What kind of people work for Drug companies?

Just noticed this on the side of a medicine bottle that I used tonight.

(context: My 4 year-old has a cold coming on)

The bottle is clearly marked "Children's Dry Coughs - 2 to 12 years"

"WARNING: MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS. IF AFFECTED DO NOT DRIVE OR OPERATE MACHINERY. AVOID ALCOHOL".

I can tell you I won't be letting him drive tonight to the construction site where he works with the other alcoholic 4-year olds.

Doesn't anybody read these labels before this stuff is shipped out to stores?

Mick Jagger, Bogart, Star Trek.. and a rotten fart

One of my more curious headlines I suppose.

What's the connection. It's something to do with quotations and the way people change words around to suit themselves.

Mick Jagger was reputed to have once said

"I'd rather be dead than singing 'satisfaction' when I'm 45".

Did he actually say it?

I don't know. Many people have quoted him but there is no way of knowing for sure whether he actually said it.

And where is he now?

63 years old and still singing 'satisfaction'.

Humphrey Bogart, playing Rick Blaine in Casablanca is believed by many to have uttered the immortal quote "Play it again Sam".

Well firstly it was Ingrid Bergman's character, Ilsa Lund who uttered the quote except the actual quote was "Play it, Sam".

Nobody seems to care because everyone is happy with the whole Humphrey Bogart and "Play it again, Sam" combo. Time passes and facts evolve.

The actual "Play it again, Sam" quote is from the Marx Brothers film, "a Night in Casablanca" from 1946.

It's also common to hear people saying the whole "beam me up, Scotty" in a reference to Star Trek. Except as we all know now, it was never actually uttered, not ever. Ah well.

Which brings me to the rotten fart. I was reading LA Frog's Blog yesterday and she had a great article showing an advert for a local company that had put together a witty name. It was offering pet care and animal services and called itself Pet Pourri. LA Frog points out that the witty name in fact translates directly as 'rotten fart'. Now that's daring marketing if you ask me. Read about it here.

And finally, there's the tale of Todd Beamer, the passenger on United flight 93 which crashed on that fateful day, september 11 2001. He is famed for uttering the immortal words "let's roll" as the passengers made one final push to retake control of the aircraft. A website dedicated to his memory quotes him. Unfortunately the 9/11 commission report found that he in fact was overheard to say "roll it", a clear reference to the fact that the passengers were planning to roll the drinks trolley against the cockpit door in an attempt to gain access.

Sometimes we prefer the modified version of what people actually said. And sometimes it's smarter to let people believe what they want, especially when their version of the quote reads better than the original.

Moving Statues, apparitions and BMWs

I was sitting in the conference room in Rome last weekend, right at the front like I usually do. And then I had an apparitional experience.

In the bin right in front of me I saw the likeness of a BMW 5-series. Not the whole car of course, just the front. It was a perfect image of the front of the car.

The image was the reflection of the two legs of the table next to the bin and clearly the angle at which the reflection of the table legs made its way to my line of sight had created this striking image.

I could see the grille and the lights and it looked like a kind of gold or beige coloured car. A lot like this in fact.

So I got to thinking about how the brain works and how it can be tricked by the light. When we were younger my mother used to freak me out be telling stories about ghost-like figures that she saw crossing the garden at night.

I am a super-skeptic and used to tell her right out that it was all a bunch of crap. She was convinced she saw stuff in the garden.

So clearly one's disposition towards the supernatural has some significance. If you tend to believe in this stuff then you're surely more likely to "experience" something, since you are more open to the possibility.

I on the other hand think all that stuff is tripe so I don't think I'm likely to have such an experience.

So this bin thing was rationalised by me as being the result of a trick of the light. But what of this notion of apparitional experiences?

The moving statues of Ballinspittle
In Ireland back in 1985 the country was gripped by a story about some locals in the village of Ballinspittle in county Cork. They claimed to have witnessed some statues in the village move. They were convinced but of course as people flocked to the village to witness the "miracle" nothing subsequently was seen. There were piles of people all staring at these statues, all waiting to see them move and unfortunately for them nothing did move. The church distanced itself and refused to take a position on the claims. Since the original claim nothing happened to substantiate the claims of the few who "saw" the statues move.

