Actor Andy Griffith, who played folksy Sheriff Andy Taylor in the fictional town of Mayberry, died Tuesday at the age of 86, his family said.
Griffith died at about 7 a.m. at his home on Roanoke Island, according to Dare County, North Carolina, Sheriff J.D. “Doug” Doughtie. He passed away after an unspecified illness and “has been laid to rest on his beloved Roanoake Island,” the family said in a statement.
Other than the Little House on the Prairie, The Andy Griffith Show (that featured Ron Howard as Andy’s son Opie) was one of “the” shows that we often watched during tea-break when we were still little kids. Even as kids, Andy’s situational jokes and family oriented storyline was easy to follow. Andy Griffith also starred in Matlock but it did not come close to the more famed The Andy Griffith Show.
American singer and actress Whitney Houston has died in Los Angeles at the age of 48. Police said she died in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she had been staying as a guest.
Houston was one of the most celebrated female singers of all time, with hits including I Will Always Love You and Saving All My Love For You. But her later career was overshadowed by substance abuse and her turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown.
Police were despatched, but paramedics who were already at the hotel because of the party attempted to resuscitate her, without success. She was pronounced dead at 15:55.
Not really a big fan of Whitney but she was one of the well-known female singers in late 1980s.
(We may not own an iPhone, iPod, iPad, iMac or download from iTunes but in one way or another, the way we use technology and some of our personal gadgets these days have greatly influenced by Steve Jobs ideas, innovation and footprint for better user friendly and usability designs. Image source: Wikipedia)
Click these posts from Fast Company for interesting insights on Steve Jobs:-
UPDATE: Good to hear that the police is going all out for those who is speeding on the roads. Hopefully they will find better ways to crack down pesky motorcyclists and enforce the law on those who change lane without putting on the indicators, abuse the emergency lane, hog the roads, etc
Back to the original post
(Caught this video back in 2008 of those who abuse the emergency lane – nothing have changed in 2011. Will we see change of attitude in 2012?)
I thought of replying it under the comment box but looking at the length of my reply, I might as well put it as a reply post:-
Hi Visithra
Thanks for your comments – it is heartening to know that the authorities do take the enforcement serious
I think everyone (me, you, the authorities, etc) do agree on one thing – there is a serious attitude problem with fellow Malaysians when they are on the road (it is the same in every other country as well). I have been saying the same thing too. And I am not saying that that the authorities are not enforcing the law at all but the problem is that they are not doing enough to enforce the law (I will come to the part of “what the solution, then” shortly).
In relation to attitude problem, you ask “why can’t we change?” Good question there but unfortunately there are certain things you can do to call people to change their attitude when they are on the road – organising safety talks, campaigns on mainstream media and public areas, compilation of statistics, etc but it will come to a point where these “soft approach” had done its part. If nothing much changed positively (as evident from Ops Sikap 24 statistics and your comments that no matter what you tell them they go back to doing the same thing), it is high time for the Government to take stronger measures.
It is up to you to advocate the continuation of the soft approach – participate in road safety campaign, give out free helmets (which probably ends up on the motorcycle basket rather than on their head), etc and hopefully one day these road users will see the light at the end of the tunnel and change their attitude.
But seriously, don’t you think that the Government have been doing that for donkey odd years? It may have moved a small percentage of them but a bulk of them seemed to have remained stubborn and unmoved. If this soft approach has been effective, wouldn’t it have worked – even if number of vehicles on the road sky-rocketed? That is my point preciously. Let’s have a look at the statistics (you can “google” them for the sources):-
Deaths in Ops Sikap 21 = 241
Deaths in Ops Sikap 22 = 218
Deaths in Ops Sikap 23 = 199
Deaths in Ops Sikap 24 = 289
Summons issued in Ops Sikap 23 = 167,868
Summons issued in Ops Sikap 24 = 133,808
After the end of Ops Sikap 24 which saw a huge increase of fatality (if number of cars to be blamed, shouldn’t deaths in Ops Sikap 21 – 23 be increasing as well?), it is obvious that they need to relook into these soft approaches and revamp the whole strategy. It is ok if those with serious attitude problems go and kill themselves in road accidents but it does not happen that way – it affect others as well directly or indirectly. It impacts the family, other innocent road users (who were at the wrong place and at the wrong time), and the country as whole.
Just a couple days ago, I witnessed a bus with full load of passengers streaming down the highway at more than 120 km/h weaving in and out of the fast lane – it must be someone’s lucky star that it did not hit anyone and end up killing someone on the road. So how we are going to prevent a repeat this incident? Send all bus drivers to road safety seminar and hope that they will drive safer the next day? Given the fact that bus drivers are driven by the economics of trips per month, I have my doubts that soft approach will cause bus drivers to be slower on the roads. What else can be done?
Let’s say the authorities are indeed serious in enforcing the law but having a problem of unable to be everywhere at the same time – the question is what they are doing about it?
In my last post, I talked about the need for road safety operations to be conducted all around the year (road safety operations here does not means road safety seminars in some posh hotels). And I made my share of the noise when they canceled the plans to increase the fine to RM1,000 – that should have been introduced for hardcore road offenders. Then there were talks of “Automated Enforcement System” at certain hot-spots – are they widening the scope of enforcement? What about those traffic cameras that snaps the photos of those who jump the red light? Surprisingly I don’t see them anymore in most of traffic lights where jumping the red light is a norm.
