Almost 10,000 cellphones confiscated

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Cape Town traffic police are closing in on their ten thousandth cellphone confiscation since they began confiscating cellphones in 2012. This isn’t a random thing though. No, they only take the cellphones off people who are using them while driving. You know, the ones who are clearly in contravention of Road Traffic Ordinance Regulation 308A, which prohibits a driver from holding a mobile phone or communication device in one or both hands or with any other part of their body while driving?

Those ones.

“The numbers are staggering and an indication that many motorists still refuse to acknowledge the dangers of using cellular phones while driving. It is astonishing to consider that people will very easily persecute drunk drivers for reckless behaviour, but cannot see the recklessness in fiddling with a cellphone while navigating through traffic,” said mayoral committee member for Safety and Security, JP Smith.

Look, this is Good. News. but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg, as I noted here.

And it seems that, as always, South Africa is high on the list of cellphone naughtiness while at the wheel – as you would expect given the impunity with which we treat traffic and/or any other laws. But it’s not just here that it’s a problem. In the US, the major cellphone companies have joined forces to produce the itcanwait.com campaign, and they’ve released some really good mini-documentaries to get with it:

It would be great if MTN, Vodacom et al. (Al being the only guy who’s still on Cell C) could team up and do something to try and reduce cellphone use while driving.
Although I think we’re still some distance from that tipping point whereby it becomes socially unacceptable to use your phone while at the wheel, I do think that people need something to remind them what tossers they are being, when in every single case – it can wait.

UPDATE: What happens to the over 6000 confiscated phones which haven’t been reclaimed? See this EWN report.

Trance Monkey Update!

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The monkeys are safe! Remember when we told you that the monkeys were going to go crazy by the doof-doof sounds of the Astral Circus party at Monkey Town in Somerset West this weekend (he said without taking a breath)?

Regular reader and (now) part time, informal trance party correspondent for 6000 miles…, AniB, got in touch this morning with great news:

That link takes you through to Astral Circus’ Facebook page, where they state:

I’m sure most of you have read the article about Astral Circus regarding how the sound is going to affect the monkeys and animals surrounding the venue.

I’m pretty sure they meant Monday’s post on here.

A sound test was done today and we’re happy to announce the sound doesn’t reach the monkeys therefore it will cause no harm to any of them.

THE PARTY WILL GO ON!
-SAME VENUE
-SAME TIME

See you on the dance floor.

Well, look. I’m glad they’ve done the responsible thing and tested the sound levels. And I hope that the SPCA are ok with the party going ahead now, but you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the monkeys. One can only imagine that they had been looking forward to several (or more) hours of chilled vibes kicking off with local bad boy (I actually have no idea if he is local, bad, or indeed a boy) Hoax and moving on to the likes of DJ D-rANg3D, Phixius, Satori, the hugely anticipated trance-off twixt Psyden and Erreur (“They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art”), before culminating with the magic musical dreamweaver that is Psyfunk.

Instead, all that they’re able to look forward to is some peanuts and (possibly) an extra banana on Sunday morning.

Unless, of course, we can crowdfund a few tickets for them…

Go! (again)

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((again) because it’s not this post)

I was going to share some music with you this morning, but then I went into the lab and I listened to some other music and now I want to share some of that with you instead. The beauty of this arrangement is that I am still able to share the original music with you at a later date and therefore you get two tracks for the price of one and that price was free anyway.

Can you say “Bargain”?
Of course you can, because that throat surgery was wholly successful, wasn’t it?

That then, is “the other PSB” – Public Service Broadcasting, whose debut album, Inform – Educate – Entertain, was released in 2013 and was listened to in the lab a bit earlier today.

It’s very different, isn’t it? And also very catchy. The new album, The Race For Space, (from which the above is taken) is also worth almost 44 minutes of your valuable time (which is all it will take first time around, promise).

“Trance Party Will Traumatise Monkeys”

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Really?

