Royal Baby Excitement: An Explanation for (some) South Africans

There were a lot of people getting very excited about events at a London hospital yesterday. And there were a lot of locals here who didn’t seem to understand why there were a lot of people getting very excited about events at a London hospital yesterday and they actually got quite annoyed about the people who were excited.

I’ve never really understood why if something doesn’t interest people, they feel that they have to aggressively criticise it. To me, it suggests some sort of insecurity. Who knows?

Anyway, I fell into the middle of the two of the groups. I wasn’t hugely excited about the birth of the royal baby, but equally, I didn’t have a problem with the people who were.

So here’s a way I thought of explaining it, in a journalists outside a hospital kind of way.

Compare this line (much used yesterday as a reason to belittle those excited people):

“It’s just a baby. Hundreds of women have babies every day.”

with this line:

“He’s just a patient in a heart hospital. Hundreds of people are patients in heart hospitals every day.”

Which is a pretty ridiculous sentiment for anyone* in South Africa to accept, because Madiba has almost deity-like status here. He’s a special person. His is a public interest story. So yes, there are many other heart hospital patients around, but Madiba is South Africa’s heart hospital patient, and that’s why his hospitalisation is different.

Well, the birth of the royal baby is Britain’s version of Madiba’s hospital stay. You can see that it matters to “us” in the same way that Madiba matters to SA simply by looking at the similar scenes outside the Pretoria Heart Hospital and St Mary’s in London.

It’s not an ideal analogy, but it’s not far off.

Live and let live: whether it’s babies, former presidents or excited punters.

 

* 99%+ of people, anyway.

Guardian spares republicans royal baby news

Nice little touch by the Guardian newspaper’s online people today – if you aren’t into the monarchy, you can helpfully and simply bypass the clamour around the royal baby by clicking Royalist or Republican to tell them so and change the front page you see accordingly.

With:

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Without:

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Very nice.

Now if they could just get rid of the cycling as well, that would be great.

Visible wi-fi?

Gizmodo has published a little piece about what we things would look like if we could see wi-fi signals. While it’s quite interesting, for example:

A ‘normal’ field of wi-fi is typically spherical and can extend 65 to 100 feet.

…(i.e. they’re 3d, not simply unidirectional), it’s also not ever so scientific, as if we were able to see wi-fi, we’d surely be able to see all sorts of other (currently invisible) electromagnetic waves as well: infra red, ultraviolet, radio waves etc etc. The picture would surely be far more complex. Your microwave oven would be psychedelic.

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Above is a bit of Washington DC with a depiction of low level wi-fi hanging around the Washington Monument like a colourful mist (or smog, as the hypochondriacs would have you believe). And below, an image showing the decreasing amplitude of the wi-fi waves as they get further from their source. That’s why you can’t get a signal if you’re too far from your router.

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My physics A-level made me wonder if the reflection from the pond would happen. And then I decided that it probably would, since wi-fi is represented as being within our visible spectrum.

But while this is all very pretty, does it really mean anything?

Well no, it doesn’t. But it is very pretty. But I was thinking that it was rather sad that we couldn’t see this sort of stuff with our naked eyes, instead of having to resort to arty depictions. And then I read this comment on the Gizmodo page:

I see things like this, all the time – I see them right now. They’re not as vivid as the photos, they’re more like transparent solids that act as waves and move in specific patterns. There’s more than one pattern though, which I assume would be other noise beyond the visual spectrum. They’re not eye floaties, I’ve researched every visual phenomena that I could find, and though one came close it didn’t really explain everything.

I want some of whatever he’s on.

Still winter

As the kids’ winter holiday drew to a close, we made the most of the winter weather with a quick braai:

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This evening, I settled down to a bit of pre-season footy: the totally bizarre mismatch of AFC Bournemouth hosting a full strength Real Madrid side.
It’s currently half time and 0-3, but it could have easily been 0-27 (which it probably will be by full time).