Adventure Reviews

... got an unwelcome surprise when police found more than 600 snakes and other reptiles packed in the luggage compartment.Acting on a tip-off, police intercepted the bus in a northern province bound for Buenos Aires, asked to see passengers' documents, then began poking into their bags. A wildlife smuggler had packed 444 boa constrictors, vipers and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo.No word on whether there was room left for socks and jocks.

And that’s something that keeps carmakers tossing and turning at night, because they’re well aware that women choose more than half the vehicles sold – all the ones they buy for themselves, and also most of the ones that are bought by households.Sorry, fellas. It’s true. No matter how much you want that souped-up sportscar. Unless SHE agrees, you may as well back away from the vehicle now, sir.One of the most blatant grabs for the female market was the mid-50s Dodge La Femme. It was actually a 1955 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer under the skin, but the Detroit designers camouflaged that skin as thoroughly as a make-up artist for the Milan catwalks.And the first bait they used? Pink, of course. The colour universally agreed to be female, and lumbered on us from the cradle. A short stroll through the rosy glow of the girls’ aisle in any toy store shows the colour indoctrination starts early. Everything in pink: stuffed toys, dolls, prams – and, further into the career-training section: play stoves, brooms, vacuum cleaners... even a pink draining rack and dishmop.So it’s no surprise the La Femme was decked out in pink paint, with an interior covered in pink vinyl, set off by pink rosebud tapestry. And to show that this was not merely a cynical marketing exercise, Dodge kitted out the car with accessories that reflected the growing independence of women moving into meaningful career paths: a pink handbag complete with office essentials like a matching powder compact, lipstick case and comb.Because the La Femme sales figures were never separated out from the Custom Royal Lancer, it’s impossible to tell how many were sold. But estimations run as low as less than 1000. But the pink disaster being quickly dropped from the Dodge range at the end of the following year probably gives an indication of how successful it was.However it fared better than the 2004 Volvo YCC concept car. Designed by women, and featuring a host of features that those women said they wanted – and that the women and men who saw the car applauded.Some of the more general ones – automatic doors, parking assistance, diagnostics and service warnings – have since appeared in later cars. But the more female-specific features, such as the ponytail-holder channel in the driver’s seat, vanished without a trace.Volvo never intended to put the show car into production. And that’s the key to the whole problem, really.Carmakers might wrestle with insomnia, drown themselves in the chatter of focus groups, and spend obscene amounts on surveys and studies, all to supposedly find out what women want.But what’s the point? We’ve got as much chance of seeing that ponytail holder as we have of seeing men do their share of the housework.  Less chance, even – if it’s mathematically possible to conceive of a probability so miniscule.

And that they are are addicted to gadget buttons. At least, that news won’t be a shock to any household that contains these three items: a television, a remote control (RC), and a male.Those carefully-controlled laboratory conditions are universally acknowledged by leading scientists to be the optimum litmus test for the presence of the additional Y chromosome that dictates male gender. Female is X only and …err, Y not.Longstanding empirical research into the subject has resulted in the following scientific equation: TV + RC + Y = constant button-pushing.Conversely – and far more intelligently — TV + RC + X = SATC marathons + C7H8N4O2 (where C7H8N4O2 is the chemical formula for Belgian chocolate).But RC syndrome is the not the only example of male gadget addiction. There are others, and they’re proving to be far more dangerous.A recent study of 2500 Australian drivers revealed that 17 per cent of male respondents admitted to losing focus while using their satellite navigation systems in the car. That compares to just 12 per cent of women.The research by insurance firm AAMI found that men are more inclined than women to fiddle with the GPS on the run. Apparently, where women tend to set up the GPS destination before they head off, men are more likely to try and do it on the run.This is probably because men will end up several postcodes off-track before they’ll even consider the ignominy of asking directions. Even of a gadget designed specifically for giving an opinion on directions, and for which the man has paid a considerable stack of change, presumably with that purpose in mind."Men have a tendency to pre-occupy themselves with gadgets and gizmos, particularly those that are loaded with technology. For some men, the temptation to fiddle and change settings on their GPS can be too great,” AAMI spokesman Mike Sopinski says.The irony is that a device intended to make driving easier and safer – compared to the practice of steering the car from behind an unfolded expanse of paper map – has now become a safety hazard.Added to this, the survey reported extra driver distractions from phones, music players, and probably electric shavers, food and drink as well.“In many ways, technology is a bonus for drivers, but they also need to employ their own commonsense, as a complement to the equipment to ensure they're not putting themselves or other drivers at risk,” Sopinski says.He also says some men think they know better than the technology, and questioned the GPS’ ability to get them to their destination, or even started an argument with itHard to believe that men would doubt directions given by somebody – or something – other than themselves, we know. And arguing? Unthinkable.

