Highway accidents involving a cellphone, a moving car and a distracted driver are becoming a serious matter in most areas here in the United States.  Even with in-board phones and/or bluetooth headsets, reported incidents are steadily rising.  Is there any solution at all that would keep the driver focusing on the road.  In other countries they have began applying costly fines as a deterrent, a firm warning about how serious the matter really is.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, announced Monday that it has developed software called DriveAssistT that will detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds. When that happens, the software will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over. –From CNN.com

This maybe one of the many possible solutions around.  I could imagine this software crunching speed and distance  in real time to get a good accurate situation report.  Is it really in motion or not?  I hope they can get this to commercial grade so that it can be an option.  Last year 41,059 people died in traffic accidents… any help will go a long long way.

I just thought “why not show an upside down tree” to get your attention.  I think I did.  Hey, do you know that it’s just 100-days and counting ’til Santa shoots down your chimney on Christmas eve.  Yes,  I know a lot of radio stations now are doing the traditional Christmas countdown.  And as usual, well at least in South East Asia, Christmas songs will peek-a-boo on regular radio airwaves.

So, just in case you missed to give gifts to friends last year, make sure you write your gift list as early as you can.  You’d never know who you’d be missing, and it may be too late to rush to the store again for that single purchase.

I tried researching why we have Christmas countdowns… didn’t find it in Wikipedia.  But good ‘ol Google shared a few links with me that led me to this page.

The first church official to propose special activities for the pre-Christmas period was Perpetuus, bishop of Tours, in 490. To help his flock prepare for the holiday, he advocated fasting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Martinmas (November 11) to Christmas Eve. This practice, which mirrored Lent, spread slowly throughout France, Spain, and Germany.

A very moving video and probably the most watched this season on YouTube.com.  It was produced by NapCam, an organization in Australia dedicated to preventing child abuse. On September 7th to the 13th they have a campaign for the National Child Protection Week.

NAPCAN firmly believes that a critical factor in breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect is positive behavioural change at the individual level -all Australians accepting their personal responsibility to be positive role models for children.

The last part of the video was the most dramatic of all, I won’t spoil your viewing so you have better watch it right now.  True to the campaign slogan, children do imitate what adults do.  I think every known culture would agree that the best way to teach a child is to show them what you do.  “Telling them what to do” doesn’t work at all.  It’s the doing part that convinces these children we believe what we say.