Could it be true?

So I was browsing the internet and stumbled upon this flash video...(could take a while to load depending on your connection) I cant vouch for its accuracy but it does get you thinking about the things that you take for granted just becasue you hear it on the news.

On the hunt for cheap petrol?

If you are on the look out for pretty cheap petrol in your area then try out this site I got sent called PetrolPrices. It basically notes the cost of fuel at stations in your area and registration is free only for the UK tho. It run by the same team of Our Property fame which has a the largest (according to them) house price database in the UK.

Rising hope? Where?

Whatever stance you took or still take on the Iraq war, its needless to argue that Iraq is not in pretty bad shape today. Whereas the death rate for the coalition has reduced, that of the Iraqis has spiked such that not a day goes by when there is no death toll. Some are already declaring civil war. Elections did take place in December but we are still waiting for a government to be formed as rival factions argue who is going to be the PM.
So it a great surprise that the US manage to declare a rising success in the midst of this chaos. Oh a success with their reconstruction projects I think to myself...schools? Hospitals? university? water treatment plant? electricity generation plant? No my dear friends a great, big 104 acre US embassy complex in Iraq is on schedule and to budget. Built within the fortified green zone at a cost of $592 million with no Iraqis as part of the project or workers the new embassy is totally self sufficient. It will include two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.
The average Baghdad home has electricity only four hours a day. What about the other 8,000 reconstruction projects specifically for the Iraqis? Have they started? What the status? Is anyone bothered?
Talk about a slap in the face for the Iraqis.

24 / 7 / 365 Society

Last Thursday a colleague and I were discussing plans for the weekend and I said I needed to pick up some bits and pieces for the garden. He then asked whether stores were open on good Friday and that got me thinking. As a society where are we heading when even our bank holidays that are meant as a days off were becoming normal working days. On Friday most stores were open as usual till 5:30pm. What about the people that work in those stores? Don't they deserve a day off? Not only is the traditional 9-5 working day long dead, we demand our banks and insurance companies to have someone at the end of a telephone line 24 hours a day and now even our holidays are now turning into working days.
As religion plays less and less of a role in society we see the erosion of religious etiquette 'keeping the Sabbath holy' etc which some believe as detrimental to society. They express that the lack of religious guidance has led to our present society of 'loose morals' and 'workaholics'. On the other hand others claim this is erosion has been good for society. We now have a society that is accepting (to a certain extent) of all faiths and doesn't force morals on others. This they claim means we can also learn about other faiths bettering ourselves.
Whatever you believe, it is worth taking a moment pondering about our actions and demands and how these affect other people. Is it right to demand that someone works nights so we can check our bank balance over the phone at 2am in the morning? Is it right to demand that people work on days that their faith deems as a day off? Is it right to demand that society runs 24/7/365?

News Bites

Sudoku Championships
The independent Newspaper launches its second Sudoku championships in Great Britain. The article claims that the Sudoku craze that swept the nation in 2005 is still going strong and shows no signs of flagging. Channel 4 notes that Sudoku is the "seventh most popular" search term on the internet. The ever popular rubiks cube has had a Sudoku make over and the M4 motorway has been graced with its own statue of the worlds largest Sudoku grid 275ft by 275ft. My question though is who is helping to sustain this popularity? For the past n number of years there have been reports about the decline of mathematics in schools and Universities. Some have claimed "We are less and less numerate as a nation, just at the time we need mathematical skills to stay competitive in the global market." whereas other have professed that "In fact, mathematics in Britain could become extinct over the next few decades because fewer people are studying mathematics as each year passes, which means there will be fewer people who can teach it, so even fewer will be able to study it and eventually the tradition of Brits doing clever things with numbers will disappear forever". So I have to really ask myself who are these 'Sudokuist' that are driving the craze? Is Britain really brainier than it thinks? Or is it that maths as a subject bores us but as an art form it excites us? PS Im into Kakuro. More info on maths decline here or here or here.

