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Showing posts from February 8, 2009

Treating the symptoms instead of the cause.

So the Nanny State (England in case you were wondering) is now claiming that airbag jackets should be mandatory for motorcycle riders, because whilst riders account for only 1% of road users, they account for 20% of fatalities. You know what, they're right. But rather than force everyone to wear a ridiculously cumbersome jacket that hinders your movement and would cause more accidents through loss of control, might it not be better to treat the cause of the problem : car drivers? TRL323 (a report commissioned by the UK government themselves) indicates that 90% of motorcycle accidents are caused by cars driving into them. In other words, 18% of all road fatalities are caused by car drivers hitting motorcyclists. Here's an idea - ban cellphones and enforce the ban. Remove air bags, traction control and all the other so-called "safety" devices that are put into cars to eliminate responsibility from the driver. Until motorists realise that they are accountable, and there

Amazon is broken. 2009 edition.

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The latest in a long ongoing saga of Amazon having the odd issue with their 'recommended' function. This time, a Vinyl thong back strap teddy with o-rings. I'm not sure what's worse - that this was recommended because I purchased Wall-E on BluRay, or that there are used ones available....

England is broken - the ongoing saga.

Kudos to the British government for spending the £4.7 billion (yes, with a 'B') on their new biometric National Identity Card program without budgeting a single penny for card readers. They are going to roll out these cards to government officials and then on to private citizens as a way for the authorities to to "protect" identities and safeguard borders. Problem is that not a single police station, border entry point, or job centre has a reader capable of extracting information from the card's biometric chip. Truly, they operate like a finely-tuned machine. Why they couldn't just add the extra info to driving licenses - something most people have - is beyond me. UK ID cards have no readers

Getting the killer deal

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for some good room rates at the Red Rock in Vegas. The usual stuff was cropping up - $220 a night and so on. So I went back to the main page on the site and clicked on 'hotel packages'. There was the usual collection of golf packages, spa packages and such, and at the bottom of the list was an internet-only offer - 50% off room rates. Not "up to" but just plain old 50%. I clicked through and it took me to the booking page again. Popped the dates and room selection in and whaddya know - two nights at the Red Rock for $198 instead of $438. The lesson here: persevere when you're looking for a deal. They're normally there, but awkward to find. In this case you have to start a booking, then when it gets to the room choice, look at the bottom of the screen for the "packages" icon. Click on that, scroll down to the bottom of that list, and voila - 50% off. Not available on the front page or through any other part of the