Navestock Parish Council in Essex has declared it will no longer report road craters for repair.Instead, they want the potholes left to erode further, increasing their ability to slow traffic down."Potholes cost a lot to repair,” a council announcement said. “Coupled with potholes there is an ongoing cry for speed limits … potholes are the original traffic calming measure.”The writer went on to suggest that the government “change the law which obliges councils to repair potholes so that our country lanes can get pot-holey and thus slowing traffic to our ideal way of life, save hedgehogs and rates, and possibly keep people out."And it’s that last sentence that gives the game away. Navestock council doesn’t really want to slow drivers down. Not at all. It wants to stop people driving there altogether.Pesky visitors. Possibly even nasty tourists. Wanting to invade Navestock’s idyllic roadways and fiddle with the fauna.But – in the longstanding tradition of local government bodies – the council’s move shows the usual myopic lack of vision and dereliction of their duty of care for the community.It’s just not good enough. Potholes by themselves will not stop traffic, otherwise most of Australia would have ground to a halt long ago.You need to add some extra calming measures, but the potholes can help provide them. For a start, as they grow, the chasms are sure to catch out two-wheeled traffic.Just imagine how effective lane-change warnings would be if the road studs were replaced with a neatly-spaced conga line of mangled scooters and motorbikes.And hopefully you’d also get a scattering of those noisy, footpath-legal abominations that negligent parents insist on buying for their over-indulged litters. It shouldn’t be too hard to harvest a few of those with potholes, since they can be run off city walkways with merely a strategically-placed foot in their path. Err… or so we’ve heard.Then there’s the possibilities offered by the fluoro and reflective wardrobe favoured by cyclists. Scrape enough of them off the bitumen – or just roll them into the centre of the road — and you could probably replace kilometres of median strip. And just imagine how lovely it would look at night. You’d probably crowds to rival the city’s Christmas tree switch-on.And if a widening pothole is “the original traffic calming measure”, how much more effective could it be with a car irretrievably wedged in the crater. Or a couple of “rum pig” stickered offroaders. Or even – as the craters grow — some of the B-double parade that serenades the residents along the freight corridors.There’s true council vision for you!

And the latest – a low-budget doco already starting to make a splash in the US – looks set to be a hit with the timely idea that underhanded mischief has long been a practice of the fuel industry.And why not. After all, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean Big Oil isn’t plotting against you.Gashole – which when spoken with an American accent, intentionally rhymes with a popular term of endearment – puts forward the premise that oil companies have been manipulating governments, media and technological progress in order to keep their piggy bank well fed and happy.The movie suggests that the governments even collude with the companies to keep the price of fuel see-sawing between peaks that are judged to be as high as the public will bear, and troughs intended to calm the consumers when there’s an outcry. Coupled with the occasional bit of political policy or procedure intended to make the public think governments are actually doing something.Sound plausible? And did we hear somebody mutter `Fuelwatch’ in the back rows?Gashole also pursues rumours of cars that get 100 miles per gallon (about 2.4 litres per 100km) but that have been quashed by Big Oil. This chase had the movie directors — Scott D Roberts and Jeremy Wagener – trawling though the US Patent Office records, trying to track down some of the vehicles and technologies that have gone into urban legend.Are they myths, or is there a conspiracy?“I went into this very sceptical,” Roberts told eyewant.“I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all. Having said that, we put the pieces of the puzzles together with factual documentation and eyewitnesses. We absolutely feel that we substantiated any claims we made to hidden or buried technology.“We stand by what we found and we let the audiences make up their own minds. Most of the reaction from the thousands of people that have seen the film is shock, frustration and anger.“We even found the head scientist from Shell Oil who was in charge of their testing. His job was to see how many miles per gallon they could get on passenger cars. His own words are absolutely shocking.”Roberts says the Gashole team had relatively little response from the oil industry when they were making the movie.“We asked all of the big oil companies for their input and reactions to our claims but we were declined any interviews,” he says.“We also asked to talk with them about their alternative fuel programs and where they saw the implementation of alternative sources of fuel in the next five to ten years — also no response except from an executive at Chevron who put us on speaker phone and laughed at us.”Roberts says the ultimate aim of the film was to have the public realise the scope of the fuel problem.“We wanted to tell a great story and also to have people from all political sides open their eyes to the fact that our dependence on foreign oil is not a technological problem — it's a social problem, an economic problem, and a political problem,” he says.“We've had the technology for years to vastly improve fuel economy but haven't used it.”Gashole is not yet scheduled for screening in Australia, but clips from the movie can be seen on the internet, including a provocative trailer on myspace and an excerpt that shows Democrat Barbara Boxted revealing how Shell manipulated a refinery story to help bolster prices. 