So what do you make of this? A couple of people reckon they saw a statue move. True? Not true? Hard to decide for sure. In my view it depends on your pre-disposition to the concept of apparitions and similar experiences.

There is a good article over at Wikipedia about apparitional experiences. Here's a good excerpt to support my own view on this:

"Apparitional experiences ... represent a form of quasi-perceptual experience in which the role of external stimuli is minimal or possibly non-existent, while the experience nevertheless continues to be phenomenologically indistinguishable from normal perception, at least in some cases."

Check out the full article here.

And what then of the BMW 5-Series?
The model I "saw" is referred to as the E60 model of the BMW and is the 5th generation model of this car, first manufactured in 1972. The E number refers to the chassis type used to manufacture the car. The car was designed by American designer Chris Bangle, and was rejected by BMW purists as being an ugly car. Bangle was also responsible for the BMW 7-series, also rejected by fans as ugly. Some fans even went so far as to start an online petition to get BMW to fire Bangle. Both series were known for having the "Bangle butt", the characteristic rear-end design that BMW fans consider to be unattractive and poorly designed.

Bangle is no longer the main designer for BMW models, being "moved upstairs" and replaced by Dutch designer Adrian van Hooydonk. He is now the chief designer for the entire BMW group including brands such as Mini and Rolls Royce.

Those who know me will know that I am not a big fan of BMW cars. I have no desire to own one. I do think it's amusing that in 1959 BMW almost was sold to Mercedes-Benz only for a last-minute change of heart by BMW. The rest is history as far as BMW is concerned.

So, my mother is sure she saw "something" hovering around in the garden at night. Anyone else ever "seen" anything or know someone who claims to have "seen" something?

The long walk home

By now it was about 10:30 PM and just over an hour since we left piazza Navona. We had walked non-stop and were only just arriving at via Aurelia antica.

I was sweating like crazy, my shirt was soaked and I was carrying my jacket. It was hot.

We headed down the narrow entrance to via Aurelia antica, with no discernible footpath on either side of the road, just a narrow strip about a foot wide on the left hand side separated from the road by a white line.

It made sense to use what little walking room there was so we crossed over to the left hand side and made our way down the hill along the road. It was dark and poorly lit. At this stage the two women I was with had removed their jackets and thank goodness they were wearing white tops. The cars whizzed along the road towards us, the occasional car flashing its headlights as they spotted us walking along this really dangerous road.

We kept going as far as we could along the left until we came to one of the famous Porta or arched entrance gateways along the road. These porta were the entrance ways into Rome in ancient times and clearly there was no concept of traffic versus pedestrians then. Thus there was no footpath. On the left we approached the porta (the exact one shown to the right here) and crept up close to the stone wall to see if there was room to squeeze through.

A car zoomed through, flashing its lights at us. We stepped back onto the grass and waited. One of the women poked her head out and made a dash for the other side of the road on the far side of the porta. She ran diagonally through the gate and made it safely through.

She gestured to us from the other side of the porta that it was safe and I stepped out cautiously. Approaching the gate from our left came a car at high speed. I ran and made it across and looked back to see the other woman hesitate. "Run" came the shout from the other side of the porta.

The car horn blew and she dashed to the right and across to where I stood.

It was dark, very dark and by now this was getting really dangerous. We walked on, this time on the right side of the road.

By now the Aurelian wall was high and dark along the left side of the road and to our right, next to where we were walking was a high ditch of brush and trees. There was little or no room to walk but we edged quickly along the road nonetheless.

Shortly after we ran out of space to walk on the right and had to cross to the left again. Now the Aurelian wall was made up of a series of arches, all of which had been bricked up. There were pillars sticking out of the wall at the sides of each arch and we dashed from arch to arch along the wall.

