pop-ups began. Mr. Volle, a graphics designer, accused the school system of sacrificing his wife to deflect attention from its own failure to install effective filters on its computers.

“The computer was infected long before Julie walked into that room,” he said. No other staff members in the southeastern Connecticut district have been charged or are expected to be charged.

During the trial, Robert Hartz, the information services manager for Norwich’s schools, said the computer’s filters that would have blocked such ads were not fully operational, since they had lacked the proper updated information for several weeks.

In an interview, Pam Aubin, superintendent of the Norwich schools, said that Mr. Hartz had ordered an upgrade, but that the supplier had sent it to the wrong e-mail address, using “B” for Bob rather than “R” for Robert in Mr. Hartz’s name.

reg-free NYT Link. Brian Krebs at the Washington Post interviewed Ms. Amero, and has a thorough, updated writeup on the case here: Link

Runaway!

This story from Middle East Online is worth a post simply to show the photograph of the British PM scurrying back onto BlairForceOne like he suddenly remembered he left the gas on.

Not only do observers believe the prime minister's stock is damaged at home due to the war in Iraq, they find the conflict and his close alignment with the United States have harmed his reputation in the Middle East. Add to that the lack of specific details about what was discussed to help improve the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the question could be -- and indeed at one point was -- asked: what was the point of the trip? Blair's office repeatedly stressed that the visit to Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories and the United Arab Emirates was for him to assess those countries' views on the Middle East situation.

Can someone buy the Blairs a telephone for Christmas please.

Tony: Hello, is that the Middle East?
Middle East: Yes, who's calling please.
Tony: Ha ha you're so funny. I was wondering how everything was.
Middle East: Well everything's pretty much the same. Fucked.

"Political sources in Jerusalem last night did not attribute any special significance to Blair's visit, and noted that the British leader travels abroad often because of domestic weakness,"

Now you mention it if you look at that photo closely he does seem to have a bit of weakness around the domestics. A telephone and a truss please Santa.

NYC is waiting...

Sinatra sang it best, New York New York so good they named it twice / New York New York buy your crap there half price.

In case you needed a reminder that the dollar is getting the living shit beat out of it by the mighty pound then just keep your eyes peeled on the tube:

NYC & Company, an official marketing body controlled by New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has taken out an aggressive advertising campaign in London pointing out that the British capital is one of the few cities in the world that makes the Big Apple look cheap... NYC & Co's head of tourism development, Fred Dixon, said: "Brits are probably the savviest travellers in the world - they're keenly aware of the value of their currency. They're very comfortable in New York - the language is the same, there are cultural ties and it's good value."

Now all the Brits need to do is get past the fog and terrorists and ignore that pesky rule about declaring any purchases whose value exceeds £145.

Bathamatics

Has the London bath become threatened by climate change? It would seem so:

Moves to tackle climate change may spell the end of the bath. A London council is set to introduce planning rules encouraging builders to provide only a shower.

I would have thought a much more fun campaign to preserve water would be to advise Londoners always to take someone into the bath with them.

Will Londoners take this lying down? If this becomes the norm they won't have a choice but to stand up and be loofered.

Estate agents will probably swing this to their advantage as the extra space freed up due to the lack of a bathtub would provide plenty of room for a good sized London bedroom. But more importantly how will this news effect people who blog about bathmats such as Salvadore over on Smaller Than Life?

Will more bathmats be released into the wild for him to document or should we hang on to them for after the bathtime prohibition kicks in? Having one folded over your arm could gain you entry to one of the bathe-easy bars that are sure to spring up across the capital.

Facts about Sleep

Since we all understand that sleep can basically make or break you, I've pulled a couple of facts from a study by the National Sleep Research Project:

• A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year


• REM sleep occurs in bursts totaling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep. Here is a wikipedia definiation of REM.


• Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.


• Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.


• The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.


• After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.


• Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.


• Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal


• Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

Winner of “not my job” award