Anger in today's youth.

 I was out for a drive around 10pm with some friends of mine a few months back and found myself surrounded by cars filled with youngsters. I’ve never felt so conscious of my own space. The drivers were like roosters standing over their nests: music pounding, windows down, making their presence felt.  I glanced over at one or two of the drivers, their glares were nothing short of threatening. It was a distasteful blend of “I’m out on the town with the boys” and “If you stare at me again I’ll have you.”

 I don’t remember being that angry when I used to go for a night out. The drivers looked a little over half my age, fuelled and fired up.  Are they really angry or are they an exaggerated adolescent version of all of us? For various types of rage, it seems, are all the rage. I read about a Scottish man who suffered severe head injuries at the hand of four teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17.  Then there was the brutal story of the Canadian in Sydney who, while in his wheelchair, suffered an unprovoked attack at a train station – again by a group of youths.

 What is the problem here?  The stream of examples of violent attacks by youths - fatal knife attacks at schools, bullying, and gang assaults – is scary and I doubt there is a parent out there who doesn’t shiver at the thought of what dangers their kids might face as they drift away from their homestead. But it’s not just our young, we’re hearing about violence across all age groups and it doesn’t have to be the alcohol, drug related or vicious fatal types that we see on the news everyday. Violence, rage and anger are everywhere and we’ve all experienced it at some level.

 Recent reports show that one driver in four admits to committing an act of road rage. One in five say they have ended a relationship or friendship with someone because of how they behaved when they were angry. 71% of internet users admit to having suffered net rage and 50% of us have reacted to computer problems by hitting our PC. The list goes on but more interesting than statistics is the types of rage we’re experiencing these days. Office rage, classroom rage, phone rage, road rage, queue rage, PC rage, air rage, shopping rage, pavement rage, lollipop rage. (Yes, lollipop rage - in the UK it has been reported that 1 in 10 lollipop ladies are a victim of abuse or violence.)

 Anger is a way of dealing with stressful situations, but these days it has become much more physical and violent.  Why are we so stressed? We live longer, have more holidays and our lives are much more comfortable than ever before. On the flip side, our lives are much faster paced, demanding, results driven and nowadays we’ve come to expect things instantly, even a short wait can be exhausting and annoying – waiting has become stressful.

 With the fiasco back in early 2010 on the F3 out of Sydney where motorists waited for hours to get out of the city after a fruit truck rear-ended a petrol truck carrying thousands of litres of petrol highlights how our lives can be instantly attacked by stress – a 12 hour traffic jam challenges our every anxiety and I doubt there is anyone who could remain calm in such a situation.  People have a right to be angry. There is some evidence that stress has overtaken the common cold as the main reason for taking time off work. Where does that lead? Anxiety and depression are two common side-effects on top of sleepless nights. A sleepless night will leave anyone with a short fuse.

 So if stress really is more prevalent then this is an unmet challenge for youths. I’ve heard the term, “Bad to the bone” and we all know somebody who we think is exactly that. While I believe it is true that there are those who have innate violent tendencies there are also those who are born into stressful environments, and possibly more stressful environments than there have been in the past, where violence and rage are acceptable means of expression. Anger is everywhere and everyone has different ways of dealing with it, it can even be healthy. But violence isn’t. As reason slips away, so does the bigger picture and lives get ruined. Where will this leave our youth?

EXCLUSIVE: KIM JONG-IL A GREAT DAD SAYS HEIR KIM JONG-UN; OTHER BROTHERS LESS ENTHUSIASTIC(online blog entry).

By Joe Hildebrand - The Daily Telegraph.http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/joehildebrand/

THIS WEEK countless thousands of North Koreans bade a final farewell to Kim Jong-il at a state funeral in Pyongyang but none of the mourners was so grief-stricken as his son and successor, Kim Jong-un.

Now in yet another extraordinary exclusive the Joe Hildebrand blog has uncovered a transcript of Kim Jong-un’s moving eulogy for his father…

(TAP, TAP) Testing… Testing… Testing… Wow, I just realised that’s the first time I’ve said ``testing’’ without the words ``nuclear weapons’’ in front of it. Boy, things change quickly around here.

Well thanks very much for coming ladies and gentlemen, especially those of you who did so voluntarily.

What can you say about Kim Jong-il? For me it’s nothing but good things _ and for so many reasons: his warmth; his kindness; People’s Edict 117A: Thou Shalt Only Say Good Things About Kim Jong-il. The list goes on.