Cars streamed towards us, interspersed occasionally by scooters and motorcycles. In the distance I could hear a scooter and when I looked I could see it had no lights on. It zoomed towards the city and just as it approached out group the idiot driving it swerved towards the woman at the front of our group, forcing her to jump in behind one of the pillars for safety.

We edged out again and continued along the road.

This pattern of crossing from left to right and back again continued for the best part of 40 minutes.

Eventually the road came to a fork and we took the left fork, heading down an even darker section of the via Aurelia antica. This time the lights were even more sparse but thankfully there were fewer cars. Soon we passed under the motorway bridge carrying the new via Aurelia above us.

We knew we weren't too far from the Hotel now.

We continued along the road passing a field of pampas grass that was at least 15 feet high. Incredible. We came to a junction and spotted the lights of a petrol station and the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

We passed the Crowne Plaza Hotel and came to the intersection of the two via Aurelias, the old and new. We crossed the street and turned left. Our hotel was not far away now.

We travelled along on the footpath on the right hand side, until we realised that now all that remained was the motorway with no footpath.

We couldn't walk on the motorway. Could we?

Well it turned out we had no choice. We were so close to the Hotel now and the only way to get there was along the motorway so we went for it.

We edged along the wall of the motorway and luckily came to a motorway exit not more than 500 metres away. We climbed up the off-ramp and crossed the intersection at the top. We walked down the on-ramp on the other side along the edge of a large car park of an electronics superstore.

We edged past the fence until it was low enough to climb. I suggested that we get off the motorway and walk through the car park instead. The women were not keen on it, worrying about getting their clothes dirty of all things!

They relented and we all climbed in where the fence was just 3 feet high. Walking through the car park there was a huge sense of relief and eventual safety. We exited the car park, crossed some waste ground and came to the entrance to our Hotel. A short climb up the driveway and 2 hours after we left piazza Navona we were finally back in one piece.

What a night.

All the women were worried about was what to say if anyone asked how long it took. They settled on an agreed response of 45 minutes. Right.

I have to say I slept well that night, after a 20 minute shower that is.

Saturday night.. an Aurelian saga

We finished eating dinner at about 9:30 PM at the restaurant on the Piazza Navona, as I mentioned previously. It was disappointing food but we were hungry so it didn't matter too much.

We left the restaurant and headed across the Piazza back towards the direction of the river Tiber, or Fiume Tevere as it's called by the locals.

We arrived at Corso Vittorio Emanuele, a wide thoroughfare that runs through the middle of the city. There was a bit of hemming and hawing as we worked out what we would do with the rest of the evening.

After a few minutes we had arrived at the conclusion that the Russians wanted to walk about in the city for a little while longer, while my two other female colleagues and I were keen to head out of the city.

We joked for for a few minutes about walking back to the Hotel and the Russians thought we were mad. That must have hardened our resolve because that's what we decided to do. Walk to the Hotel.

We had a map and an experienced map reader (not me) and it didn't seem unreasonable so we went for it. I mean how hard could it be to walk home to the Hotel?

Step 1 - cross the river Tiber
We started off heading west, looking to cross the river as our first milestone. It took some time because this is one city of mazy twisty streets and you just can't walk in a direct line on every street. We walked for a while, stopping every 5 or so minutes to squint up at the plaques adorning almost every street corner.

We crossed the river at Ponte Garibaldi and travelled north along the river bank for about 500 metres turning into via de Cinque or something like that. It was packed with people, narrow twisty little streets really bustling with life. And restaurants everywhere, much better than we had seen earlier in the centre of the city.

This was where it started to get confusing. The text on the map was so small you could barely make out the names of the streets. We turned left, maybe then right and before we knew it our two options were two poorly lit alley ways. Although my in-built cautious instincts told me that neither was a good option, the fact that there were loads of couples streaming in and out of both of these alleys suggested we'd be ok.

We made our way through the alley and ahead lay a flight of stone steps up to what sounded like a busy road. At the foot of the steps was a little bar, filled with locals. It was one of those bars that is really someone's garage and inside there were maybe 5 or 6 chairs, all different types, and a really old television showing a football match that nobody was watching. We knew we were well away from the tourist area by now.

