Ride report 94.7

Yesterday was the 94.7 Cycle challenge cycle race. Apparently the second largest cycling event in the world. Second, ONLY to the Cape Argus, wow. I have never thought of outh Africans as a cycling nation, but it certainly could appear to be, from elsewhere in the world. We are of Dutch decent, i hasten to add.

25 000 cyclists graced the streets of Johannesburg, and i would imagine even more support staff and supporters. Riding a course of 94.7 kilometres, it attracts everyone from world class racers to ... well people who should not be on bicycles. Every size shape and colour was there, and quite a large number in some kind of fancy dress. I saw bees, superheroes, cartoon characters, and the cows had babies!!
The CHOC cows that is. CHOC is a charity for childhood cancer victims, and they have ridden every year for a while now, to raise funds. This year ther were over 30 of them.

The day started early. Up at 3AM and dressed and ready, out into the dark morning. We, the Think Bike marshalls met at a coffee shop in Sunninghill, close to the start line. We were issued with "Route access" stickers and some basic instructions. The mood was good, steaming cupsof coffee and cigarette smoke curled in the morning air. Laughing and joking the marshalls swirled around as everyone tried to greet everyone else, an almost impossible task, but one which everyone attacked with vigour. Then we were offered the chance at a pre-race sweep. I took it with both hands, immediately gearing up and heading out of the parking lot. Only one marshall joined me, Beerygaz he calls himself on the forum, a guy on a bmw gs1200 who i've known since he started with us, we get along well together.

So off we went, the two of us into the dark. He had a bright oange light which bugged me a little, but honestly you can see him from a very long way away. Now i need to clarify something. Despite the route being just under 100km, somehow it takes an hour on a very fast bike. I don't really understand that. Our stops were short and not very frequent, usually just stopping to confirm a specific intersection with whichever foot marshalls were present.

The streets were wonderful and clean. The roads agency was still busy sweeping, and the recent rains had cleared most debris away. The start of the race was a stretch along the m1 highway. Long, wide and closed to traffic, the morning calm was broken by our screaming machines. It's a while since i've driven that road fast, and it really is a lovely stretch. Curving slowly uphill all the way to Jo'burg cbd, it was tar and rubber and crisp cold air. I left the bmw behind immediately, he would catch up soon enough, and revelled in the lonely road. My first stop was at the m2 split. I had noticed a number of cars on the road, despite the barricades, but saw the metro vehicles starting to arrive and knew that by the startof the race the lockdown would be complete. However, for some unfortunate barricade jumper was a nasty surprise! Straw bales right across the highway must have been a first for him, and at 4AM i would wager that he was half asleep and drunk, he handled the experience badly. Hitting straw bales at one hundred and something taked pieces off your car, you could tell by the wreckage he had left behind, when he realised that staying to examine the damage would also result in certain uestions being asked. Like why are you here, where did you jump the barricades, and are you, sir, drunk? Of course, bein 4AM and half asleep, he failed to consider the number plate that had also ben left behind. The marshalls, of course, were NOT amused, but thankfully no-one was hurt.

Continuing along the m2, they were laying rubber mats across the bridge joingings, for the cyclists. Up harrow road was a pleasure. A long step lefthander uphill, 2 lanes wide and over the crest of hillbrow. Past the hospital the barricades already in place, straw bales easily visible oin the dull morning light. The sky had just started to fade to grey. Up Jan Smuts avenue, a tree lined twisty road running through the heart of jo'burg's richest suburbs, we've done this road for a number of events, and it's becoming a favourite. You have to watch it though, some of those corners are deceptively sharp, and there is always the danger of leaves on the road. But wow, both lanes closed meant that i have the full road to play with, unthinkable usually. Gaz had caught up with me since the m2, and we were bith keeping up a similar pace, him slightly behind me. Breaking through into randburg we now compete for raod space with more service vehicles, the barricades are all up, that is always a concern at this eary hour. We pass fleets of metro 4x4's, as they head ou to their assigments. Of course, while they were sedately ambling along to their destination, we were ... *cough* hammering it ... *evil grin* i was out for fun.

