Category: learning curve

Rain

Posted on

There was a hint a few years back about a new law in SA which prevented anyone – well, anyone without appropriate qualification, anyway – from publicly commenting on upcoming bad weather. This was obviously a hugely important step in a country where the discussion of upcoming poor meteorological conditions has topped the lists for both most serious and most prevalent crimes for the past decade. Time to end this heinous behaviour.
Here’s Ivo’s view on it.

To be honest, I’ve no clue if that law was ever passed, and thus I’m not willing to stick my neck out and suggest that there may be excessive precipitation headed towards Cape Town on any particular day in the near future. Like, Wednesday, for instance. Simply, I can’t say if that’s going to happen.

Screenshot_2015-06-01-06-41-19~2

It would surely be even more foolhardy of me to do some rudimentary calculations by adding up some apparently random numbers…

rfall

…perhaps including 6.4, 10.7, 13.3, 12.7, 4.6, 6.6, 7.1 and 5.6, and then gasp in amazement and concern that the total of those digits is 67. And were that the number of millimetres of rain to fall in any given 24 hour period, that would be quite a bad thing for wherever it fell on. Especially if some of that place was already at high risk for landslides following large veld fires earlier in the year.

Not that I’m saying that’s what’s going to happen, of course. In Cape Town. Throughout Wednesday.

Because I’d be risking arrest if I told you that.

Massively disappointing volcano

Posted on

Yeah – after this, that might come as a surprise. But wait, there’s more. This massively disappointing volcano is also in Iceland, home of exciting stuff like whale-hunting tourism, puffin pie and the Best Landscapes In The World™.
Iceland doesn’t do “massively disappointing”. Or rather, it didn’t, until now.

Imagine my excitement upon reading this headline:

The view from inside Iceland’s Thrihnukagigur volcano

Thrihnukagigur – still way up in the top 50% of Icelandic volcanoes listed by ease of pronunciation. And now they’re going inside it:

I’m being lowered through the dome of a subterranean cathedral-like space. Above me, the volcanic crater is a small bright circle in a thin tube. Beside me rainwater runs down ripples of frozen lava and cascades into the quiet depths.

OMG! How cool? How HOT? But then anticipated amazement turns into that crushing, massive disappointment.
Because what it turns out to be is just a big cave.

Ugh.

And I’m not alone in thinking this way; even its discoverer – a local opthalmologist – was rather unimpressed:

On Midsummer Eve 1974 Mr Stefánsson was lowered down into it with the help of nine friends. He was really disappointed.”I dreamt about finding a drainage channel with lava falls, lava pits and formations, never seen by a human eye before,” he says.
Instead he found an expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, “like a stone quarry”, he said.

And, over the intervening 41 years, bugger all has changed.

Still, there’s a video of this expanse of bare rock with a pile of rubble at the bottom, so click that link above and go and play.

Just don’t expect to be impressed.

Extreme

Posted on

I followed a Braam Malherbe vehicle in the traffic this morning. I have no idea if it was the Braam Malherbe vehicle or if there are other Braam Malherbe vehicles, but given that Braam Malherbe describes himself as:

A South African international motivational speaker, extreme conservationist, extreme adventurer, philanthropist, writer and educator.

you’d imagine that he’d probably have at least a jetski and an assault helicopter as well as a bakkie.

Basically, we’re looking at Lewis Pugh-lite here.

I’m concerned though. Is he not spreading himself a little thinly? Wouldn’t it be better to cut back on the range of activities he does and do them a bit better. Not, I hasten to add, that I’m suggesting that he’s not doing them well right now. Just that surely if he devoted a little more time to, say, the writing and the speaking, he could probably improve them both. Makes sense, no?

Also, what is “extreme conservation”? I find the idea rather discriminatory against less extreme, but equally endangered species.

“OMG Braam, the Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl has just been added to the red list!”
“That’s terrible, Penelope. What’s its primary habitat?”
“Well, the remaining 2 pairs live in the mountains just outside Somerset West.”
“Pfft. That’s nowhere near extreme enough. Let them die. Now, you got any more news on that Antarctic lichen? And get me a coffee – use those beans I brought back in that handmade snakeskin bag from that mountain in Mongolia.”

I’m guessing that’s probably what it’s like in his office most days. And that’s also why you’ll never see a Lesser Spotted Beagle Owl in Somerset West.

One of the reasons, anyway.

I’m sure that Braam Malherbe is a great guy, doing great things. I’m sure that he’d be even more famous than he already is if he’d only add “cold water swimmer” to his CV. And I’m sure that if he did do cold water swimming, he’d be more than willing to answer questions about the massive carbon footprint of his recent Seven Seas Expedition.