I remember when I was little Dad said to me: ``Son, one day all of this will be yours.’’ Then he handed me a cyanide tablet. He was always kidding around like that.

The funny thing is that when I was a teenager I didn’t want to follow in my father’s footsteps _ I wanted to be in a rock and roll band. I remember having a fight with the bass player over who’d sing lead vocals. Next thing I knew the bass player was working in a coal mine and his parents had been sent to a re-education camp. Dad was always looking out for me that way.

Actually it’s a little known fact that Dad was a bit of a muso in his youth as well. He once told me he was the best singer/songwriter/lead guitarist in all of Korea. Of course I didn’t believe him at the time so he went and made a phone call and sure enough the next day it was on the front page of the newspaper: ``EXCLUSIVE: Kim Jong-il best singer/songwriter/lead guitarist in all of Korea’’.

I was still a bit suspicious so I asked Communications Minister Stephen Conroy if the Korean People’s Army Daily was a propaganda sheet that unquestioningly parroted the government line but he said it looked pretty good to him so I guess it must be true.

In fact all his life Dad loved to let his hair down and have a good time. I remember all the parties he used to have and all the amazing guests that would visit us: Mao, Brezhnev, Sarah Hanson-Young…

We’d all just sit around drinking vodka and eating turnips. Sometimes we’d play charades which I was really good at, and not just because the answer to everything was always ``Kim Jong-il’’.

Sometimes to mix things up a bit he’d change the answer to ``Kim Il-sung’’. That was Dad _ always full of surprises.

And I remember the other games we used to play at the palace. Dad was especially good at hide and seek. He once hid a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium from the United Nations for 17 years and that was pretty hard to do. Mum was always yelling at him to get it out of the kitchen.

And it wasn’t just WMDs. One day we were playing hide and seek with my brothers Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-chol and Dad hid them so well that nobody’s been able to find them ever since.

Unlike a lot of dads who are always too busy to spend time with their kids or held up at the office, we were always doing things together. Often he’d take me down to the driving range and we’d just whack a few golf balls. Of course he’d get a hole in one every time but he was always very encouraging. He said anyone could get a hole in one every time as long as they relaxed their shoulders, followed through with their swing and were Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

We also used to love doing things around the house together. Dad’s favourite was the gardening _ geez we’d have some laughs. I’d be out there all day planting stuff to no avail and then he’d come along and just walk across the flowerbed and ifvoilanf! Perfect orchids every time.

Of course like any family we had our ups and downs. I remember Dad once had to cut the throats of some counter-revolutionary elements and Mum was really cross at him for that. She said he shouldn’t have used the good scissors.

And of course there was that time he starved two million people to death but nobody’s perfect. Besides, Dad said they were all reactionaries.

Still, all in all it was just your typical childhood. I never would’ve guessed that I’d end up as Supreme Leader but I suppose life’s full of surprises like that.

So anyway, anyone for a round of golf?

                    Above: Kim Jong-un reflects upon his warm and loving childhood.

The sub-text here is that morons roam our roads (online blog entry).

By Tracey Spicer - The Daily Telegraph.http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/the-sub-text-here-is-that-morons-roam-our-roads/story-e6frezz0-1226236113363

IT was a performance worthy of a Guinness World Record.
Barrelling along Sydney Rd, Fairlight, the truck driver was texting on one mobile phone while speaking on another, steering the rig with his knees.
I hit the horn and indicated -- in no uncertain terms -- he should stop before he killed someone.
Still clutching the phones he slowly and deliberately raised his middle finger.
If only he'd read the sad story of 21-year-old Sarah Page -- a serial texter from New Zealand.
"It's fine, Mum, I do it all the time!" she'd protest.
Until she wrapped her car around a pole in 2009.
Sarah suffered massive brain injuries.
Her family turned off her life support.
The police returned her belongings, including a mobile phone.