Easter Egg scam

So you pop over to the local grocery store/supermarket to grab the Sunday paper when you notice that Easter eggs are on a promotion. Oh you say to yourself, my little cousins would love these. So you pick up three boxes and head for the tills. You pay for the eggs and the paper and the store clerk packs then into a bag for you. "Oh" she says the eggs are bigger this year so we can only get two boxes in a carrier bag. "Score" you think to yourself. Not that you bought Easter eggs last year or you remember how much it cost last year, the main fact was that it is bigger than last year's and it is on promotion. So you get home put two aside for your cousins and leave the third in the living room. After dinner you are feeling a peckish and your eye darts over to the Easter egg. Well you could have half now and half next Sunday you tell yourself as you tear open the box. You open the box only to find out that the box maybe bigger but the actual egg has reduced in size. Yeah you have been had in the great Easter egg scam.

£85 Sandwich
Now I have had some expensive sandwiches but £85 for a sandwich? Apparently the sandwich is made of Wagyu beef that demands it its hefty price tag. Full story here. Photo from Yahoo.

Men think about sex whilst women think about?

Their bodies. Yep their size and shape. Researchers at Grazia magazine claim that the average woman thinks about her body more often than a man thinks about sex. According to the article in the Metro the least popular parts of a woman's body was her thighs and 7 out of 10 women think their lives would improve if they had better bodies. While men were suppose to think of sex every 20 minutes, women worried about their shape every 15 minutes. Interestingly Nike just put out an advert about thighs as shown in the photo. Click photo to zoom

Music Snapshot: Dancehall and Hip hop

So I dropped over to check out the dancehall charts this week and guess who was still number one? Yeah Ding Dong. I wrote earlier in the post "Catch phrases to songs"(march 20) about this song and its lack of lyrical ability but yet still it has resisted the pressure and held on to that number one spot. So I decided to listen to it again just to see what the thing was about this song and found myself slowly being attracted to it. The more I seemed to listen to it the more I could feel my head bopping to the riddim. There is just something about it, if you know what it is then send me a comment?

The riddim of the moment is Tony matterhorn's dutty wine. Just the opening line of his track get you hooked. It goes " Me step inna di club, a dance rub a dub, An di gyal a come wine up on me, Mi stan so tall back against the wall, And now she start climb up pon me". There are loads of other artists spitting some good lyrics on this riddim including Busy signal's lu lu lu but Tony's track is just on another league. Cant wait till this drops on riddim driven or the video comes out. Check out your tube for submitted videos of people doing the 'dutty wine' dance or Ragga Ragga Ragga 2006 for Tony's single. Other riddims worth mentions are nookie , wipe out and sweat riddims.

On the Hip hop front one album is worth it wait in time and that is Rhymefest's Blue collar. Scheduled to drop on 18th of April it features production from kanye West , No ID and Mark Ronson to name a few and features Kanye, Common, Mario, Carl Thomas and ODB. The single Brand new is off the hook and other tracks like All girls cheat, Devil's pie, These days and fever are a close second. Rhymefest's lyrics have been described as " being simultaneously witty and gritty" and taking "best of old school humor from the Biz Markie school, militancy from a Public Enemy class and creates his own unique vocal persona". More on Rhymefest

CCTV everywhere but are we really safer?

