Don’t Visit Antarctica

I know, I know. You had other plans for this evening anyway. Me too: I’ve been told that there might be something history related on the History Channel. Granted, this was by the same person who suggested that there would be some music on MTV last week, but it’s got to be worth staying in, just to witness what would be an… er… historic event.

And if you were wondering how you’d even get there in the first place, you should remember that there is a scheduled flight service from Cape Town to Novolazarevskaya Station, so it’s not as hard as you might imagine.
But lousy TV and ease of access to available flights aside, you still shouldn’t go to Antarctica, because tourism is destroying the place. And that’s a bad thing.

Scientists say walking on moss beds will leave footprints that could last for centuries.

Fortunately, this important news is now being shared, thanks to a new commercial from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight:

Not quite sure that green oval at the end works so well, given that it completely misses including the widely-suggested alternative destination, but at least the primary the message is quite clear.

On an altogether more serious, certainly more edgy and somewhat longer note, his hugely interesting piece on the US Wealth Gap is sublime.

Washing machine dances to PsyTrance

Ah, this takes me back to those good old raving days. We’ve all been an unregulated washing machine on an all-nighter at one time or another, right?

Even if you mute the music (understandable if it’s not your thing), you should really watch this all the way through because there are a couple of things that you can take from this; firstly that there seems no more fitting entity than a rapidly spinning, out of control washing machine to accompany this genre of music, and secondly that the structural integrity of the washing machine is maintained for an almost implausible length of time, given the rather extreme forces at work here.

That second point should at least reassure you that something would have to go very, veryvery wrong for your home appliance to go rogue and destroy your laundry, kitchen, utility room, bathroom, outhouse or wherever you choose to do your washing.

Next week, a toaster does Swan Lake.

Pretty Fly

This just in from our Agriculture correspondent:
Great news for the Western Cape agricultural sector. We farm sheeps, cows, pigs and the like. We have pretty canola fields. Grain, lots of grain: it makes our beer. We do grapes really, really well.
And now, we’re about to do flies. Common houseflies, black soldier flies and blowflies.
We’re about to have [clarkson] the biggest fly farm – in the world! [/clarkson]

8,500,000,000 of the little buggers.

That’s a lot of flies.

The 8 500 square-metre undercover facility, being built by Gibraltar-based AgriProtein, is due to be completed next year and aims to produce 23.5 metric tonnes of insect-based protein meal and oils and 50 tonnes of fertiliser a day. Fish and chicken farmers have already signed contracts to buy the feed, an alternative to soy and fishmeal, according to Jason Drew, the company’s co-founder.

That 23.5 tonnes of “insect-based protein meal” is a long-winded and fancy way of saying “maggots”. Can you imagine 23.5 tonnes of maggots? Each day? That’s almost 9,000 tonnes of maggots every year. From this one facility alone.
Fear Factor eat your heart out (but not like this).

It might not sound like the nicest thing in the world, because 8.5 billion flies eating rotting food, manure and abattoir waste isn’t the nicest thing in the world UNLESS YOU’RE A FLY AND IF SO, HOW THE HELL ARE YOU READING THIS?, but the science is good, it’s ecologically sound and it makes commercial sense.

My only concern is that the insects will be:

housed in giant cages

Presumably, they’ve considered the size of their livestock and calculated the space between the bars of the cages accordingly, right?

Fly_close

Toddler stuck in mop bucket rescued by firefighters

Yes. Seriously.
And it’s in my hometown of Sheffield, famous for knives, forks, the Tour de France and now – small children stuck in mop buckets.

Crews from South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service’s Dearne station in Rotherham, rescued an 18-month-old girl from a mop bucket at about 1pm today. The toddler, from Adwick road, Mexborough, was rescued safely and was not injured.
The fire service tweeted:
Child stuck in a mop bucket? No problem! 18 month old girl freed by Dearne firefighters without injury.A spokesman for the service added: “It was nothing too serious and was put out to show we do attend more than just fires. Most of the time we are called to people stuck in railings and that sort of thing.

Personally I have never heard of something like this but it’s not unusual for us to release children.”

I have no particular comment on this, save for the fact that I’m glad the little girl was unhurt.
I just thought it was a cute story. Sadly, no pictures, but on the plus side, that does mean that you can let your imagination run riot.
I’m sure that this unfortunate event will never be mentioned again – especially on her 21st birthday.

Blog-related QOTD

Once more, to Brian Micklethwait, who is producing some lovely stuff lately. This quote:

As I often warn readers, this blog will, as I get older, be, more and more, about the process of me getting old.
Don’t get me started on automatic supermarket checkout machines.

Brian is older than me, but somewhat concerningly I can see 6000 miles… headed that way as well in the future.