Step 2 - the climb
Up the steps we climbed and arrived at a wider street, but pretty quiet nonetheless. The odd car whizzed past but it was not busy. There was no footpath.

Just a white line at the edge of the road. We were on via Garibaldi. This was a long, winding road, with options to go up or down.

We had come from down so we decided to go up. Up we walked, passing the occasional car as we climbed up the hill.

Rome is built on seven hills, so a bit of climbing is inevitable when exiting the city.

We passed a police land rover at the top of the hill, right next to the Fonte dell acqua Paola. This was right at the top of the hill.

At this stage the jackets were off because we were all sweating. It was 10 PM and still 23 C.

Not the best weather for a night-time walk but what can you do.

Step 3 - Head for Via Aurelia
Now that we had climbed the hill we needed to head down the other side and head for via Aurelia. Our Hotel was located on via Aurelia, albeit some way out of the city on this road. We descended the hill and should have headed due west but for some reason we followed via Giacomo Medici and then via Pietro Roselli.

We were in the wrong place because we had headed south instead of west. This was turning into a long walk and a tiring one at that and we weren't even close to the Hotel yet.

We finally got our bearings correct again and made a quick turn onto Via Giacinto Carini knowing we were very close to via Aurelia. We came to a junction and could see no signs so I went and approached some flower sellers, all set to ask for directions.

"Buona sera" I said.

"yes?" the flower seller said.

He wanted to speak English so that was fair enough, even though I was ready with my question in Italian. That is frustrating when you travel in Europe and you're all set to ask the taxi driver a question in his language but he wants to practice his English.

Anyway, we were right next to it, via Aurelia.

Well not quite as it turns out. You see Rome has these old walls that act as boundaries for the old city. Via Aurelia in fact runs right alongside the Aurelian wall, built some time around 270, and is almost 12 miles long. In more recent times a new via Aurelia was built, in the form of a motorway, to take traffic in and out of the city.

Thus the road we were standing at was via Aurelia antica, with antica clearly meaning ancient or antique...

We were heading down what was pretty much the ancient roman road that led out of the city since the year 270.

And another thing it was dark. Dangerously dark.

We had a long way to go yet...

Back from Rome (adsum)

Well Rome was fun, brief but fun nonetheless.

I had very limited opportunity to look around the city, limited to Saturday evening but I made the most of the time anyhow.

The shuttle bus dropped us into the city on Saturday evening around 6:30pm. The bus stopped next to Piazza di Spagna, known to most tourists as the location of The Spanish Steps. This is some flight of steps for sure.

My bad knees would never make it all the way up so I didn't try it out. Just as we got off the bus it started to rain. Not normal rain, this was real cats and dogs rain, really chucking it down. We tried to get to where we were going, Piazza Navona, but the person asking for directions was getting mixed information. It could have been because he was Russian, asking Italians for directions in English. Maybe not the best mix there.

We ducked inside a cafe and ordered some coffees. The usual situation. 80 cent for a coffee if you stand just inside the door. But if your buttocks avail of the sparse furniture inside then your coffee will cost €1.80. That's life in cities that draw huge numbers of tourists.

The rain stopped after about 30 minutes, just like Ireland, and we headed back out to the street. Eventually we made our way to Piazza Navona.


It's a nice square but of course everything looks different at night time. All around the square were restaurants, with people dining al fresco under canopies. Not to be confused of course with canapés, there definitely were no people dining under canapés.

Anyway, these were all the kind of restaurants that are just made for tourists. Pizza, spaghetti, pasta and all the rest, with beer at €6 a bottle. Tourist trap is probably the correct expression.

We headed off the Piazza and around some nearby streets, where there were many better restaurants but each was quite small. We were a group of 6 so trying to find a nice small restaurant on a saturday evening for 6 people was always going to be tricky.

