Words About Things

Some thieves steal money by placing complicated card skimming devices and miniature cameras on cash points and waiting for unsuspecting victims to reveal their details. Some even try to remove the entire ATM in the hope that they will be able to open it elsewhere. Most just use the old fashioned technique of distraction to grab what they can. Often gangs will tap a person on the shoulder and ask for directions before lunging at the notes or watch them entering their PIN before snatching their card.

This is why everyone seems so paranoid at cash points, looking over their shoulders and eyeing others with suspicion. Someone came up to me recently, whilst I was suing an ATM, to tell me about a gig he thought I might be interested in (because of the t-shirt I was wearing) and I almost ran away!

A pair of thieves in Paris have come up with a cunning new way of distracting their victims in order to get their hands on their cash: using their feminine charms. The unsuspecting victim was entering his PIN when one of the women flashed her breasts at him. The second woman put her hands on the man’s crotch whilst stealing his cash.

beware!

The thieves took 300 euros and left the victim shaken before departing at speed. CCTV from the areas shows two women fleeing the scene of the crime. A French police spokesman has warned the public to be vigilant: “We would advise anyone withdrawing cash from a machine to focus on what they are doing and not allow themselves to be distracted, however attractive the view”.

The women are described as good looking women in their early twenties. French police are now on the look out for an attractive pair hanging around cash points.

We tend to forget about our waste once it has been um… dispensed with, flushing it away for someone else to deal with. But what if you could power your car with human waste thus reducing the amount of pollution you create and the amount of money you spend on driving?  Lots of cars in the UK currently run on liquid natural gas (LNG) but could compressed natural gas (CNG) be just as effective?

Wessex Water Plc are a water and sewage-treatment firm so they have access more human waste than they know what to do with, until now. They have recently had a Volkswagen Beetle converted to run on compressed natural gas from their Bristol sewage treatment works. They are running a six month trial to test the viability of powering their entire fleet from small cars right up to larger vans with natural gas.

The processing plant is already partially powered by electricity created from natural gas and Wessex Water even creates enough power to sell some back to the National Grid. Releasing biogas back into the atmosphere would be harmful as Methane is a ‘greenhouse’ gas so the company wanted to use the excess they created. They say the car runs well:

“We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK. If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.” – Mohammed Saddiq

Unfortunately powering cars using human created biogas is not an entirely scalable idea, it takes the combined output of 70 homes to create enough fuel to power the VW bug for 1 year. If you consider that most households have a least one car or van there just isn’t enough poo being produced.

Last September I wrote a post about a survey which showed that 40 percent of Britons felt that they were unable to save money due to the tough economic climate. This statistic was shocking but not unfounded, unemployment was at almost 2.5 million and the recession was hitting hard. At the time 1 in 4 people surveyed had no savings at all which left them in a very precarious state financially. Others had savings already but were unable to increase them despite the looming threat of unemployment.

Although we are now out of the Recession things are recovering very slowly and many are still struggling. Consumer confidence remains low and a ‘double dip’ recession is a strong possibility. Whilst this all seems very negative it’s not all bad news. A survey completed in July shows that we are in a slightly more positive position this year: savings accounts balances at a major high street bank actually increased by £1.4 billion in the first five months of 2010.

Some people are still unable to move money from their current account to a savings account. 62 percent of those asked said that they were saving ‘much less than they should be’ and 22 percent were not currently saving at all. The reduction in personal saving is mirrored by the reduction in consumer spending, both show that lack of consumer confidence is having a negative effect on the economy. The Bank of England will publish their August Inflation Report on Wednesday and it is expected to predict a 2 percent growth in inflation next year. This is much less than previously predicted, the outlook as been revised to to continuing economic problems.

I’m no economist but it seems to me that what we need right now is some good news. A little growth in the economy would lead to increased borrowing and spending. In turn this would lead to more growth and increased job security for those reliant on consumer spending. All it would take is for some positivity to spread and not be destroyed by another wave of bad news. I’m feeling helpful so i’ll get us started: I just found £2.50 in change down the back of the sofa…

A 37 mile longer ‘underwater river’ has been discovered by a team of scientists from the University of Leeds. The current, which is on the bed of the Black Sea, has carved out a channel in the sea bed and is up to 115ft deep. If the as yet unnamed current was on land it would be the world’s sixth largest river in terms of volume of water.

3D radar image of the undersea river

The scientists explored the river using a robotic submarine and found that it has rapids and waterfalls like a normal river. The current contains more salt and carries sediment with it so the water in the ‘river’ is denser than the sea which surrounds it.

“The water in the channels is denser than the surrounding seawater because it has higher salinity and is carrying so much sediment. It flows down the sea shelf and out into the abyssal plain much like a river on land. The abyssal plains of our oceans are like the deserts of the marine world, but these channels can deliver nutrients and ingredients needed for life out over these deserts. This means they could be vitally important, like arteries providing life to the deep ocean.”  – Dr Dan Parsons

The water begins in the Bosphorus Strait in the Mediterranean and flows into the less dense water of the Black Sea. The river has currents 350 times greater than those of the River Thames which have carved a channel with 115 foot high banks. The channel is only just over half a mile wide but carries 22,000 cubic metres of water a second. This is 10 times more than Europe’s largest river the Rhine.

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