Reporters diary

Press, 14 September 1987, Page 2

Reporters diary

New collar ... IN their perennial quest for the easy life, the Americans have invented aids for dog owners in the form of radio-controlled dpg collars. The collars are designed to remove the indignity of galloping after a disobedient pet by “disciplining” the dog at the touch of a button. One collar can be programmed to give misbehaving mutts a short, sharp electric shock if they fail to respond to commands. This does not make the RS.P.C.A. happy.

...no “holler” HIGH on the approved list, however, is a second dog collar which is fitted with a small loudspeaker. Not only does it save raising the voice when issuing orders but by enabling constant communication it should prevent pets and their owners from losing each other. Bishops struggling with errant clergy, take note.

Clock Mecca-nism A new Prayer Times Clock gives travelling Muslims state-of-the-art help in knowing when to say their five-daily prayers, and which way to face when saying them. The prayers must be said at dawn, sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset, and night — as precisely defined by reference to astronomical phenomena that occur at different times in different places. Arriving at a location, the user programs in the latitude and longitude, and the microcomputerised clock rings an alarm five minntes before the time for each prayer. Another function displays the direction of Mecca. Fluid measures A zany approach to the problem of doggy-do on private lawns is catching on in Christchurch. Plastic soft-drink bottles are sprouting like pimples on front lawns of homeowners determined to keep their manicured

grass free from puppy pollution. The theory is that dogs are deterred from soiling the lawns by the moving water in the half-filled bottles, tt appears to work for some dogs but not for others. One desperate owner of a treasured garden said he thought it was working well until one day he watched as a dog trotted on to his lawn, picked the container up in its mouth and padded away with it

Diction STAND by your dictionaries: here comes another salvo in the pronouncing war. lan Johnson, of Springston, wrote: “Why, oh why, must television announcers refer to cerv-eye-cal cancer?” He points out rightly, that a respected authority, the Oxford Dictionary, makes it clear that the word is pronounced in the same way as topical, tropical,

typical and all the other icals. 50-year gulf ACCORDING to a British survey, today’s children are unhappy with their lot in spite of comfortable lifestyles. The survey compared children’s lives in 1987 with those of their grandparents in 1937 and found the gulf between attitudes was as wide as the gap between lifestyles.

Respect for parents, teachers, police and relatives that most children in 1937 had was not Shared by their 1987 counterparts. Today’s children “expect to be entertained, to receive a reasonable amount of pocket money and to be able to buy the latest fashions in clothes and shoes.” Did they need to do a survey to tell us that? —Jenny Feltham