We eventually found a nice place, and a table for 6 had just become available. It was perfect. Except for one thing. Another Russian in the group didn't fancy the chairs. "These chairs don't look very comfortable" I think was the gist of what he said. General looks of "for god's sake.. is he serious?" shot around the group. We moved on. It was a bad move in hindsight.

We ended up back at the piazza Navona about an hour later, in some tourist trap place under a canopy. It was bland, over-priced and not so charming. It was a "get the order in, get the food out and get the table cleared" kind of place.

It was OK and after walking around for ages we just needed to eat. It started to lash rain again just after we sat down so at least that was good timing.

We ate, paid, and then moved on. We walked a little more around the Piazza and then decided to head back to the hotel.

This was the beginning of what turned out to be a night to remember, for all the wrong reasons.

Ciao tutti!

Indeed. It's time to travel again.

I'm off to Rome (Roma for those with "the benefits of a classical education" as they used to say in my Alma Mater) at the weekend for a business workshop.

It will be long and tiring but they are always worth it.

I'm trying to pack my bag but not having much luck. My soon-to-be 2 year-old son (that's a lot of hyphens right there) is lurking and doesn't really want me to go upstairs. Now he's opening drawers and stuffing all kinds of things in there and throwing the former contents of the drawer onto the floor.

You'd think I'd stop typing and bend down to pick these things back up. Ok, let me just do that.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Now where was I?

Ah yes. Actually now he's gone into the next room to practice his jumping and he seems to be eating a placemat.

So, Rome. Yes, off tomorrow to the airport for the usual long wait these days. I'll bring something to read, most likely to be the pre-work for the workshop. Always best to read this at the last minute... ensures it's nice and fresh in the mind. That's the story anyway.

Apparently we'll have some opportunities to go and eat in Rome on two evenings. I'm hoping that's true because it can be so boring when you have to stay in the conference venue, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner all in the same dining room. Zzzzzz.

The rules on what you can bring on to the plane have been relaxed too. So, I'll bring my iPod and my water and my Notebook (sometimes referred to as a Laptop) and some sucky sweets for the benefit of my ears. Not sure what sucky sweets are called outside of Ireland. These are boiled sweets I suppose, if I had to be more precise about the name.

Ok, the little man is back, this time he's trying on hats.

Ci vediamo.

Serious Road Rage

Just saw this on the RTE news site..

A 55-year-old man will appear in court today in connection with a road rage incident which left a woman with a fractured skull.

I'm not sure I want to even know what he did.

What gets into the heads of people who "suffer" from road rage? Where did these people learn to behave like this behind the wheel of a car?

I'm not sure I buy the idea that people just snap, like in that Michael Douglas movie. That's a convenient excuse perhaps for poor snap judgement and a poor choice of action.

I'm reminded of the section in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink! where he described the incident where Amadou Diallo, an innocent man, was shot dead by police without any just cause. Gladwell describes what has since been learned about what exactly went through the minds of the police officers and how it built to what they thought to be the "best" choice of response, to shoot.

Sometimes adrenaline and the other components of our brain-body physiology make us do stuff in an instant that we regret forever. Most of the time these bad decisions are no so serious, other times they are fatal.

Fracturing someone's skull because of some road-rage incident.

That's just mental.

Literally :-)

Spam - I don't get it..

Just to be clear. I do get spam in my inbox of Google mail. That's not what I mean.

I don't understand why anybody bothers to send spam. Or read spam.

And lately there's so much of it being sent and it's so unsophisticated. The subject of the message is often just junk. Why is that? Is it being generated by a computer invented by a moron who can't spell? It couldn't be that.. because some of the messages almost make sense.

Here are a few of my favourites from the current set of spam messages filtered out by google mail along with what I assume the message is about:

Make her scream like never before
presumably this is a few quick tips on how to give the woman in your life a chinese burn, how to get her in a headlock or maybe even an offer of some tickets for a David Hasselhoff concert in Berlin. Obvious.

