Dry Humour

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Somewhere behind all the fuss over Nkandla and the Linkin Park drama, there’s a nation trying to get on with normal life. And if you happen to be Mitchum CEO Bob Johnson, normal life is making sure that your brand is the driest thing in South Africa. As he says:

You probably already know us as the antiperspirant that offers maximum protection against wetness and odour, but I’m here to let you know about an exciting step we are taking in the deodorant game.
A big step.
A step to becoming the driest company in the country and to transform our Mitchum family into the driest employees they can be.
Are they happy about it? I don’t really care.
At Mitchum we only do dry. Seriously dry.

To this end, he’s gone through his employees’ belongings and he’s giving away anything he’s found that’s even vaguely moist – pool noodles, jet skis etc – over on their microsite. As I write, his MD’s Island Holiday is up for grabs.

Bob Johnson is serious about this.

Sadly for Bob, there’s another South African brand which stakes a claim to desiccation: Savanna Cider. And they got in touch with Bob after a recent competition on 5FM:

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/user626130255/savanna-dry-this-for-size[/soundcloud]

As a goodwill gesture, Savanna sent over some of their product to Bob.

Bob was unimpressed, but responded kindly by draining the bottles and sending them back, together with another of his employees’ “wet” belongings:

Those last two lines killed me dead. Brilliant.

The Mitchum campaign is brilliant. It’s novel, it’s different and it really caught my attention. That Savanna also noted it and decided to interact has made things even better. I just hope that they can come back with a reply to Bob’s letter so that this can continue.

You can follow Bob Johnson on twitter: @CEOBobJohnson
Hats off to the guys at Ogilvy. Really nice work.

Disclosure (because you’re all ever so cynical): I have received no Mitchum or Savanna products – I just really like this campaign and wanted to share it.

UPDATE: And now they’re DFFs (Dry Friends Forever). Here’s the gossip from Bizcommunity.com

Angry Birds Star Wars

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Issues with internet today, so not much from me here except to say that you should go and download the latest chapter in the Angry Birds saga.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Angry Birds Space, but my first impressions of the new Star Wars game are very favourable.

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This isn’t just some Angry Birds gameplay chucked over a Star Wars background; there’s detail, storylines, special character birds and special powers. For example, above, once the Luke Skywalker bird has taken out that Stormtrooper pig shooting the laser, the Obi-Wan birds will “use the force” to destroy the Imperial fortress.

It’s free and Android users can download it directly using this QR code:

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Have fun!

UPDATE: Oh my. Han Solo bird with rebounding laser pistol is fantastic. And you can call in a “Scorched Earth” Airstrike from the Millennium Falcon. I am loving this.

If govt can keep da lama out so can they keep satanis out

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YES!

Fullscreen capture 2016-05-16 112040 AM.bmp

So says michangel.justice while commenting on this channel24.com post:

The South African Council of Churches is planning to prevent Lady Gaga from performing in South Africa

Now, if this were a campaign based on her musical efforts, I could understand – I could even join in. But no. SACC are not worried about that, they’re worried about this:

The church group has now raised their concerns, stating that they are in fact worried about the “destructive impact” Lady Gaga can have on South Africa’s youth.
Reverend Mxolisi Sonti, secretary of the youth forum, told Beeld they are afraid of the extent of Satanism in South Africa at this time, and that Gaga’s visit could lead to an exponential growth of Satanism.

One wonders if anyone has told them about YouTube, DVDs or the many other ways that people can listen to Gaga’s gaga message whether or not she actually comes to South Africa. You can also find out about real Satanists on the internet, which will be available in South Africa until Uncle Jacob says its not ok any more.

SACC’s stance follows on from the Facebook group: South Africa: No to Lady Gaga and satanists [sic] which was launched when the concerts were announced and has already reached the heady heights of 378 likes. There are ample opportunities for your reading enjoyment on there. It’s like a plethora of michangel.justices attempting to justify themselves.

The group is currently planning a march to the department of Arts and Culture in Pretoria on Friday, where they will be handing over a written request to the department in a plea to stop Gaga from coming to South Africa.

Of course, I’m all for these people being able to voice their opinions. Individuals should not be gagged just because of their religious views. Sadly, for Mxolisi, michangel et al, that goes for Satanists as well – not that I believe Lady Gaga is necessarily one of them. Can you imagine if Satanists marched on Parliament calling for some Christian singer to be banned?

Uproar. Bedlam. Hilarity.

