De Burgh-er off

I’m being dragged along going to a Chris de Burgh concert tonight.
This whole thing was Mrs 6000’s idea. Pre-Christmas, she got a bee in her bonnet about this Chris de Beagle coming to town for one night only and decided that she wanted to go. I bought the tickets as a loving “I recognise that we have different tastes in music and I know that you recognise that too, so while I am buying these tickets for you as a gesture of love, and to indicate my support of your decision in wanting to go and see Mr de Burgh, I also know that you will understand that it’s really not my thing and you’ll go to said concert with one of your friends.”

Long story ever so slightly shorter; such is the drawing power of Christophe van der Berg that none of her friends wanted to go.

So. I’m being dragged along going to a Chris de Burgh concert tonight.

There is precedent here though, and it’s on my side. We had the same issue with James Blunt, and he was actually very good. We had the same issue with Elton John. He wasn’t quite so good, but he did have a mad drummer who was very good. And, at the end of the day (and ironically that’s when the concert is), live music is live music, so we make the best of our bad life choices and we go and have a good time.

If you haven’t head of Mr Van Der Bergh, please allow me to educate you, as I educated myself. He comes from an infamous family line.
Many of his colonial ancestors were intrepid explorers and mountain “discoverers”, you will have seen his family stamp all over South Africa: the Helderberg, the Drakensberg and the Magliesburg all bearing the family name. His great-great grandfather, William, was the original hipster, emigrated to the USA and gave his name to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. Achingly trendy.

Chris is the great-grandson of brandy magnate Olof Bergh.MIN_295721_CSA

His auntie, Isabella Christine Edwina Berg was implicated in the sinking of a famous ocean liner in 1912. Dead ahead.

His great-uncle started a pig farm on the banks of the Elbe River in northern Germany, a settlement which has now become Germany’s largest commercial port.

Many are divided over Chris’ biggest moment. Most point to the longevity of his 1986 hit Lady in Red , but others are convinced that the emotional interview he gave when his son, Cameron van der Burgh, won gold in the pool at the London Olympics was his high point. I’d argue that getting to perform for me tonight would have to be up there as well.

We’ll have a good evening, whatever. There’s likely to be beer on sale and I will have some wonderful company.

And some earplugs.

Going critical

Nothing good comes from things going critical. Nuclear power plants are probably highest up the list of things which are bad when they go critical, with toddler tantrums pretty close behind.
Critical isn’t good situation to be in. Critical is… well… critical.

Unless something rather remarkable occurs very shortly, when their capacities are measured again on Monday, Cape Town’s dams will have fallen below the “critical” level of 30%.

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It’s obviously an arbitrary level that they’ve chosen to call “critical”, and quite what happens when we cross that threshold is unclear, although we have been told that we shouldn’t panic. But then, that begs the question, why bother having a “critical” level in the first place if nothing changes once you find yourself below it?

After all, very little happened when we crossed the legendary “careful now” 70% margin, nor the distinctly worrying “er… guys…?” 50% line.

I do hope that the city council have got this all in hand…

Barry Wood, the city’s manager of bulk water supply, told the council’s portfolio committee “We don’t have to be too concerned, provided that it starts to rain.”

Ah. That’s all ok then.
Colour me completely reassured.

Links

Here are some things that you might like to read.

Topless of the Pops
90s girl band All Saints today made shocking allegations about the BBC’s Top of the Pops programme:

They said the music show’s makers wanted to film them from the shoulders up to create the illusion they were performing naked.
“They were filming images of us to use as a backdrop and they wanted us to take our tops off.”

This took place in the late 90s, but there was no mention of this in 2006 when All Saints reformed, disastrously. However, since the Jimmy Savile story broke in 2012, Top of the Pops is now known not to have had the cleanest of reputations. Still, it’s taken All Saints an additional four years to come forward with these allegations, coincidentally in the same month that they relaunched their band.

Sun in an 8
Here’s what the sun looks like if you take pictures of it at the same time each week for a year.

sun8

Pretty cool, ne?