Most fatalities happened on federal and smaller roads and here, it would be harder to monitor but that does not mean the traffic laws cannot be enforced especially when seeing a motorcyclist on public roads without any helmet. Of course, there will be issue of manpower and resources but the starting cost for these can easily off-set from the summons collected from the traffic offenders and relocation of resources from other areas (as how it is done in battling other crimes with more policemen deployed on the streets).
On my part, whenever possible, I snapshot of those abuse the traffic laws (in particular the emergency lane) and sent them to JPJ for their further action for I believe call for attitude change is a waste of time. If the authorities provide some good incentive for people to be their eyes and ears in catching the road offenders in their act, I am pretty sure that there will be more people helping the authorities and the level of enforcement would be more effective.
These are just some of actions that the government agencies involved in reducing the number of fatalities could do. Such measures are NOT new and I am sure, is not something that they have not thought about. So, what’s stopping them from enforcing it?
I am not saying that we should stop the soft approach completely – there are still new, inexperience drivers coming on board every year. Who knows, it may do good for some of them especially when it is done from school level and up. However, given the fact that the statistics of Ops Sikap 24 which saw higher fatalities compared to Ops Sikap 23, 22, 21, the authorities should also relook into the aspect of enforcement – PDRM & JPJ in particular (leave JKJR to focus on the soft approach). And they need to do this before start of Ops Sikap 25.
(It may not be the same but the new World Trade Center will bring a closure and sense of new hopes for New Yorkers and with a memorial in between, keeping the thoughts of those who perished in the tragedy forever in our hearts. Image source: Wikipedia)
It has been 10 years and even now as we watched the 911 documentaries such as the award winning “102 Minutes that Changed America” last Sunday, seeing the planes hitting the Twin Towers, innocent office workers jumping down to the death to avoid the burning inferno in the inside and many more perish (some without any trace) when the towers collapsed.
The tragedy caused 2,996 deaths – innocent people from more than 90 countries (including Malaysia) and which included 343 brave firefighters from the New York City Fire Department who despite the dangers of fire, building collapsing and continued terrorists attack, continued to walk up the staircase to rescue the trapped ones and fight the blazing fire. The total deaths also included 292 people were killed at street level by burning debris and falling bodies of those who had jumped from the World Trade Center’s windows.
What a tragedy!
I still remember the day when I first heard about the tragedy 10 years ago – I was at the motorcycle parking bay, just parking my bike when a colleague of mine asked me whether I heard of the tragedy and then passed me the newspaper that showed the plane crashing into the building. As many Americans who were stood dumb-struck after the first plane struck the North Tower, I too stood dumb-struck seeing the photo on the front page. I could not believe it.
Conspiracy theories aside and no matter what the reasons that the hijackers may have had in crashing 4 planes down, it does not justify the killing of almost 3,000 innocent people. And now in place of the old World Trade Center, the new World Trade Center is being built. It is built to last another disaster and to ensure fatality kept to the minimum:-
New safety features will include 3 feet (91 cm) thick reinforced concrete walls for all stairwells, elevator shafts, risers, and sprinkler systems; extremely wide “emergency stairs”; a dedicated set of stairwells exclusively for the use of firefighters; and biological and chemical filters throughout its ventilation system.
At its closest point, West Street will be 65 feet (20 m) away. The windows on the side of the building facing in this direction will be equipped with specially tempered blast-resistant plastic, which will look nearly the same as the glass used in the other sides of the building
In addition to the protection offered by the reinforced, window-less base, a number of other design and security features are planned for the building. For example, all vehicles will be screened before they enter the site via the underground roadway, including for radioactive materials.
Visitors to the September 11 memorial will undergo an airport-style screening. 400 closed-circuit surveillance cameras will be placed in and around the trade center site.
Live feeds will be monitored around the clock by the NYPD, and a computer system will use “video analytic” computer software designed to detect potential threats like unattended bags and retrieve images based on descriptions of terror or other criminal suspects. New York City and Port Authority police will patrol the site
These skyscrapers have steel connections capable of redirecting the path of the upper floors’ load downward through other structural members if one should fail. And sprinkler supply lines have been located within an impact-resistant core–a major difference from the Twin Towers
In addition to designing wider staircases and building separate stairs for firefighters (a strategy borrowed from the British, who have long practiced this), architects at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is pioneering an elevator-assisted exit system that would help people on the highest floors get out faster
(Facts sources: Wikipedia & Fast Company)
The 911 tragedy will remain one of the greatest human made tragedies in recent times and one that propelled the fall of Saddam Hussein and the Islamic extremist regime in Afghanistan and probably propelled events leading to the people’s uprising in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen.
America as Government may have its fault – who doesn’t? Which country has perfect, good natured, forward thinking politicians in recent times? And its close relationship with Israel and its commitment and policies in the Middle East may be questionable by those working and living in the region but terrorist attacks in the name of religion remains evil and uncalled for – whether it is on an office tower in New York, USA or a fun bustling night club in Bali, Indonesia.