Lane splitting is a polite endevour. What i was doing was not ... neither lane-spliting nor polite. I was shunting it, zigzagging between the metro bakkies, doing more than double the speed limit, in a commercial/residential zone. The only witnesses to my sin, those nazi's whose sole purpose is to prevent such criminal behaviour. The best part? They did nothing. We were on the same team for the day, and we were allowed to continue unimpeded.

Through the back of Randburg, up to Bryanstone, quiet suburban avenues, again wary of leaves on the roads, the tarmac was clean and dry. Still keeping up a quick pace, up Witkoppen road, a wide road, and mostly straight, a major artery for jo'burg traffic. Onto the newly tarred Hans Strydom. The new tar black in the morning light, smooth and sharp. Onto the n14. A major highway from jo'burg west to Pretoria, it has longbeen the road of choice for speedsters. Long, clean, wide and straight, it rolls through undulating hills, mostly surrounded by agricultural land. The light was much brighter now, as dawn arrived. I had been looking forward to this moment for months. On the downill onramp, accellearing as fast as my bike would carry me, 200 quickly approached. The force of air pulling against the inferno of machine.

Tyres spinning, engine screaming, the morning belonged to me. And then *THWACK*, a half form in thheadlight and sensation. The shock rippled through the bike, more than one sensation hit me almst similtaneously. I had hit .... something. I had to pull over to check. A tarantaal. A small spotted guinea fowl, it was already dead, but i had nailed it head on. No damage to the bike, only feathers and blood visible, and i didn't feel too bad since it was already demised, but i certainly woke up!!!!

Finishing the highway, we pulled onto the back roads that took us to the finish line. Also agricultural land, but smaller roads, more twisty and narrow. But well lit in the morning light, and inviting for a still careful, yet fast paced ride.

Past Kyalami, that home of speed, and suddenly we we upon the end venue area, already bustling with activity. Arriving cyclists and everyone else, a lot of traffic, all of a sudden we are jostling amongst bicycles, notorious or swerving across an entire lane in an instant, so caution is well advised!! At the start line, we give our brief report, and i discover that my start group is over an hour away.

So refilling with petrol, cleaning the vast number of miggies off my visor, and i go fall in with the troops lining the start straight, all waiting for their groups to start. We left in pairs mostly. 2 bikes to each group of cyclists. The cyclists numbering from about 50 to 200, in the professional groups up front. The "masses" were in much larger groups, but they only left later, to allow the faster riders open roads.

My group started, with me way out in front. I like to keep a healthy distance in front. Both to anticipate any problems, and to take action should i see one, but also because i'm not interested in the cyclists. They will do what they do. I'm interested in their safety, and as such every single othe person along the route, pedestrian or vehicle, that may intrude on their race track. An almost deja vu as i ride the same route for the second time that day. Much slower, i'm bored almost instantly. The m1 highway remarkably wide a 40km/h, every detail has the time to sink in, and i pay attention to the closed off onramps, wave at the enthusiastic foot marshalls, waving their flags in enjoyment. The spectators are or me the most astounding part of this day. The entire length produces a multicoloured crowd of waving shouting spectators. Strange to see people camped on the side of a highway, skottle braai, kids, dogs, all jumping and waving at the cyclists. It truly is a ciy wide event.

My ride was uneventful. Strangely though, it never matters which group i get assigned to, i always get some prat from the cyclelab toyota team driving like a dickhead. We disallow cars on th course for a very good reason, yet every race these support vehicles are the greatest threat to anyone's well being. They are arrogant and single minded in the pursuit of service to their team, and frankly aren't very good drivers either. i look forward to the day that those support cars are actually forced to remain behind the packs, instead of wherever they want to be.

The metro police were also as reliable as ever. You can asolutely rely on them to be inside their vehicles, with no awareness of anything else. Typical. They truly are the most useless bunch of assholes you could imagine. About as useful as a bucket of nails in a magnet factory, if you get my drift.

