Only in Ireland - Traffic Management: Part 1

Is parking allowed on the side of a street in a town or city so that when the car is parked legally beside the footpath is the side of the car nearly touching the white line in the middle of the road.

I had the experience about 8 months ago when I was parking my car in Waterford city. It was a narrow road and cars were allowed to park on both sides of the road, no yellow lines in sight. There were already cars parked on one side of the road sticking out quite a bit. On the other side cars were also parked but they were up on the footpath slightly, basically so that they weren’t blocking the road from traffic, I was one of those cars.

When I arrived back to my car after a hard days work to my surprise on the windscreen of all the cars, including mine was a parking ticket for having my car wheels on the footpath. Bloody Hell! I was only being courteous in parking this way. I could have quite legally parked my car beside the footpath; no wheels on footpath, passenger door nearly out to the middle of the road, blocked the road completely from all traffic except bicycles and received no ticket. There’s no justice.

Interesting Human Facts

• The Human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30ft.
• In an average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator
• 15 million blood cells are destroyed in the human body every second
• The average human produces 25,000 quarts of spit in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.
• Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete
• The average left handed person lives 7 years LESS than a right handed person (Take not Conor)
• It is anatomically impossible to lick your elbow.
  .... and 75% of people that are told about this fact try to lick their elbow!

My little homunculus

Chess and Forum link? What What?

I just finished reading "Bobby Fischer goes to war." A very entertaining account of the 1972 world chess championship between Bobby "complete fucking lunatic" Fischer and Boris "Russian representing the Soviets" Spassky.

It threw up gems like there are 10¹²⁰ possible combinations in a game of chess, give or take a few. (Bearing in mind there have only been 10²⁶ nanoseconds since the Big Bang. There are thought to be only 10⁷⁵ atoms in the entire universe)

Anyways. You will see two new additions to the blog. A chess board and a forum.

If you post a move in the forum, I’ll move the board, and post my move. I’m white.

Niall was also saying the comments were being used to discuss the books we were reading, now there is a handy forum link.

We’ll see. Maybe this’ll work. Maybe it won’t.

Warning Message

Note to the owner of a black 94 D VW Golf parked outside the Irish Life Office on the Quay in Waterford:

Turn off your fuckin car alarm.....

Brain Teasers

Some short Brain Teasers for you to ponder:

A scuba diver is 1,000 feet below the surface when the oxygen in her tank runs out. The diver doesn't make it to the surface for nearly four hours, but she doesn't die when her oxygen runs out. Why didn't the diver die when her oxygen ran out and how did she reach the surface?

A man has recently escaped from prison and is making his way home on foot. He is walking along a straight rural country lane in bright daylight. He has walked about two miles from the prison, when he sees a police car coming toward him. Despite knowing that all squads would be out looking for him, he ran towards the car for a short while, and only when he was about ten feet away, did he turn and run into the woods to hide. Why did he run towards the police car?

Two convicts are locked in a cell. There is an unbarred window high up in the cell. No matter if they stand on the bed or one on top of the other they can't reach the window to escape. They then decide to tunnel out. However, they give up with the tunneling because it will take too long. Finally one of the convicts figures out how to escape from the cell. What is his plan?

Amazing Facts

• Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
• If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end becaue of the rate of reproduction.
• Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
• You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
• August was the wettest month in Ireland in 2004

Funnier than anything I could think up

From the V Funny Johnathan Steele in todays UK Guardian

The so-called Genesis project received its massive funding before they realised that it had nothing to do with taking Phil Collins into deep space. In fact, the naming of the craft is not without an irony of its own, since the purpose of this trip was to inform us about the origins of our solar system. Yet the president who is paying for it all has passed an education bill allowing creationism to creep back into American schools. Why does he need to spend millions on the space probe, to find out what he says Americans can read in the Book of Genesis? Could it be that he's only claiming to take the Bible at face value in order to secure votes in America's bible belt? Or maybe they just told him that with all that fire coming off the sun there must be some oil in there somewhere?

With the tide of Christian fundamentalism that is increasingly directing scientific funding in America, soon Nasa won't be able to send out any more probes unless they are looking for a big bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud surrounded by angels. But though their latest mission has ended in disaster, maybe this week Nasa just settled the science versus religion debate for once and for all. A huge lump of metal comes flying out of the sky at 200mph, crash lands in the United States, but it completely misses President George W Bush. Clearly there is no God; what more proof does anyone need?

Amaze your friends - Astound your enemies !

Did you know?

Mme Curies notebooks are still so radioactive they are kept in lead boxes. She is also the only person ever to win a nobel prize in both chemistry and physics.

Ray Burke is a thief and a crook and a liar.

Contrary to popular myth the Great Wall of China is not visible from the moon ,it is from a low earth orbit or LEO, and if you are in a LEO you will also see the man made garbage island off the cost of Nth America(pedants also like to include illuminated large cities/conurbations).

Kevin Kilbane is possibly the worst irish midfield player in a generation.

Mathematician/Philosipher and all round Church-Baiter Bertrand Russel(The Prinicpia Mathematica) won the nobel prize for literature.

Jesus possibly never existed at all

Pet Hates Continued – C.S.I: Dublin Style

[Inside of suburban train, two dead bodies wrapped in embrace. A third body is hanging upright from the overhead rack. Pretty young junior forensic, Jenny Swish, is taking lots of photos from different angles. In walks Chief CSI Detective Joseph “Joe” Johnson. He leaves his sunglasses on]

Joe bends down on his hands and knees to talk to his subordinate

Joe: What is the situation?
Jenny: Looks like severe trauma to the head, caused by a blunt instrument.
Joe: Any idea what?
Jenny: Looks like a book, Joe!
Joe [wrinkles brow]: A book? Any idea of motive?
Jenny: Looks like they were making out.
Joe: Kissing on an early commuter train! Probably sent some regular traveller over the edge. Battered them to death with his book.
Jenny: Had some hard words with them, huh Joe?

[Joe walks over to the hanging body, dance music is audible through the earphones, still in his ears. He talks to his pathologist, a middle aged pretty black woman, Loretta Banks.]

Joe [hands on hips]: What about this guy?
Loretta: Strangled on his earphones.
Joe: And then he placed the earphones back in his ears. This guy was out to prove a point
Loretta [Upset – talking to the corpse]: You poor baby, killed for playing your music too loud.
Joe [Talking to himself]: Looks like someone on this train couldn’t wait until their stop!
Loretta: Sorry Joe?
Joe [Talking to camera]: Looks like these three have reached their destination!
Loretta: Joe?
Joe [Talking to floor]: Our guy is obviously off the rails!

[Joe walks out of the train, takes off his sunglasses and squints in the sun. You are left knowing that he is going to get his guy, and moralise him to death in the process]

How can anyone follow that last blog

From todays UK Guardian ......

Apparently there are certain tell-tale signs you should look out for if you suspect your husband of getting back in touch with his first ever girlfriend; increased time spent on the internet, furtive texting on his mobile phone, having a huge love-bite on his neck and "Gary 4 Shazza 4 Ever" scratched into his forearm with a fountain pen. This week the divorce rate reached its highest level in seven years and part of the blame was laid at the door of internet sites such as Friends Reunited.

It's been one of the unforeseen byproducts of the internet revolution that people can easily contact old flames instead of using computers for their intended purpose, which is stealing music and downloading hardcore pornography. The problem is getting so bad that in a few years' time they'll launch a new site called Divorcees Reunited, where all the people who left their partners for their childhood sweethearts can find out what their ex-spouse has been up to since the big split.