Monday, November 28, 2011
Oh, grandmother, what an empty fuel tank your car has!
When you think of grandmothers you probably envision a kindly elderly woman sat on a plump sofa, with fluffy slippers, knitting something. Maybe with a cat or two next to her.
When you think of thieves you probably envision people sneaking about silently dressed in dark clothes. Well this story is about two grandmothers, but un-stereotypically they are both thieves, and un-stereotypical thieves at that.
Stealing £400 of alcohol at an ASDA in Chadderton on the outskirts of Manchester, these women piled the loot from their trolley into their car but didn’t make a very swift getaway.
This is mainly due to the fact they’d forgotten that for a car to work, it needs petrol.
A fundamental mistake really.
Furthermore, they took so much alcohol that they struggled to close the vehicle’s boot, had to ask a passer by to help them push the car to ASDA’s own petrol station to fill up, were filmed committing their crime on several different CCTV cameras, and were stupid enough to try their stunt again at another supermarket in the area later that day.
You’ll be thankful to know that these two thieving grandmothers were caught.
Photo © Sean McEntee via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: alcohol, ASDA, boot, car, CCTV, Chadderton, crime, grandmother, petrol, steal, thieves
Friday, November 25, 2011
Karate V Sedan
The twisted metal shells of old cars you see in scrap yards are usually the work of heavy machinery – but not in all cases it seems.
On man in America, dressed in karate gi, has been filmed destroying a red Sedan with his bare hands, and feet, and some fire at the end for added drama.
Reportedly inspired by the Super Street Fighter IV video game, the footage shows the old car reduced to burning wreckage.
We don’t know what he has against the Sedan, but any attempt to forgive and forget has quite clearly failed.
Still, if you’ve been trapped in a traffic jam for hours, or have just had to pay a lot of money after failing an MOT, this might be a good video to watch to relieve the stress before getting back on the roads once more in a calm frame of mind.
Labels: heavy machinery, karate, metal, MOT, old car, scrap yard, Sedan, traffic jam, wreckage
Monday, November 21, 2011
Hippocampus GPS
Do you always get lost? Maybe you just need to update your brain with new maps.
Apparently, according to neuroscientists at the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at University College London our mind works like a sat-nav when we’re making our way somewhere by foot. One section analyses how far there is to go before we reach our final destination, and another part decided upon which route to take when we have several paths to choose from.
One of the scientists explained, "The posterior hippocampus cares about how long a route is going to be. It's like GPS. It knows how far you've got to go in the real world and it gets more excited the closer you are to your goal."
So, if you’re thinking about getting a sat-nav, maybe you don’t even need one!
On the other-hand, navigating your way through some of the UK’s more complicated roads, like the one-way systems which encircle whole towns or cities, might be a little easier with GPS technology on your side, and not just the posterior hippocampus.
Photo © dkwonsh via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: brain, destination, GPS, hippocampus, lost, map, navigating, road, route, sat-nav
Friday, November 18, 2011
Lollipop lady stops charging horses
Lollipop men and women have to be quite brave, we think, what with some of the reckless drivers there are on the road.
So we definitely take our hats off to one 53-year-old lollipop lady who stopped a group of charging horses on her watch!
She stated, "I looked up the road and thought that's a lot of horses.
"I stood there and held my stick out as they ran towards me and they must have been startled by my jacket.
"It was lucky the horses didn't come running along 10 minutes earlier as they would have killed some children.
"It's not something you expect to see"
Guiding the horses into a garden, she kept them off the road until the police and RSPCA came to take over and the owners arrived to return the animals back to the field they had escaped from.
The headteacher of the school for which the lollipop lady works applauded her quick thinking, and we do too!
Photo © Joybot via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: drivers, horses, lollipop lady, police, road, RSPCA
Monday, November 14, 2011
A mini roundabout conundrum
Have you ever approached a mini roundabout at exactly the same time as the motorists on the other available exits and found that everyone comes to a standstill?
The first time I experienced this oddity I was, thankfully, having a driving lesson, so my instructor could guide me through the conundrum which lay before me.
I was giving way to my right, and the car on my right was giving way to the car on their right who was giving way to me. And of course I wasn’t moving because I was busy being a good driver and giving way to my right.
“Someone’s got to go”, driving instructor explained, “otherwise we’ll all be sat here forever waiting for each other.”