Impress your woman with your animal instincts
Clearly this message has some great tips for knocking over the bin/garbage in your home and then eating your way through all the filthiest remnants of food you can find. Maybe a tip for how to dislocate your shoulder so you can "clean yourself" like a dog or cat would do. Who wouldn't want to open this message.

Be Macho!
Yes indeed. Clearly a membership form for the hairy chest club with a link to a downloadable medallion for printing onto glossy photo paper. I believe this is how most superstars started out so a must for all fans of macho heros such as Chuck Norris, Steven Segal and that guy in the Soprano's who was shot in the face so he couldn't have a proper funeral.

and finally..

Turnip Hooked
Now I have some colleagues who have never heard of Turnip. No idea what it is or what you do with it. This is clearly the e-mail for them. This is one of those informative and engaging introductions to this wonderful vegetable that by the time they have read to the bottom they are simply hooked. They are cruising the streets just hours later looking for a late night turnip score. And who could blame them. The king of "vegetables that can be eaten by humans and swine".

And now to delete all the ones offerings me Rolex watches and other smut.

Variable values

Sometimes I drive too fast. This causes me dissonance.

I think I am a safe driver but that's only the case about 95% of the time.

Other times I don't know why but I just drive more recklessly. Usually I drive too close to cars in front, often because I'm stressed and want to be somewhere 10 minutes ago.

But then I get there and ask myself "what the heck did you drive like that for?".

I usually find it easy to justify the erratic 5% using some external factors. What I've referred to before as the fundamental atribution error I guess.

I look around and more people are erratic more than 5% of the time they are behind the wheel so it's not all bad.

I just wish I could spot myself about to go into 5% crazy mode and somehow switch it off. Maybe put on some Kenny G or something on the CD player.

What about you reading this?

Does your driving behaviour swerve between "I am an excellent and safe driver" and "get the hell out of my damn way you moron"?

There's a mystery.. adult nappies

Shopping in Spain last week I noticed Adult nappies (diapers) on sale in the supermarket right next to the baby nappies.

Granted lots of folks clearly need these nappies/diapers due to bladder issues so there's no great surprise or mystery there.

The mystery is that these items are never seen on the shelves of supermarkets in Ireland.

Does this mean that only people living outside Ireland have incontinence problems? Or are we too ashamed to display such things in a supermarket frequented by the general public?

I'm going to go with the "shame" angle here. A quick search on Google reveals a Yahoo! page with loads of suppliers offering to discretely ship this shocking product to one's home. Yes, discrete shipping to help you avoid public shame and humiliation.

So we can go and buy toilet paper and those moist toilet wipes (see here for problems with these particular items) without incurring too much shame, but the unfortunate person with an incontinence problem must stay away from the supermarket. You'd swear this condition was contagious or something.

One point of caution. I am not referring to products for those folks who like to dress up like babies and stick dummies in their mouths. That's a whole other ball game.

So, good for Spain that this product is on sale and no-one is batting an eye-lid.

Unfortunately we Irish seem to share the same sense of shame about personal matters with our British cousins.

It seems that some 19 million people in the US suffer from this condition. So working the maths and applying roughly the same percentage to the Irish population it would seem that 230,000 people should be needing these products in Ireland.

So why aren't they on sale openly in the supermarket?

Now there's a mystery for you.

I am NOT eating that Donkey's nob

Yuk.

I buy into the concept of the "acquired taste". Many things are an acquired taste.

Guinness for example. Many people, upon drinking a pint of the black stuff for the first time, do comment on how "unusual" a taste it is.

Naturally people all around them are heard to utter "stick with it, it's an acquired taste".

That's without even mentioning the curious effects that first pint has on the old digestive system.

Frogs legs. That's another one.

Oysters. Yep. For some a delicacy, for others a revolting experience.

Russian Dog's Penis? Donkey Penis?

Indeed. Now who in their right mind would eat that? Well apparently in Beijing you can head into "some kind" of establishment that specialises in this gourmet fare.

Personally, I think the highlight must be the "bull's perineum". You're not going to find that on the menu at Friday's.

Click here to read all about it. Might be best to read this after you have eaten.