There was a message in the drafts folder.
"I'm on my way to Napier," it read.
The time was 3.59pm, seconds before she crashed.
Her sister Sam said the tragedy has taught her a valuable lesson.
"It only takes a split second while you take your eyes off the road for tragedy to occur, and sending a text is just not worth it," she wrote in a heartbreaking blog.
In 2007 around 45,000 Australians crashed while using mobile phones -- 145,000 had a near miss.
Using a mobile phone increases the risk of an accident four-fold.
Your eyes are off the road for up to six seconds each time you look down to text.
And yet we keep doing it.
A survey in Victoria has found 70 per cent of motorists aged 18-25 admit to texting while driving.
Around one in five said they surfed the net while driving.
I had no idea about the extent of the problem until hubby got a new work car, the Hyundai iLoad.
From that height you see it all: The businessman tapping away on the iPad hidden in his lap; the middle-aged mum sending an email with her two precious kids in the back; the Gen Y who treats it like an extension of his arm.
So what are our state governments doing about it? Four-fifths of f . . . all.
Sure, there's a hefty $265 fine and the loss of three demerit points.
Last financial year, more than 50,000 NSW drivers paid a whopping $13 million in mobile phone fines.
But it's not changing our behaviour. And it's the same the world over.
In the US, some 3000 people were killed last year by so-called "distracted drivers". In one incident in Missouri a 19-year-old truck driver sent or received 11 text messages in as many minutes before causing a highway catastrophe which killed two people and injured 38.
This prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to urge all US states to ban using electronic devices while driving.
US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called it "an epidemic".
In Utah, texting drivers face three months jail and a $US750 fine. Arkansas bans all mobile phone use for drivers between 18 and 20.
In Japan, you can't use a phone in your car, full stop.
This was being considered by Australia's transport ministers in last year's draft national road safety report, which found even hands-free devices dramatically increase the risk of crashing.
Talking on the phone can slow your response time by 35 per cent, indeed, to that of a driver with a blood alcohol reading of 0.08.
"In my view it is as dangerous as speed and drink driving," said Superintendent Max Mitchell, acting Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Police Traffic Services Branch.
NSW police supported the idea of a ban.
Mark Stevenson, an epidemiologist who studies driving distractions, called for more drastic measures: "Vehicles could be manufactured with in-built blockers so drivers cannot receive phone reception when the car is turned on."
Such devices already exist.
But no one seems to have the guts to effect change.
We need to acknowledge that this is the new drink-driving menace.
Therefore, we should tackle it in the same way with a combination of hard-hitting TV campaigns and tough penalties.
A shocking advertisement on the dangers of texting while driving was shown at high schools in the UK two years ago. It was bought by the American Automobile Association to air after 9pm, because it was so graphic.
Why not bring it here?
Why not double, even triple, the fine?
And why doesn't mobile phone use cop the same double demerit points as other offences over the holiday period?
I believe we should turn the texting drivers into social pariahs.
The problem is, we all think we won't get caught.
Like the truck driver on Sydney Rd, we give the middle finger to those trying to curb our freedom.
Let's hope that it doesn't take the death of a loved one for us to realise the error of our ways.

Speaker the devil.

 Is there any button in the world more dangerous than the one marked "speaker phone"? Sure, George Dubya had access to a big red one that would have allowed him to wage apocalyptic nuclear war, but if you seriously think the staff of his real-life West Wing would have told him where it was, what it does or even how to push a button, you're as dim as he is.

 Frankly, danger lurks beneath every button on your mobile phone once you've gone beyond a sensible number of beers. The only people in this world who haven't sent a drunken text message and regretted it the next day are those who don't know how to send text messages at all. Or those people who don't drink.

 But the speaker phone is a real killer application. The tale of that fabled prankster Lote Tuqiri (now a rugby league player over here in Australia, and if you don't know what rugby league is Google it) amusing his teammates, and Peter Hewat in particular, by putting Wallaby selector Michael O'Connor on loudspeaker reminded me of a disaster I witnessed a few years back.

 It was the evening of a girl's night out and a girl friend of mine, who'd attended, was regaling us with tales of what her brother had gotten up to with a stripper the week before at a bucks party. Good, clean fun, obviously.

 So, my girl friend puts a call through to said brother and immediately fronts him with a question about his behaviour, which is followed by a brief but stony silence and then an apoplectic outburst from his girlfriend, who was sitting next to him while he drove, along the lines of: "You (expletive deleted). What (expletive deleted) stripper? You told me there weren't any (expletives deleted) strippers there. You're (really loud expletive deleted) dead." Being a responsible motorist, he'd answered the phone and put it on speaker. Bad move. Really bad move.

 The brother, called back a few minutes later to tell off his sister (my girl friend), and told her that he was now on the way to hospital to have his testicles removed from his throat. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I am actually old enough to remember a time before mobile phones.

 What I can't remember is how we ever lived without them. Please, do tell me if you've had, or heard of, similarly horrible speaker-phone shockers.