Eventually the motorist to my right decided to make the first move and eventually everything was back to normal and traffic was flowing again.
But it made me realise how a lot of the things you learn about driving, you only really learn once you’ve passed your practical driving test and gained some more experience of the road.
That’s why it’s so important that some insurers make cheaper insurance quotes available to young drivers, because if they can’t afford the cover they might not get back onto the roads until much later on in their lives and by that point they’ll have missed out on years of useful motoring experience.
Photo © bravediggs via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: cover, driving instructor, insurance quote, mini roundabout, motorist, practical driving test, traffic
Friday, November 11, 2011
Changing someone’s flat tyre could save your life
The well-know sayings ‘one good deed deserves another’ and ‘what goes around comes around’, couldn’t be more fittingly used than as two morals of this true story.
A 61-year-old Canadian man in America was driving his pick-up truck down the Interstate 94 when he noticed that two women were stranded at the side of the road unable to change the flat tyre on their car, so he pulled over to help them.One of the women states, “We were so grateful. Nowadays, nobody ever really stops to offer their help. It's kind of scary sometimes, because you really don't know what you're getting into.”
Having changed the tyre he went on his way – and usually that’s where the story would have finished.
However, a matter of minutes after setting off again the man began to have a heart attack and his wife, who was in the truck with him, stopped the vehicle and tried to flag down another motorist for help.
And who happened to stop but the two women her husband had helped a few miles down the road.
One of the women, a certified nursing assistant gave the man CPR until a state trooper and two Dunn County deputies took over and a helicopter ambulance arrived.
Thanks to the man’s good deed, the nursing assistant was able to give him the CPR which helped him survive until the emergency services turned up.
As the Patrol Sergeant stated, “It's an interesting turn of fate.”
Photo © Tiger Girl via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: CPR, flat tyre, heart attack, miles, motorist, pick-up truck, road
Monday, November 7, 2011
Do we not bleed?
When I was an undergraduate at Manchester a few years ago I belatedly managed to find a room in a shared house – until that point I’d been staying in a youth hostel while combining flat hunting with university study.
On hearing that a friend of friends had dropped out of his anthropology course (it would turn out that he had unwittingly become a real trendsetter) I quickly seized the opportunity to take his room, arriving early in the morning and literally helping him out of bed as I moved my belongings in.Things were great. Yes, the flat was a bit damp. No, we didn’t have a hoover. Yes, the fridge did begin to resemble something from a chemical warfare programme. But, all in all, things were great. At least until the winter…
Because, when winter arrived we found that the place was very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that even doubling on jumpers and wearing long johns wasn’t enough.
Then, after checking the radiators, we realised that they weren’t working properly.
Outraged, we called the landlord, who told us that maybe we ought to bleed the radiators. But what did he mean by “bleed”?
Did he mean that we fill them with our own blood then extract it so that it could be reintroduced to our bodies, creating a kind of intravenous home-heating system or was it simply an arcane and profane way of telling us to deal with it, to suffer?
Truth be told, we were completely baffled so after a great deal of consternation we simply shrugged our frozen shoulders, donned a third jumper and put the kettle on, all the time cursing the landlord for being so unhelpfully cryptic.
But it seems we weren’t alone. A new study has revealed that half of young people in Britain have no idea how to bleed a radiator.
Young drivers unable to change tyres, young people unable to get cheap car insurance because a minority don’t drive safely, young people unable to bleed radiators. What next?
Photo © hoill via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: cheap car insurance, young people
Friday, November 4, 2011
Reckless he is. Matters are worse… But the police force is with him.
It’s being reported that police in Germany this week stopped a driver who’d been involved in a hit-and-run with a Halloween reveller.
Much to their shock, when they got the offending motorist to wind down his window, they realised that far from being the reckless young driver they might have expected, he was actually a 900-year-old green-faced Jedi alien.
But no, fear not, Master Yoda hasn’t been brought back from the dead only to cross over to the Dark Side – the offending motorist in question was himself just a Halloween reveller in Yoda mask, albeit a drunk and recklessly driving one.
A Berlin police spokesperson commented, "The officers were especially surprised to see Grand Master Yoda at the wheel.
"The hapless Jedi returned home on foot. In this case, the force was not with him."
Fortunately, the pedestrian sustained what have been described as only “minor injuries”.
Photo © Gonzavision via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: Halloween, Master Yoda, young driver