It might sound like a science fiction dream — or more likely nightmare — but experts are predicting that one day robocops will be patrolling the streets.Professor Noel Sharkey, who sports the chief white coat and pocket protector in the artificial intelligence bunker of Britain’s Sheffield University, has completed a study that concluded robots will be doing most of the crime fighting and traffic duties within 30 years.As they should, the roborozzers will have superhuman strength, be unable to feel pain, and will apparently all be hooked into the rafts of databases that contain all our bank accounts, tax files, criminal records and even shopping history and movements. Although it’s not clear why they would want to know that you spend half the night looking for old comic books and collectible beer bottles on ebay.The learned professor spent a couple of months on the study, funded — you won’t be surprised to hear — by a film company about to unleash a boxed set of desperate cash-calf sequels titled something like Son (or great-great-grandson) of Terminator.He delved into all the latest research from around the world, in addition to apparently doing some assiduous study into future trends and ideas, as developed by the eminent rocket scientists in Hollywood.And according to his findings, the robots will be joined by autonomous police cars that can detect a speeding car, recognise its number plates and automatically add demerit points to the owner’s license — in addition to deducting fines from their bank account on the spot.This will raise some problems if your car has just been stolen and is speeding away with the thief at the wheel. But doubtless there will some sort of system where you can appeal an unfair charge and fine swiftly and easily, and be listened to with sympathetic understanding. Just like today.The robocars will also be able to administer random alcohol and drug tests, and presumably cart you off the street and down to the watch-house if they consider you’re over the limit.Professor Sharkey doesn’t venture what the robotic police cars might look like, but you can imagine some kind of misalliance between Knight Rider — for those of us old enough to remember David Hasselhoff’s launching role, but not old enough for the mercies of senility to have erased the horror from our grey matter — and the Sheriff from the Cars animation (for the rest of you).But he thinks the mechanised officers themselves will look pretty much like us, with human-like features concealing a construction of inanimate materials with a battery power system and an electronic till rather than a heart and brain. Much like parking Nazis, really. 

This is good news. Except for the fact that it's not news. Or true.But it's just the bait needed to attract green-tinted car buyers who will “lean to green” to pacify their guilt-ridden materialistic heart.More manufacturers are making big news out of PR machines because it these engines that can swing buyers into their showrooms.A successful PR machine prides itself on successfully conning journalists into relaying precisely what they want to the public. The journalist sees it as an easy story and the reader sees it as a true story complete with an independent, unbiased writer's name on the top.It appears to be happiness all around. Pigknocker Motors does so well out of the publicity that it starts to advertise in the same newspaper. A win-win-win.But what about the reader? The chum who rushes out and with half a bank vault under his arm and 10 years to repay, plunges $45,000 on a Pigknocker de Luxe with seat warmers?He believed the win-win-win of the manufacturer, the PR outfit and the newspaper advertising department. He was thinking win-win-win-win with his ownership of the de Luxe being the fourth big win.Sadly it wasn't to be. Pigknocker had invested so much in PR that it didn't have a lot left over for after-sales support. To save on staff outgoings, the Customer Service woman with the nice voice was also the car detailer and wasn't there to answer the phone when the complaints started rolling in.And all the greenery that was promised came at a cost. No-one told our chum that the de Luxe only used premium unleaded, needed servicing every 5000km, had superb wet-weather tyres for grip but wore to the canvas in only 10,000km, had back-up batteries that needed annual changes and that the much-lauded fuel economy was achieved in a vacuum-sealed laboratory in Finland with 125/75R16 tyres and with the mirrors, bumpers, door handles, wipers and grille removed while the engine ran artificially without alternator, water pump, aircond compressor, oil pump, power-steering pump and half its required sump oil.Our chum, after a year of ownership, feels decidedly ripped off - a fact enforced by his self-opinionated neighbour with the Corolla who barely has to wash his car - but still believes he has done his bit to save the planet.But, of course, none of this is true. No company would release a car on the market that promises the earth and delivers nothing but a breath of warm oxygen.They wouldn't get away with it because car buyers today are savvy, right on the money and clicked into the new wave of technology.No-one, especially the young who know everything and the mature who used to remember, could get fooled by any PR machine dishing up twisted facts. Could they? 