Yes, really:

The SPCA is up in arms about a trance party planned for Saturday night at a venue in Monkey Town in Somerset West, which is home to more than 200 primates.

What, Somerset West?
Oh, the monkey zoo place. Sorry. Carry on.

It has threatened to have the organisers arrested if they go ahead with what is billed as “an epic night of thundering bass lines and psychedelic melodies taking us into the blissfulness of each other’s minds”.

Pftt. Is anyone else just hearing the hand-wringingly awful:

Won’t somebody please think of the monkeys?

Without wanting to belittle the SPCA’s concerns in any way, and hopefully without any use of the word “killjoys” (oops), am I alone in thinking that the monkeys might actually enjoy a night of banging trance? Given that they are our closet relatives, and that some humans enjoy trance music, I think it’s worth a go. In addition, there are no lyrics for their puny frontal and parietal lobes to have to struggle with. (It’s also a well known fact that gibbons are well into the rave scene. So it’s really not that much of a stretch.)

But, no. The SPCA attempt to strengthen their argument for having the event cancelled with this line:

“We get repeated complaints from horse owners when trance parties are held in the Boland that the continual thumping and laser lights caused their horses to go crazy.”

But horses aren’t monkeys. Horses are notoriously miserable animals with no opposable thumbs who are generally more into show-jumping and the Industrial Goth scene. They’re obviously going to be irritated by trance’s 4/4 time, 32 beat phrases, time-keeping downbeat kick drum and regular open hi-hat placed on the upbeat or every 1/8th division of the bar. That and the complete lack of challenging fences in the arena.
No wonder they go crazy.

Monkeys though? I reckon that’s right up their tree. And who wouldn’t want to be taken into the blissfulness of a chimpanzee’s mind, anyway?

C’mon SPCA… give it the green light. Just this once. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Next: Overberg Overrun By Lunatic Music Monkeys.

Industry Experts say…

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I was just wandering around Bloomberg.com articles from 8½ years ago, when I came across this one by Matthew Lynn – a Bloomberg News columnist.

“The opinions expressed are his own.”

says the disclaimer at the bottom. Looking back now, I bet Matthew wishes that the opinions expressed had absolutely nothing to do with him, given that the headline is this:

Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move

Ugly.

In other Apple related foolishness, there’s that famous thing that golfer Rory McIlroy shared in 2012:

If anyone is having a bad day, remember that today in 1976 Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800. Now it’s worth $58,065,210,000

Because yes, if you are having a bad day, it’s somehow comforting to know that someone has had a worse day than you. Thus, in the same way, if you’ve ever thought that you might have been massively wrong on something, take a look at the link above, because you won’t have been more wrong than Matthew.
Matthew has taken the proverbial biscuit when it comes to being wrong. Publicly wrong. Wrong on the internet, where no-one ever forgets and stuff like this gets brought up on top class South African blogs on Monday mornings 8½ years later. That wrong.

There’s some deep insight from the industry expert, as he states with the sort of confidence that only an indusrty expert can state:

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.

Well, yeah. But no.

Matthew wades through plenty of incorrect assumptions and erroneous assertions before coming out with this blisteringly mistaken final paragraph:

The mobile-phone industry is becoming a cozy cartel between the network operators and a limited range of manufacturers. It could certainly use a fresh blast of competition from an industry outsider.
It may come – but probably from an entrepreneurial start-up somewhere. How about phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls? Or with never-ending batteries? Or chargers that don’t weigh three times as much as the phone?

It won’t come from the iPhone. Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.

Look, credit where it’s due – we’re still waiting on the never-ending battery (wo-o-oh, wo-o-oh, wo-o-oh) (sorry), but “phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls”? Hahahahaha, because this is 2015 and we don’t talk any more.

Thankfully, as far as I am aware, Matthew Lynn is still around and the continual resharing of his 2007 column hasn’t yet driven him to suicide. That’s good, because if we weren’t reading his opinion pieces, how else would we know that the Pope is going to renounce his Catholicism in 2016?