My Motley Meanderings

I was in two minds as to whether to write about this story or not. Two Italian women decided to hitchhike to Israel making friends along the way and spreading an anti-war message. As performance artists they chose to do it wearing wedding dresses, calling the trip "Brides on Tour." The pair split up in Turkey, and one of them, Pippa Bacca, was raped and killed.

I can't express how saddened I am by this outcome. It's a dreadful shame and I feel for her friends and family. What really annoys me about this story though are the people commenting that she was naive, stupid, foolish, that she somehow 'had it coming' because she was hitching alone in conspicuous clothing, and that the outcome somehow proves that, a. people (and men in particular) are inherently evil, and b. hitchhiking is suicidally dangerous.

I've never hitchhiked. This has far more to do with a persistent worry that nobody would stop for me than that I might be picked up by a maniac. I have picked hitchers up several times and will happily do it again. I would do so more often if they weren't such a rare sight in this country, I suspect largely due to media sensationalism; the very rare incidents of violence against hitchers being far more newsworthy than stories of people successfully travelling the world, meeting new people and conserving resources. Obviously you need to exercise a bit of common sense before picking someone up or accepting a lift - take a look at the hitcher/driver, ask them where they are going, and say 'no' if something feels wrong. If you're sensible, I really don't think it's significantly more dangerous than other situations where you come into contact with strangers (eg. travelling on public transport).

Pippa Bacca's story is inspirational. Not because of how her life ended, but because she believed in the inherent humanity and kindness of people everywhere. I hope her message will live on and not be tarnished by those who feed on misery and take every opportunity to shout, "I told you so!"

I have a work mobile. I almost never get called on it - it's just there in case something goes badly wrong with a client's systems while I'm out of the office. Something quite odd just happened. ( Read more... )

I wonder how many marriage proposals I'm going to get today?

I've just had a spam claiming to be from a bank who wishes to pay me $150,000 reparations on behalf of the UN because they caught a Nigerian crime syndicate who told them I was one of their victims. All I have to do is send him my full contact details...

Happy birthday to hermi_nomi!

An open letter from Terry Pratchett.

One of my email addresses seems to have got onto a spam database along with the name "Elizabeth" and I'm getting dozens of messages a day (most of them caught by the spam filter) to that name. Some even refer to me as Elizabeth in the body of the spam.

Imagine working the last step on the assembly line for this product.

Standing in the middle of a giant car boot sale with several hundred strangers, all of us observing the two minutes' silence.

pogonophilia n. condition of being attracted to beards -pogonophile n. person who loves beards.

Apologies if you've already seen this on Boing Boing. Some of you will have listened to me ramble at length about my long-term dream of building an ecologically friendly underground house in the countryside, and thought me to be more than a little mad for considering it. Well, this house is exactly the kind of construction I'm talking about, and I think it proves that it's not only possible but it can be done for a much lower cost than a boring standard bricks and mortar house, providing you can manage to buy a suitable piece of land and obtain planning permission to build on it.

People who mishandle and damage rented DVDs, then send them back for the next renter to deal with. The last three disks I've got from Amazon (all episodes of the same TV series) needed polishing before they would play properly, and even then there were sections I had to skip over because they kept stalling the player.

I just remembered the significance of today's date. It's the First of May!

Warning: you might not want to play the MP3 on loudspeakers if you're at work...

I thought the For Dummies/Complete Idiot's Guide style of book was a recent innovation, but apparently not. I've recently obtained an eighty year old book called The Motor-Car and How it Works, For Those Who Are Devoid of All Mechanical Knowledge by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon K.C.B., K.C.V.O., D.S.O. with 75 diagrams drawn by Captain A. H. Green.

The preface is very patronising to the reader, for example: "What to the ordinary mechanic 'is as plain as a pikestaff' gives the average lady a headache to look at." The information contained in the rest of the book isn't too bad - it's rather outdated in places, but a lot of the basic information is still relevant, the style is easy to follow, and I learned a few things from it that I didn't know about 1920s automotive technology.

The chapter titled "A Few Hints on Driving" contains four golden rules, three of which are still relevant and common-sense, one of which now seems bizarre. They are (paraphrased): 1. Don't overtake unless you can see enough clear space ahead of you; 2. sound your horn at every junction and listen for a reply; 3. Slow down on corners; 4. Don't undertake. Elsewhere it talks about sounding your horn every time you see a pedestrian crossing the road "to warn them," and sounding your horn when you come up behind a hay wagon so that it will pull over to allow you to pass. According to Sir Bacon, "children and dogs are the real dangers of the road. Road hogs and scorchers are far less dangerous." He doesn't explain what a scorcher is. On the subject of fuel economy he writes, "The saving of a mile or even two miles per gallon of petrol means very little compared with other matters. The difference between 20 and 22 miles to the gallon in a thousand miles works out at eight shillings, at the present price of petrol. Repairs to a defective car will cost many pounds. So do not worry about petrol consumption so much as reliability." Interestingly he refers in one place to the gear lever as a "joy-stick".

This book was published in 1927 by Mills & Boon. It contains an advert for another of Sir Bacon's books: A Simple Guide To Wireless, For All Whose Knowledge of Electricity is Childlike.

Edit: According to this short biography, Sir Bacon had a rather interesting life and career, and served a very important role in the British navy during the first world war.

Note to self: just after midnight on new year's morning isn't the best time to try sending text messages to people, as everyone else is doing the same thing and the phone network has gone kaput.

40 minutes later: I give up, I'm going to bed. How about you all just pretend I sent you a personal greeting but O2 ate it, OK ;)

I finally had an opportunity this morning to try out Royal Mail's new(ish) facility for buying pre-paid postage labels via their website. The experience wasn't as good as it could have been, but I probably will be using it again.
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