Worth repeating?

Posted on

Worth repeating? Given the lack of action on this issue, despite the repeated warnings from people far more qualified and eminently more important than me, you could be excused for thinking not. However, given the gravity of the situation being described and the impact it will have on our ability to survive as a species – yeah, probably.

We’re back on that old chestnut of antibiotic resistance, I’m afraid. The topic rearing its ugly head on here thanks to this guest editorial in the South African Medical Journal for May 2015, penned by Marc Mendelson of UCT and Malebona Precious Matsoso from the DoH. It’s a local journal, written by local people, about local issues. Just like the Southern Suburbs Tatler. Except sane.
It makes such happy reading:

If our overuse and misuse of antibiotics is not halted now, about 10 million people will die annually from drug-resistant bacterial infections within 35 years. The hammer blow will fall hardest on Africa and Asia, accounting for 4.1 and 4.7 million deaths, respectively, and the world’s economy will lose more than 7% of its gross domestic product (USD210 trillion) by 2050.

If 10 million deaths sounds terrible, it’s because it is terrible. Put in context, annual deaths from HIV worldwide are around 1.5 million. TB accounts for 1.4 million deaths. Heart disease kills about 2.5 million people each year. Three big killers and we’re only just halfway there.

Fortunately, this is all way in the future, isn’t it? Well, no. It’s not:

This is not a futuristic scenario … it is being played out right here, right now, in South Africa and other countries across the globe. Decisions to withhold surgery based purely on the patient being colonised by pan-resistant bacteria are being made, and people are dying of untreatable infections in our hospitals and communities. Quite simply, our abuse of antibiotics is destroying modern medicine as we know it. Unless the international community can alter its path, we will lose the ‘miracle of antibiotics’.

So it’s here, and it’s going to get much worse, so why isn’t something being done about it? We’ve touched on this here before:

Of course, if this problem wasn’t so insidious, we’d all be panicking about it already. If there were a 9/11 or a Hurricane Sandy – a single event – there would be far more awareness. (Not that mere awareness would really help anyway.)
But that’s not the case with the antibiotic resistance problem. It’s sneaking up on us and, for those of us in the know, it’s rather worrying.

And on that note, for me, probably the most significant line in Mendelson’s and Matsoso’s musings:

These numbers should make people sit up, listen and change behaviour. But more often than not, it has to be personal to achieve this.

Yes. Sadly, that’s probably what it will take. And sadly, this will happen to people as well. It’s happened to me already this year.

I was reminded of this satirical piece by Andy Borowitz, penned in reference to climate change, but with a nice, ironic “resistance” twist:

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports…
While reaffirming the gloomy assessments of the study, Logsdon held out hope that the threat of fact-resistant humans could be mitigated in the future. “Our research is very preliminary, but it’s possible that they will become more receptive to facts once they are in an environment without food, water, or oxygen,” he said.

Maybe the same will be true once we find ourselves without antibiotics as well.

We live in hope. Briefly.

Little & Large

Posted on

No, not the popular 80s British comedy duo. I’m talking about ships.

To mark the 175th anniversary of the Cunard Shipping Line, that company took three of its biggest cruise liners to Liverpool’s River Mersey to celebrate. Since the ships in question were the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Victoria and the Queen Mary 2 (recently in Cape Town), it was billed as the 3 Queens. By all accounts, it was a resounding success, with ships, flypasts and fireworks for the estimated million onlookers to see.

18082145872_f4ce4989e4_b

If you want to find images of the event, Google is your friend. Or Flickr. And the whole thing was streamed live on Youtube. Look, you’re not short of options here.

But while people are celebrating and having a good time, normal life goes on. And if you’re the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company Limited Seacat, Manannan (seen by me here), normal life is getting people from the Isle of Man to Liverpool. And it’s probably quite annoying when you get there and someone has taken your parking space:

11162081_1015281998482036_255042973669970321_nHey – it’s ok. There’s precedent: previously in Liverpool, Manannan has had to sneak in behind the QM2 to dock at the landing stage.
But… scale!

20150525233254There she is, just off the stern of the QM2. And while we snigger at the tiny Manx ferry, it’s worth noting that it’s not actually that tiny: it’s 96m long, and carries 850 passengers and crew and 200 cars. Mind you, compare that with the QM2’s 345m length and 4,350 passenger and crew capacity, and yeah, ok.

Of course, it’s not a fair comparison – these vessels have different jobs and are each designed to fit their respective purposes. But the QM2 is awfully big, isn’t she?