I recently came across an article professing that we have been winning the war against crime with CCTV. The article like the majority of articles in the media on CCTV miss a very important point. And that is the fact that a CCTV system is first and foremost a deterrent and secondly a surveillance system through which evidence can be collected. This distinction is important because it means that as a deterrent it must be used in conjunction with other methods to ensure personal safety. The article suggested that the mere installation of CCTV cameras in the DLR trains automatically means that the DLR trains are safe. This is not true and misleading. Almost all CCTV systems never record normally in real time in the interest of saving space in the recording medium. Real time recording is defined as recording at 25 frames per second. This simply means that as with a camcorder or a DVD when you playback the tape/DVD etc you will see 25 separate frames each second. Anything higher than 25 frames per second makes no difference to our (human) eyes however anything lower will cause the pictures to flicker and appear jerky. Most CCTV systems in normal mode record at around 4 frames per second or less depending on the CCTV set up and how many cameras are in the system. When an alarm is triggered the cameras then switch to recording in real time. As we know, incidents on the trains such as pick pockets and robberies are so quick that no alarm is raised or by the time it is then the incident is over. Thus the footage that will be retrieved will be at 4 frames per second thus vital pieces of information such as a flash of the face is lost within the missing 21 frames. As such the robbery will enter the police's files of crimes that never will be solved. In the mean time the victims are left disappointed as the CCTV images are deemed useless. Even if the camera recorded the incident in real time there are other hurdles to consider. Is the lighting enough to identify the suspect? Is the angle of the camera wide enough to capture the incident? And most importantly does the CCTV system meet the correct standards BS 7958:2005 (UK standards not sure about the rest of the world) that dictate standards for collection, storing reviewing and analysing CCTV? If the CCTV system doesn't follow these standards then evidence is rendered useless as the CCTV system may not be operating within the law. Thus making a mockery of the CCTV system. Finally the handling of CCTV images is to be considered. Do the people that download evidence from CCTV system understand the process of 'chain of evidence'? I don't claim to be an expert in CCTV law but to me it seems media is giving the public a false sense of security. Shows like big brother and other reality shows only feed the frenzy in creating this 'real time' recording myth.

I don't deny the fact that CCTV can help in the fight against crime (even though it can be argued that as a deterrent it simply pushes the crime to another area) by providing a vital role (evidence) however I believe the message should be that personal protection through prevention should come first even if you are on the DLR train equipped with CCTV.
Saying this though the recent developments in IP technology, Digital Video recorders and compression techniques means that these problems are being addressed and we are progressing towards real time recording. So if you are reading this thinking your face is going to be in those missing 21 frames you'd better think again.

Monday Morning Blues

So you rollover and switch off the alarm. It 6.40 which means you have pressed snooze twice already. You convince yourself its not Sunday morning and head for the shower. You know you are late so you rush around to make up time. You wish you had a three day weekend. As you are late you walk briskly to the bus stop. And 50 meters away you see the bus approaching. You start running praying that someone at the bus stop flags down the bus. The bus stops and you just about make it. You seat down and start sweating but you are not too bothered. You get off at the trains station and hear your train rolling in. You start running again. There is an unusual number of people standing outside the station but you pay no attention and touch your oyster card through. You quickly pick up the metro and head for the nearest carriage. The information display says listen for announcements so you are not sure whether this is your train.There are no announcements. The doors start closing so you jump in. It must be my train because its on time. You take a seat and start reading the paper. You'll tell whether you are on the right train at the next station. The next station is your regular stop so you lean back and start digesting today's news through the metro. You get to the 2nd station. Its also your regular station so you continue reading. Then there is the annoucement by the driver. "This is the train to Cannon street calling at all stations. You rest easy you've made it. You got the right train. At the fourth station you hear the annoucement "This is the train to Cannon street calling at all stations via Blackheath and Lewisham". Your train doesn't go to Blackheath or Lewisham. It goes to Greenwich where you change to the DLR. You slowly start panicking. Should you get off at the next station or this one? Should you stay on? You need the DLR so Lewisham would do. You stay on. Suddenly the internal display in the train starts working. Apparently you are on the 77 to Cannon Street. But you know you needed the 81 to Cannon street. However you also know the 77 doesn't go via Plumstead so what train are you on? You cant be bothered to think. Lewisham station looms in sight. You get off and take the DLR. You are now heading the direction you just came. Your Mp3 player beeps. Low battery. You finally get to the office and get your papers ready for the 9 o'clock meeting. You realise you've left the papers you spent all weekend doing at home. You've got the monday morning blues