Some perspective, please

By 6000 | 6000 | January 10, 2010

After the dreadful attack on the Togolese national football team, questions have been raised about the World Cup tournament in South Africa later this year. But why?

 After all, France 1998 went ahead despite the Kosovo conflict, which was occuring on the same continent.

As Danny Jordaan has pointed out, South Africa 2010 has nothing to do with the African Cup of Nations save for being held in the same year.  What happened on Friday, 3,000 kilometres away from SAFA headquarters is tragic, but it has no bearing on the World Cup.

This situation has merely highlighted the West’s blinkered view of Africa as a single troubled entity. But Angola is just one of fifty-two countries here and is as different from South Africa as Hungary is from the UK and Honduras is from the US.

So can we drop the hysteria and get a little perspective, please?

EDIT: See also here.

5 Comments | Tagged , , , | Posted in annoying people, in the news, sport, this is south africa, world cup 2010

Statpr0n and three big moments

By 6000 | 6000 | January 10, 2010

I was flicking through some WordPress plugins and seeing what they could do for 6000 miles…when I realised that there are three fairly large moments rapidly approaching. And, quite conceivably, they could all arrive on the same day. Although I will not be making any particular effort to ensure that they do. Honest.

Firstly – on January 30th, I will complete my 365th day of consecutive posts. I got the post-a-day idea from the inimitable Brian Micklethwait and I thought I’d see how it went in February. It went well and the rest is, as they say, history. Or soon will be, anyway.
I’ve had to throw the odd quota photo in here and there to keep things going, and – mainly due to intercontinental travel – I have even pre-written a couple of entries, but generally, you’ve had one or more quality posts each day.
It’s been hard work, really hard, sometimes, but readership is up, subscriptions are up and I’ve actually enjoyed the challenge.
Will I continue? I haven’t decided just yet, but it seems likely. Watch this space on 31st January.
And before and after as well, obviously

The second big thing is that I am “just” 10,000 words short of 200,000 words on 6000 miles… blog posts. That’s a whole lot of words and a whole lot of posts considering I (apparently) average just over 300 words per post. One memorable effort didn’t even have any words at all. That must have dragged the average down a bit.  

The last bit of news is that – at an average 8 comments per post – I am almost up to 5,000 genuine (i.e.ham, not spam) comments. This blog would still exist without comments and commenters, but it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting and fun. Posts about the 2009 general election in South Africa were particularly well commented upon, as is any post about the contentious issues in local politics. Quota photos generally don’t get comments, nor do admin posts; those about religion do and that one about The Killers concert really got people going.

I’m going to make an effort to reward my 5,000th comment in some way.
Not sure how yet, but I’ll do it.
And because of all the spam that Akismet sifts out for me, no-one will know who or when it is, save for myself and The Guru. And thus, he’s not allowed to enter. Sorry, The Guru – it just wouldn’t be fair.

This post is 422 words long and is being filed under admin.
All of which means that no-one will actually have read this far.

6 Comments | Tagged , , , | Posted in admin, learning curve

Tickets please!

By 6000 | 6000 | January 9, 2010

How exciting – look what I got in the post last night:

Two of them, in fact.

Now there’s just a couple of flights to organise, a reasonably priced hotel room in Oslo (is there such a thing?) and a couch here and there in the UK.
Oh, and if you’re reading this, Mr Carter – as you should be - you’re proving rather difficult to get hold of!

9 Comments | Tagged , , | Posted in flickr, music, positive thoughts

Cape Argus Gender Bending Drug Dealer Confusion

By 6000 | 6000 | January 8, 2010

I read this article in our local newspaper, then I read it again. In fact, I have now read it seventeen times and I am still none the wiser.

Strip search turns out to be revealing

7 January 2010, 13:07
By Lavern De Vries

Mitchells Plain police will on Thursday charge one of the area’s most notorious drug suspects with fraud – after allegedly discovering during the course of a strip search that the man is actually a woman.
The suspect was arrested at his Kuils River home last Tuesday after police had received a tip-off that drugs might be delivered there. Police strip-searched the suspect, believing that he might have hidden drugs on his person.

