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Telephonephobia is a new thing!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Telephonephobia is a new thing!

With surprise I read about a new “problem” in this world. It is the fear of having a phone conversation. The reasons can be manifold. Maybe the information you have to pass on is bad news, or you are concerned that the person you talk to would put you on the sport and you don’t know how to answer a question, or your communication partner is just toooo chatty.

I am on the phone a LOT, due to work, but also for private calls, but after reading about the fear of phone conversations in a German publication, I realised that there are some people that I hardly EVER talk to on the phone. Facebook Messenger and What’s App are the only means we use to communicate with each other. :-O

Are we hiding behind all these messaging apps?

I am not sure if the term Telephonephobia has been used yet for this new type of aversion of using the phone, but it definitely has the danger to become a bit of a problem. A few minutes of a call will create a closer bond with the other person AND will speed up the communication hugely. Have you ever tried to arrange a meeting with someone on messaging platforms only? It can be a pain in the backside to make all arrangements and usually takes a lot longer than a quick call.

So I am in favour of using the phone to TALK to people again. ;-) Who is with me?

Odd,

Weather Shambles in Ireland!? Can we handle the weather?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Weather Shambles in Ireland!? Can we handle the weather?

Before I start into this article, let me state – for the avoidance of any doubt – that neither the Irish government nor Irish Water can be made responsible for the weather. Irish politicians would probably love to lay claim to organising the most suitable weather for their constituents and Irish Water is never at fault about anything at all anyway, but we will have to let them off the hook regarding their weather responsibility. :-)

The question that I came across during the week does, however, have something to do with Irish authorities and with their ability (or not!) to forward plan and to do what we need them to do when it comes to weather challenges.

Weather is an important topic in Ireland! We love to talk about it and even more to complain about it. We don’t really have any weather extremes, but you wouldn’t know that if you listen to weather news or read just a normal newspaper.

Oddly, though, we seriously struggle as soon as something out of the ordinary (i.e. 13 degrees and scattered showers) happens. If we have 2 cm of snow, the country comes to a stand still. Traffic collapses, schools close and the country stops operating. On the other end: Give us around 20 degrees for a few weeks with no significant rain fall and we are (nearly) running out of drinking water.

Is this normal? Well, there are countries in Europe that regularly have significant snow fall and just keep going. And there are other countries where they know they will have hardly any drop of rain from Spring until end of Autumn and still, people will water their lawn and drinking water is plentifully available.

We claim that we are not used to it and therefore we struggle dealing with it. Hmmmm, Middle Europe (around Germany) had temperatures of above 35 degrees for well over a week and they are also not used to it, but life continues. Water is still there despite very little rain this year. Mallorca, Fuerteventura and the south of Spain (just to mention a few popular places) have no rain at all in the summer, but there doesn’t seem to be a hosepipe ban. And if we look at the other end of the year: Snow is never guaranteed in parts of Middle Europe. But if there is snow, then they deal with it and continue!

When will we start to prepare for increasing temperatures, lack of rain and occasional snow? The holes in the water pipes need to be plugged asap, we need more deep wells to get better water than surface water and we need to think about water desalination.

But what about winter time? We now do have salt and we have snow ploughs and still there is panic and mayhem. Do we need new rules? Make Winter tyres compulsory? Make it compulsory that house owners clean the footpath?

What do you think would fix the problems in summer and in winter?

Environment, Odd, Politics, ,

Life is TOUGH when you are given the correct change!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Life is TOUGH when you are given the correct change!

OMG! What has our world come to? A gentleman was traveling on the DART from Lansdowne Road to Dun Laoghaire and he bought a ticket at the ticket machine. The ticket was EUR 2.70 and he had only a EUR 20 note. So he put the money in the machine and the machine gave him a ticket AND gave him the CORRECT amount of money back. But that didn’t please this gentleman and he had to make a video clip to complain about ….. the fact that the machine gave him the correct amount of money in COINS. What a HORRIBLE and UPSETTING experience!! :-O

The gentlemen was not just anybody, no, it was Conor McGregor’s father and I guess that is one of the reasons why it got picked up by a number of people and then also made it into some media channels. Someone also grabbed the video and made it available for all of us on YouTube youtu.be/hrq-2FFFcrc so that we can have a laugh or a head-shake about the tough tough life that McGregor’s dad has to endure.