This tracking pattern of the sun is called a Solar Analemma and is formed as a result of the earth’s axis’ 23½º tilt. Useful images (like the one above by Jesús Peláez) include a local landmark (like the one above incorporating Burgos Cathedral in Spain) to provide perspective and avoid any sort of “drift”. You can delve as deep as you want into this one – here’s an interesting site.

Peninsular Removal Services
Are apparently still up to their no good tricks.

Malik Jalal is on the Kill List
The fascinating story of a man the USA are apparently trying to kill. 

The next attack came on 3 September 2010. That day, I was driving a red Toyota Hilux Surf SUV to a ‘Jirga’, a community meeting of elders. Another red vehicle, almost identical to mine, was some 40 meters behind. When we reached Khader Khel, a missile blew up the other vehicle, killing all four occupants. I sped away, with flames and debris in my rear view mirror.

Two sides to every story, and sure, this is his (in the Independent, the biggest misnomer since Pussy Galore), but maybe while he’s over in Blighty, the US might at least like to hear what he has to say.

Staying with death…

The Assad Files
A long, LONG, harrowing read, but worth it if you have the time. The story of those trying to bring Bashar al-Assad to justice for war crimes in Syria. And those who are trying to help from within, together with the sometimes comical difficulties they face:

Large extractions often depend on friendly countries to negotiate openings in otherwise sealed borders, so captured documents can remain hidden for months. On one occasion, several thousand pages of evidence were left with an old woman in a remote farmhouse in southern Syria, but the investigator didn’t explain the significance of the files. When winter came, Wiley said, “in fairness, she was cold, so she burned the whole lot of it as fuel.”

That’s the lighter side, and there’s not much of it.

New $5 note upsets Aussies
Yeah… that is pretty ugly.

NGB5_Queen_side_-_mock_up_specimen_image_-_blue_background_-_JPG_300dpi   NGB5_Parliament_side_-_mock_up_specimen_image_-_blue_background_-_JPG_300dpi

The E.coli are apparently actually wattle, and the technicolour bird is an eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris).

 

Now, you’re up to speed.

Road Safety

Road safety ads are all the rage at the moment, presumably because people continue to die all over the roads. To be fair, people will always die all over the roads, so it are obviously the needless deaths that these ads are trying to prevent. I’ve seen three that have made me think, and I’m sharing them here.

There are a couple of approaches. And happy happy joy hoy, the first is the horrifically graphic approach, deminstrated here in the Western Cape’s First Kiss video:
In case you didn’t catch the warning just there, it’s rather graphic.

Erg. But you know, wear your seatbelt and that won’t happen. And apparently, it works:

The “First Kiss” commercial is adapted from the “Damage” advertisement produced by the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment. This advertisement was credited by the Irish Road Safety Authority as having brought about a 100% increase in backseat seatbelt wearing and 50% increase in front seat wearing rates in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Sadly, one of the highest risk groups – ‘the yoof’ – tend tune out serious messages. So then you need to try a different tack: humour. Here’s a New Zealand don’t text and drive ad:

Because no, as this final print (and my favourite) ad proves, when you’re texting while driving, you’re really not concentrating on the things that you should be:

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Very clever, Land Rover.

Of course, in SA, all this falls against a backdrop of very limited adherence to the law and very limited enforcement of those laws. But still, anything is better than nothing, right?

Possibly, anyway.

Conspiracy Theories

I’ve gone off John Oliver a bit of late. If he’s trying to be a comedian, then we’re all good. But if he wants to be taken seriously as a political commentator – something that he seems to want to achieve – then he needs to be a little more consistent in telling us what we should be thinking.

But that’s another story for another post.

Happily for the purposes of your blog reading experience today, this clip is all about the funnies:

The more you trawl the internet (and I actually finished reading the whole thing a few months back now, so I’m a bit of an expert), the more outlandish the conspiracy theories you find, and – perhaps more worryingly – the more people you find supporting them.

This the day after April Fools, the only day where people actually read the mainstream media with any degree of cynicism…

Honestly, wake up, sheeple!