Mitchells Plain police station head Director Jeremy Vearey said that it was during the strip search that the suspect was found to be a woman.

Wow. Incredible. Bizarre. But still makes sense, thus far.

We were forced to call Pollsmoor Prison to make arrangements for him to be held there until his bail application today. They then had to make arrangements to remand him in the hospital section, where he was held until his court appearance.

“Him”? “His”? “He”? “His”?
I thought you just said that this was a woman? I thought that was the story here?

Prison authorities had also considered holding him in the women’s section of the prison “for his own safety”, Vearey said.

This would actually make sense, now wouldn’t it? Because it is a woman!
Did you miss that? Because it was actually you that said it just a few lines earlier, Mr Vearey.

The suspect faces charges of the illegal possession of ammunition and the possession of stolen property.
He faces another charge of bribery after he allegedly offered R9 100 to one of the arresting officers in an attempt to persuade him not to register the case, according to Mitchells Plain police spokesman Rewayne Muller.

I think they mean “She faces”, obviously…

The fraud charge relates to him allegedly having two sets of identity documents – one as a woman and the other as a man. It is alleged that he has bought property, including at least two houses with the male identity document.

See how easy it is to confuse people with this whole What gender are you? lark?
No wonder Caster Semenya had them fooled for so long.

A couple of estate agents were none the wiser – fair enough.
But when the police officer who discovered that you don’t have any bits still thinks you’re a bloke and the journalist that he calls with the story about how the man they just arrested turned out to be a woman also still thinks you’re a bloke, then that’s more than a gruff voice and a fake ID – that’s mind control!

All of which leads me to believe that she will get off scot-free when he appears in court later today.

3 Comments | Tagged , , , | Posted in in the news, that's a bit mad, this is south africa

Test cricket is still mainly boring

By 6000 | 6000 | January 8, 2010

With dropping attendances, bore draws and the huge push towards shorter versions of the game, it was nice to finally see an exciting finish to a 5-day test match yesterday. The second time in three matches in this series, actually. (In the other game, England obviously wiped the floor with sorry SA).
But while the last over histrionics, South Africa’s constant and often desperate appealing and Graeme “The Cramp Man” Smith’s wonderful innings and penchant for referring everything were all briefly gripping to watch, it was really only the last couple of hours of the game which were actually “exciting”.

All of which leads me to believe that in actual fact, Test cricket is still mainly boring. And that isn’t really a problem if you’re happy to be bored; if you have days to spare at the ground or on the couch, beer and snacks to hand. But for the majority of us, that’s not the case.

The problem as I see it is that in order to get the exciting finish, you have to sit at least through four days of potential dross. And yes, I know there were “gripping” bits here and there, like the Steyn vs Collingwood thing and Fatty’s lovely innings, but mainly it was quite dull going through to motions stuff. For 4½ days. And that’s why T20 – which condenses the best bits from Test cricket into a couple of hours and is therefore exciting – has become so popular.

So what I propose is this: T6000 cricket. In this new and revolutionary form of the game, one takes scenarios from all the Test matches in history which have ended in an exciting manner. (There must be at least three or four of them.)
These scenarios would then be played out to a finish in front of a capacity crowd. Games would consist of one innings of variable length, as the different scenarios would kick in at different times. For example, I would propose that for yesterday, we start at tea on the final day – after all, it was mostly pretty dull before that.
So England (or South Africa, depending on who wins the toss) would start 5 wickets down, needing to survive 35 overs. 
In this case, the batting side could only ever get a draw, but them’s the breaks. And before you moan that you’ll never see the top batsmen playing, you’re wrong: the warm-up would consist of the top order being put through their paces before going and having a drink in the players lounge as their tail-enders actually play the game.
As an added benefit, since each 15-session match will now be played in one single session (a reduction of 93.33%), there will be less danger of player burn-out – a major cause of the top players not being able to play in the first place.

Sure, the purists will hate this, but they’re the ones with the time, the couch, the beer and the snacks.
For the vast majority, T6000 is the future.

2 Comments | Tagged , , , , | Posted in sport, that's a bit mad, this is south africa
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