A great idea in the days when smoking was still a style statement. And while smoking is now frowned on, the lighter fitter is still an absolutely crucial idea these days, when the current mandatory fashion statements all need to be powered up. Mobile phones, music players, portable DVD players … they all compete for attention from what can be the lone DC outlet in most cars. Toss in a handheld satnav and you’re really in trouble.The solution? Alternative ways to charge up while you’re on the move. Sure, you can get little gadgets that you fill with normal batteries, and then your phone sucks the charge out of them. But using batteries to charge a battery seems frankly unimaginative when there are other novel ways to do the job.Several companies keeping an eye on emerging markets have launched phones that can be charged on a bicycle. They’re probably a hot seller in China where you have 500 million cycle commuters — and 5 million new mobile accounts every month – but a bit difficult to use in any vehicle smaller than a delivery van.However, there are several little hand-crank chargers on the market. Looking like something between a fishing reel and a pencil sharpener, the idea is that you grind it furiously for a few minutes before you make each call. Marvellous notion, perfect for remote areas, and all very green and environmentally sound.The only problem is that they don’t work very well if your phone battery is already flat. And if you depend on the hand-crank to keep it charged, it’s going to be dead flat. All the time.We spun the handle into a blur and still didn’t get enough charge to do more than send a brief SMS.And all that winding-up was a bit boring, too. Which is why we’re very keen on the idea of Orange’s prototype charger – recently tested at Britain’s Glastonbury festival – that powers your phone (or music player) by capturing the kinetic energy of your dancing.You strap the DanceCharge on and boogie away, a system of weights and magnets generates an electrical current to charge you up.Given that Glastonbury is fairly well-known for consumption of the kinds of ingestible substances that demand frenzied dancing at even the sound of a tinny ringtone, this gadget could effectively turn you into a perpetual motion machine.But a bit difficult to use behind the wheel of car, did we hear you say? Well, not if you judge by the amount of people who drive while phoning, texting, eating, drinking and grooming. Often all at the same time. Bopping around to the banal doof of choice should be a snap.However, the DanceCharge has meant Orange dropping their previous prototype – the WindCharge. Which looks like a larger version of those natty little personal fans, except that it’s your own personal wind farm.The plan was that people would wave it around and catch enough breeze to charge their phones. Sadly, like the hand-crankers, it didn’t work very well unless you were in cyclonic conditions.So no good as a hand-held. But we’re puzzled that Orange didn’t try mounting it on a car. Zoom along with the slipstream whirring the blades into a frenzy and surely that would be enough to power every device in the car.Or wait! Maybe it could even power the car itself. Have we brilliantly hit upon the ultimate perpetual motion machine, and saved the world from the menace of fossil fuels at the same time?Oh… okay… law of diminishing returns and other killjoy physics theories, huh? Ah well, back to the drawing board. Looks like we have to remain battery hens. 