Maybe if these people want to increase support for their cause they should bring over some popular Christian singer, leading to an exponential growth of Christianity.

I wonder why that hasn’t happened yet?

Knot good

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It’s one of those pet hates; when you pop you headphones in your pocket and the tangle elves get to work tying all sorts of knots in them, meaning that listening to music the following day takes 10 minutes longer than you had planned.

Well, it’s not your fault. I’ve recently learned that you can blame PHYSICS!

A duo at the University of California found no elves (durr – they’re invisible!) but they did find some PHYSICS!

It is well known that a jostled string tends to become knotted; yet the factors governing the “spontaneous” formation of various knots are unclear. We performed experiments in which a string was tumbled inside a box and found that complex knots often form within seconds.

From that initial line, maybe the best way to avoid this difficulty is not to jostle your pockets. Some men may find this rather taxing.

We used mathematical knot theory to analyse the knots. Above a critical string length, the probability P of knotting at first increased sharply with length but then saturated below 100%. This behaviour differs from that of mathematical self-avoiding random walks, where P has been proven to approach 100%. Finite agitation time and jamming of the string due to its stiffness result in lower probability, but P approaches 100% with long, flexible strings.

Basically, all other factors (and basically, this means trouser jostling) being equal, the longer your cable, the more likely it is to knot.

There are graphs, photos and a whole raft of other formulae and statistical explanation in the paper. I did my best to work my way through it and, despite falling asleep twice, managed to get to the end.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that they had not even bothered to provide a solution for this horrible phenomenon.

Science is amazing and science can be used to demonstrate amazing things. You only have to look at some Austrian bloke jumping from what appeared to be a large, old-fashioned kettle on the edge of space to see this. But all those amazing things are no use if they can’t be put to practical use. Lest we forget, Felix’s freefall allegedly taught us that we could safely eject from spaceplanes of the future (ok, bit of a stretch there in attempting to justify their expense sheet by the guys at Red Bull perhaps, but still).

But this, for all their efforts:

The experiment was repeated hundreds of times with each string length to collect statistics.

gives us just that. Statistics. And they are statistics that say that if you put your headphones in your pocket and you jostle (or even if you don’t), you are going to end up with knotted cable.

This is no help whatsoever and I feel that I must apologise on behalf of science. In my humble opinion, experiments with no practical application should be banned. Physics should be banned. Raymer and Smith have dragged its name through the mud.

And if those bans leave us with no more skydives from space, well so be it. The likelihood of me ever having to evacuate a spaceplane seems rather small when compared with the likelihood of me having to untie another sodding knot in my Sennheiser CX300II’s every time I take them out of my pocket. And no, I am not a serial jostler.

Science must provide answers and solutions. Otherwise we might as well just all study the arts.

a-ha receive Cross of St. Olav

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And, as many of you who have tried and failed to get your own Cross of St. Olav, that’s a pretty big deal in Norway.

Morten Harket, Magne Furuholmen and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy will be awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, during a special ceremony in Oslo on Tuesday, November 6. The Order of St. Olav is awarded for distinguished services for Norway and mankind. The members of a-ha are receiving this Royal Order for their outstanding musical contribution.

And local newspaper Aftenposten pulled no punches in their adulations at the band’s achievements.

Du kan gå hvor som helst på kloden og plutselig høre en a-ha-låt fra en kafé, en bil, et hus. Du sier navnet Magne Furuholmen, og du blir bedt med inn på te i Bangkok, du nevner i forbifarten Morten Harket og drosjesjåføren i Buenos Aires slår av taksameteret. På en parkbenk i New York kommer du i snakk med en person om Waaktaar-Savoys «Velvet», og du har en venn for livet.

Or:

You can go anywhere on this planet and suddenly hear an a-ha song at a cafe, in a car, a house. You say the name Magne Furuholmen and suddenly, you are invited for tea in Bangkok; you mention Morten Harket in passing and the Buenos Aires cab driver stops the meter, you discuss Waaktaar-Savoy’s song ‘Velvet’ on a bench in New York and you find yourself a friend for life.

I have to admit that even as a big fan, none of these things have ever happened to me. Maybe I’ve been listening to classic 80’s synthpop in all the wrong cities. I’d love to be invited for tea in Thailand or get a cheap ride in Argentina. To be fair, I’m less interested in a friend for life in America, but that’s just a personal thing. Anyway, I don’t generally discuss specific pieces of music with benches or any other form of street furniture.

After that incident while chatting about Bohemian Rhapsody with the cycle rack it’s safety first for me.