Oh, you wonder WHY getting coins back was a problem? Well, didn’t you know that he wears a “slim-fit, hand-fitted, Hugo Boss suit”, so where in god’s name would he room for coins??

Life is sooooo tough for some!!

www.rte.ie/entertainment/trending/2018/0723/980555-gofundme-set-up-for-conor-mcgregors-dad/

Dublin, Odd, ,

Amalgam in Tooth fillings: Harmless but DON’T use it?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Amalgam in Tooth fillings: Harmless but DON’T use it?

Last week a number of media outlets reported that EU had brought in a law that outlawed the use of Dental Amalgam for fillings for children under 15 and pregnant or breast feeding women. The law is from 2017 already, but it came into effect only on 01 July.

So what is Amalgam? Amalgam is compound for tooth fillings that contains Mercury. Mercury is highly toxic but for some odd reason it is allegedly harmless when in your mouth.

The Irish Times wrote in an article “Mercury is the only liquid metal and, while safe when used in dentistry, has been associated with incidents of poisoning, as in the Bay of Minamata in Japan where, in the 1950s and 1960s, a disfiguring disease was identified to be associated with industrial-scale mercury poisoning.”

So it’s safe, but causes poisoning!? How does that make sense?

The Irish Times continued and claimed that the change was part of the Government’s adherence to the Minamata Convention, a United Nations agreement dating from 2013, which aims to protect human health and the environment by reducing, or eliminating altogether, the use of the chemical element mercury.

But it might not surprise you that the Irish Government delayed the change until the very last moment and that it only did so because of a EU law change.

Interestingly Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany have banned or restricted use of amalgam already in 2011. But the Irish Government thought it was appropriate to allow the use for another 7 years! SEVEN!

Now why is this change happening? After all the Health Service Executive in Ireland said that the Amalgam compound was “a safe, reliable and durable filling material, and has been used successfully for over 100 years”. So something safe and perfect will be banned? Isn’t that odd? Bans are normally reserved for dangerous things, no?

Well, interestingly if you are older than 15 or not pregnant, you can currently still get Amalgam fillings DESPITE the fact that many other countries saw the need to ban it.

So is it dangerous or not? Dentists and Health Service Executive tell us that it is safe, but how could they not do that. It would imply that they were lying all along. The ban for children and pregnant women is a clear admission that it is NOT safe.

DON’T use it and tell your dentist that you do NOT want any Amalgam fillings added!

 

Health System, Odd, , , , , , , ,

“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
“Hosepipe Ban” – Are they for real??

When I read this, I thought it was a Waterford Whispers News story. (Waterford Whispers News is an Irish satirical news website that usually hits the nail on the head with their brilliant headlines.) The announcement that made me think it is a joke was the announcement by Irish Water on Friday that from Monday 02 July a “hosepipe ban” would be in effect in the Greater Dublin area.

At first I thought it is Irish Water nonsense, but checking into it a bit more I realised that a piece of Irish Law really mentions that the “use of water drawn through a hosepipe” can be prohibited for the use of “watering a garden, watering recreational parks or sports grounds […], irrigating or spraying crops […], or washing a mechanically propelled vehicle or a trailer”.

Water conservation makes sense if there is a shortage and due to the idiotic way public water supplies in Ireland are ONLY served from surface water in lakes and reservoirs (instead of using water from underground sources) we are currently entering a period of water shortage. BUT a “hosepipe ban” just sounds like a ridiculous piece of law.

The ban will be in place for the whole month of July and if someone is found in breach of the ban, they could be fined EUR 125.

But here comes the interesting stuff:

While the wording above is taken from the “Water Services Act 2007”, Irish Water is NOT banning all wasteful water use. Instead they reduce the ban to “watering a garden, cleaning a private motor-vehicle using a domestic hosepipe. […], filling or maintaining a domestic swimming or paddling pool (except when using hand held containers filled directly from a tap), […]” so that means if you use a domestic hosepipe you are not allowed to clean the car, but if it is a commercial hosepipe, you can go ahead without any issues. It also means that your swimming pool must not be filled via hosepipe, but if there is a tap above the swimming pool OR if you get LOTS of big containers and fill it by hand, you are all above the law.

Dublin, Environment, Irish, Odd, , ,
 
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