Basically, the students are given a crop of cars to look at, and then – presumably ablaze with the kind of torrid creativity that can be fired up only in the presence of such superb vehicles – they toddle off to the drawing board and sewing kit.But judging by the results of this year’s competition, they might well have toddled off to bed in a fit of jawbreaking yawns, fully equipped with rubber hot water bottle and mug of cocoa.The winning frock was turned in by Robin Claybourne – who also made off with the gold gong last year – and in the budding fashionista’s own words was inspired by the “modern simple silhouette of the Saturn Astra three-door”.But the “sophisticated one-shoulder cocktail / club dress” looks more like the Olympic flame ceremony might have been in mind when Claybourne penned this truncated toga with a floppy bow, reminiscent of bad 80s styling and its revival in every red carpet snoozefest we’ve seen this year.Renee Patton’s white suit was inspired by the “distinctive and curvaceous lines of the (Chevrolet) Malibu LTZ, and admittedly you can see where she refers to the pockets being designed to emulate the curve of the side windows and the large interior console inspiring the wide sleeves. But there’s somehow a touch of the Flying Nun about the overall result, and we’re betting it wouldn’t take much of a breeze to fill those sails … erm, sleeves and have you lift off.Nora del Busto – like Claybourne a second-timer at this gig – was this year inspired by the Hummer HX Concept’s “armour-like feel”, which produced metallic pleated sections that were related to the offroad beast’s grille slots. Or perhaps had been dragged through it.The Hummer’s removable doors seeded the idea for the detachable sleeves, which we at first thought were just bad 80’s crumpled arm warmers. But don’t get us wrong – we’re all in favour of the crumpled motif in fashion. Or at least in favour of not ever ironing anything, and then pretending it’s supposed to look that way.We’d been a bit excited about this year’s competition, because we knew among the cars set up as inspiration was the Pontiac G8 – or Holden Commodore to you and me.We hoped this Aussie upstart would inspire a fashion rebellion and show the rest how it should be done.Sadly, Koree Gilbert’s G8 ensemble turned out to be a knit jersey pantsuit of the kind beloved by the more menacing members of the CWA’s front line combat battalions, who don the uniform for skirmishes in the killing fields of scone judging. On the other hand, perhaps it’s perfect for the Commodore, after all. 

Inusurance company Allianz is penalising their customers in Britain who get caught using a mobile phone while driving.If a driver cops a fine – and the points penalty – they will now also be stung with having to pay 30 per cent more for their insurance.That’s a bigger whack across the wallet than you’d get for blotting your record with a speeding fine.In fact, it brings the policy penalty in line with that imposed if you’ve been hit with a dangerous driving offence.That’s because Allianz reckons that if you’re using your mobile behind the wheel, it should be categorised as dangerous driving.No argument here, but we think Allianz hasn’t gone anywhere near far enough.If using a mobile without a hands-free kit is a ``dangerous and needless act’’ – as the sage and sober accountant types at Allianz put it – then it opens a whole bootload of possibilities for making our roads safer.How about some penalties for the thumping doof-doof stereo systems that render the driver deaf to any surrounding traffic, not to forget shattering windows and generally startling the horses. The cars all seem to be playing the same track in any case, and just one would be loud enough for the rest of them to hear it in the next postcode.And why are there no penalties for eating while you’re driving. If a mobile phone can sap some of your concentration on the job at hand, how much more is put under load while you try to wrestle with a rapidly disintegrating hamburger?How about the visibility lost by trying to block out the rear window with a row of scatter cushions and toys on the parcel rack. Not to mention all those nauseating `baby on board’ signs, No Fear decals and the full range of bumper stickers designed to communicate how great a wit the driver is.And don’t get us started on twinkling dangly crystals swinging across the line of vision from the rearview mirror. Our fervent hope is that they get up enough momentum to smack the owner across the noggin.It looks certain that other insurance companies in Britain – and probably all over the rest of the world – will follow suit in raising policy premiums for those caught with mobiles.For a start, we’ve yet to see an insurance company turn down the chance to charge more. But road safety experts have applauded the move, and even the polled public seem to approve.Of the 3000 motorists surveyed by the insurance company, 56 per cent said they saw someone using a mobile phone while driving every day.They must have been seeing the same few people driving around and chatting a lot, because only 10 per cent of those surveyed admitted they had ever used a phone behind the wheel without a hands-free kit.And around 66 per cent said they thought the change of policy by Allianz was a `good’ or `very good’ idea, although there are no details about whether any of those are from the 10 per cent of sinners.