Category: that’s a bit mad

Jet waves

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More from Facebook, and from my favourite group thereon, previously mentioned here.

Here’s an image shared to the group by one of its members.

Given the geographical position of the island in question, together with the profile of the aircraft, it’s most likely to be a 777 going from somewhere in Western Europe to somewhere in the USA.

But this is just a post from a guy who has spotted the plane going overhead, pointed his camera heavenward and pressed a button. It doesn’t matter where the plane is going from or heading to. We don’t need to know: the strength of this image is its sheer simplicity

But then, there’s always one, isn’t there? Because in the comments below, this:

I must admit that I hadn’t even considered this aspect of the situation.

The picture was ok. Look, I wasn’t hugely impressed with it, but it was ok. Just nice. And, being me, I had thought a bit about the type of plane and its likely journey. But as I mentioned above, that’s not what matters. And I was inadvertently right.

Because what actually really matters are the jet waves polluting our sky. Yeh?

Air travel isn’t the cleanest form of transport. It’s getting there, with the all new A350-10 series belching a whole 25% less carbon dioxide than its predecessor and such, but putting couple of hundred tonnes of aluminium and suitcases 10kms up into the sky and then moving it several thousand kilometres is always going to be a fuel intensive process. I knew that. But I hadn’t thought about the jet waves, polluting our sky. And I’m sure I wasn’t alone in this. Because no-one ever thinks about the jet waves, do they?

And yet, there they go. Those jet waves. Polluting our sky.

Never a dull moment

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Just another week in the mad world of South African news.

Triggering just another ANC media release. Except, this one includes this line:

The ANC will leave it to psychoanalysts and scholars of art to debate Mabulu’s narcissistic obsession with the phallus and human genitalia in general.

No matter how crazy you think Western politics has become recently, they are still some distance from matching this sort of banter.

Ugh… Cyclists

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Ugh… Cyclists.

When they’re not jumping red lights, riding seventy-four abreast through Kalk Bay every weekend or whining about their morning jaunt being cancelled, they’re defecating in their hands and flinging it at fellow road-users.

Poo flinging? How very Capetonian.

But amazingly, the victim of the attack has come in for criticism after sharing the details of the incident online. Comments included:

“A man had time to pull down his trousers, poo in his hands and lob it at your car..?? Was you stationary..?? Because I’d of drove off the minute he was pulling down his trousers.!!”

Yeah – sorry about the grammar etc. It’s from Gloucester.

And my favourite:

“Anyone with half a brain cell would drive off as soon as the hand cupped to scoop the poop.”

Presumably these people are only aware of best practice here because this has happened to them too?
So there we go, folks. The two expert-recommended stages to commence driving away should you ever find yourself in a similar situation: the pulling down of the trousers and the cupping of the hand to scoop.

Leave it any later than that, and frankly, you’re asking for trouble.

Full story

Pack your trunk – we’re off to Mars

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Vital space exploration news greeted me this morning in the shape of this headline from The Times:

Right. Obviously, besides the single benefit stated above, there are also drawbacks with sending elephants into space. For starters, their somewhat larger mass means that you’re going to need a lot more thrust to get you up to escape velocity and out of the Earth’s gravitational pull. They’re also pretty big in terms of volume, meaning that you’re going to need to increase the size of your spaceship to house them. They eat more, they drink more, they poo more, but perhaps our major concern here should be that we’re clearly ignoring the most important factor to consider in this whole plan: they are elephants.

Yes, elephants are ever so intelligent, but they are still elephants. We’ve all seen how clever and caring they can be on those nature documentaries, but elephants are let down by their inability to communicate in basic human language, let alone carrying out computer programming and complex scientific experimentation. In fact, aside from their alleged cancer-resisting traits (and perhaps their reputation for having really good memories), there’s not an awful lot that supports this frankly very dodgy idea to send elephants to colonise Mars.

And then, what if we were to actually follow through on this and colonise Mars with these pachyderms? It sets a worrying precedent for the future colonisation of other planets with somewhat implausible animals. So what next? Sending ornamental ducks to Jupiter? Hammerhead sharks to Saturn? An anteater to Venus? Presumably we’d have to send some ants as well for that last one. See how complicated it becomes?

No, this is a silly idea and we should stop right now. The elephants won’t mind – they’re very thick-skinned – and it might just save us from the inevitable onset of any immature Richard Gere “gerbils in Uranus” jokes.

Stop the world…

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… I want to get off.

Yep. Whatever. Call me when you can pirouette your way to safety around an Ebola outbreak or conjure up some much needed water in the Sudanese desert using just your cha-cha skills.

And who would ever want to explore Mars when there was an opportunity to wow the audience with some exciting team ballroom work?

I actually have nothing against dancers, but “future-proofing our children” by teaching the Merengue instead of Microbiology?

No. Just no.