Disc parking which can make a one-hour parking zone as short as thirty minutes, possibly resulting in an unjustified parking ticket. On March 31, 1979 the conference of ministers of transportation in the European Union decided that a European standard should only use designs with a single clock face. The standardized clock disc was introduced as federal law in Germany in November 1981, and similar designs were adopted in other European countries. From 1998 the old parking disc designs began to be abolished. France set the last date to 2007, while in Switzerland (not an EU member) the EU parking disc design
The Gate to Women's Country The Gate to Women's Country The Gate to Women's Country is a post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Sheri S. Tepper, published in 1988. It describes a world set three hundred years into the future after a catastrophic war which has fractured the United States into several nations. The story is set in "Women's Country", apparently in the former Pacific Northwest. They have evolved in the direction of Ecotopia, reverting to a sustainable economy based on small cities and low-tech local agriculture. They have also developed a matriarchy where the women and children live within town walls with a small number