Is that geting your hair cut is so stress free. I don’t need an appointment to see a barber. I can just turn up and I will be in and out in 25 minutes. And it will only cost €10 for a cut.

There is a fair bit of truth to this…

I heard some talk at the weekend about possible contenders for a Mary McAleese replacement as the president. It seems a bit early as she willo be in the job until 2011, but I suppose the early stage jockeying has to start now.

If you keep up with my blog you will know I am no fan of the current president. It’s not that she is a Fianna Failer, but more I was dissapointed that at the last election (in 1997) we were just given a poor choice of Mary Robinson wannabe candidates from each party. She also is too close to the Catholic Church for my liking.

Which is why I think we need a swing back in the other direction to balance things the next time around. And if you were looking for an interesting, more liberal, independent, candidate then I think Senator David Norris would be excellent. So I am now declaring my support for having a Queen has head of state!

If you have been following the US health care reform debate (how much attention is it getting in Ireland?) you will have heard about the various crazies that have come out of the woodwork to attack the reform plans as they are “socialist”, “communist”, will advocate “death panels” that are going to kill Grandma, and so on. Most of these are right wing loonies. The same sort of people who think that Obama wasn’t actually born in the US, currently about 26% of Republicans. Over on the left in the US there are just as many weirdos. 18% of the population think that George Bush “probably” knew about the September 11th attacks in advance. This problem of people holding fringe looney ideas has got so bad it is impacting on day to day government and has become a big factor in US political discourse.

It is easy for us to sit back and have a laugh at the silly yanks. But as we roll up to Lisbon 2 the cranks are out in force again, peddling their outrageous nonsense about Lisbon leading to abortion, euthanasia, conscription, and a new one, preventing people from “passing on farms as a single working unit“. They derailed the first vote and could do so again.

What can you do about it? Not much really. That is the joys of democracy. You have to listen to the people, even if they are deranged. The only hope for countering this sort of thing is an educated populace who can rationally analyse and dismiss this nonsense, and responsible politicians who won’t peddle lies for the short term advantage it gains them. Unfortunately human nature being what it is, you can’t depend on either thing always.

I have a quote in my quote rotator that seems appropriate here:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. – H.L. Mencken

When I was down in South Africa I got to see MTN Zone in operation.

This is a clever idea that changes the amount that you are charged for a mobile call based on the time of the day, and how busy is the cell that you are connected to. There is a back end system that monitors traffic across all the base stations (BS) in the network. If a particular BS is quiet or has spare capacity then a discount is offered on calls there. The less traffic there is on the cell then the bigger the discount. MTN’s customers subscribe to the service by sending an SMS, and after that their phone has a % showing the discount available at that moment.

Being a bit of a geek I had my phone configured so that I could see the discount levels even if I couldn’t avail of them. In the 10 days I was in the country the discount level went from 5% (arriving into the airport in Jo’burg) to a whopping 90% (mid evening near Cape Town).

I had heard of MTN Zone before, it is based on a product called “Dynamic Discount” from Ericsson. It appeals to operators because it allows them to balance the load acrosss their networks, encouraging people to make calls in quieter times and locations. Punters like it as it gives them cheaper calls. The data I have see shows that it is very successful where it has been introduced, with most customers subscribing to the service within a few months, and operators get a big bump in ARPU and reductions in churn. I have even heard annecdotal stories of taxi drivers in Uganda offering to take people to where they know the biggest call discounts are on offer.

At the moment, as far as I know it is only African operators that have launched the service. And this is an occasional topic of conversation in work. Could a service like this work in a first world mobile market? Or more to the point would the Operators here offer it? Right now, no one is, but as soon as the first jumps the others will have to move quickly to follow.

Irish sailors can only look on in awe at such skills.

A handy to have guide. Print it out, keep it in your handbag, wallet or wherever

At this sort of price ($60), who wouldn’t want a set of night vision goggles.

Update
It looks like they are available as a two pack as well. If you are buying them, you need to make sure you are getting the version 2.0 ones.

We have an allotment. Well rather she has one and I am her indentured labourer, doing what I am told when I am told. That said I do feel a bit attached to the peas and beans.

We had a bit of a scare last week. We thought the spuds had the blight. And woe was us there for a while. Facing into a future of starvation, rags, and eviction by the perfidious sassanaigh, we would have had to sell the children to pay for a boat fare to ‘mericay and we expected to sare farewell to dear auld Ireland for ever more.

Fortunately my father who knows about these things explained it wasn’t the blight, we have since sprayed (just in case) and the curse of the Irish has been averted. For the moment…