Robbo swaps Rudds in the steamy heat of Woodford

Mike's Pith & Wind - Quakes
A US who man struck a teenage boy for refusing to turn off his iPhone before a Southwest Airlines flight has been arrested on battery charges, police said on Wednesday.
Police in Idaho took 68-year-old Russell Miller into custody when the flight from Las Vegas landed in Boise on Tuesday evening.
Miller became angry when the teen continued to fiddle with his phone, listening to music and playing games, after the flight crew ordered electronic devices switched off before takeoff, police said.
Reuters
Apart from the fact that Reuters deemed this trivia worth reporting at all, there are two issues perhaps worth considering here, and predictably the first is that respect for regulations and the law in general appears to be on the wane, but that could be just an old codger’s impression. The second is that shonky regulations do not deserve anybody’s respect in an informed world. For instance, it is abundantly clear to anybody with half a brain that iPhones and the like have no influence whatsoever on the workings of aeroplanes, just as, incidentally, cell phones will not ignite petrol fumes. If they did, they would simply be banned, like all the other feared instruments of death that are (annoyingly) not allowed in the aircraft’s cabin, such as nail files and drum sticks.
While I have made this point before it’s worth making again (for the New Year), and anyway I have a deal of sympathy for the hapless Mr Miller. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - 4th of January 2011
On the 4th of January 2011-01-05I didn’t go to work, nor did I the next day. I did not wake up at 6 am shave whilst showering, breakfast on muesli and assorted fruit and squeeze myself into Ethel, the ancient faded red Nissan Pulsar, to drive to the Eltham Station. I didn’t have to avoid errant kangaroos and sleepy drivers on a road which I think I drove over eight thousand times there and back over the years without incident.
I didn’t have stand on the platform looking hopefully northwards in the direction of Hurstbridge for the first sight or sound of the boomgates lowering that signalled that there was a train actually coming that morning. I didn’t have to shuffle onto the inevitably late train to the city with other hapless commuters. I didn’t have to avoid anybody so that I could lapse into the intellectual coma of The Age cryptic crossword.. read more