By the n14 the second time i was exhausted. I raced ahead and waited fo my group. It's a safe area, and we're not needed to maintain a clear route. By this time the various groups have merged, and are effectively strung along the entire length of the course. So i pull up at the offramp, to wait. A cigarette, a LOT of water, and a chat with some SAPS guys. I asked about the busy-ness oof their official radio (quiet they said), and they asked if my bike's feather redecoration was related to the tarantaal carcus they had seen earlier. A good comeraderie is common amongst the various marshalls, and i've always found that the SAPS guys are the best law enforcement on the day, much more so than the "traffic police" ...

The Think Bike stop was exactly halfway round the course. So after safely delivering, what i think was my group, hard to say, since the groups had so merged and stretched, i hit round 3.

I was already exhausted. 200 km on the bike, 100 fast and 100 slow. It was getting hot. So i had only one thought: get to the rest stop, food and juice, then i could tackle the masses again. Round 3 is the slowest. The wide open highway of earlier had become a maze of bicycles. Slow and fast ones, straight riders and people who i'm certain, were zagging around so much the did double the distance. It's hard riding a motorbike at 10km/h. More so when you are utterly enveloped by swaying cyclists. Hold the line, riding the clutch uphill, coasting downhill. Watching all oer at the same time, pedestrians, cyclists, ambulances, and all others who may be on the track. No wind, m heavy biker gear is starting to get steamy inside. The sweat now making me wet and sticky inside, my head getting light from the heat and bright light. I stop when some old coot and his wife are foorcing their way onto the circuit. The woman's high pitched wail sounded like an invitation to strangle and bludgeon repeatedly. I do not believe that at 11AM on a sunday morning you are really en route to a funeral. And frankly, driving in front of unsuspecting cyclists has got to be the dumbest idea i can think of. The other fight i had was an E-TV reporter. Some stupid female who truly believed a little slip of paper was reason to drive across in the 100 km line of cyclists. The arrogance was about as astounding as the ridiculusness of her demeanour. I chided her, pointing out that as a journalist, she should knoiw better. Guess i was wrong. So i happily left her with throwaway "have a nice wait".

It was also on my third round that things got busy. Cyclist crashing into each other, en masse. I had passed 3 or 4 incidents already, with the attendant TB marshalls showing that the scene was under control. But then i found new carnage. They fall so easily, and damn they fall hard! Lots of missing skin, a few broken bones.

Out at the back end of Hillbrow, just past a fairly fast and dangerous corner, someone had gone down. One lane had been taken up with a medic vehicle, so i spent time slowing the cyclists down. I was joined nthusiatically by aa woman and 2 young boys, who took great pleasure inshouting slow down and waving their arms to warn the cyclists of the impending danger. I've worked around cyclists before, and knew that donning a bright orange reflective vest, standing in the middle of the road and flapping like a panicked chicken would not get their attention. So i watched for the faster ones. Usually middle aged males with a time to beat. Not really good enough to get into the lead groups, but certainly serious enough to try attain a good time. They behave like typical cyclists, they remain still while the universe flows around them. Since they are not actually moving, in their minds it's permission to not look up. Those that add an ipod to their gear are truly suicidal.

While trying to slow these racers, another guy goes down immediately in front me. Panic stations, deal with new incident. Some guy (as above) bumped both a teen boy and another racer. The boy was NOT amused. Got patched up by the still attending medics and moved on with his race.

I eventually reached the halfway point. I fell over. Well organised, there was juice and sandwiches waiting, but why oh why was there no ICE??? Lukewarm water when you are boiling hot is as close to an insult as i an think of, but anything wet is welcomed.

Everybody was having a great day. Boerewors rolls on the skottle, big fish stories abounded, accident scenes compared and a lot of noise and laughing and joking were heard at the venue. Bikes came and went, cyclists kept on flowing past, and metro sat across the road, doing nothing, in the shade.

The time had run away, and i was able to leave. I had to fetch my daughter, and was greatful fo the bike, as now my fellow road users had changed form idiots on bicycles, ambling slowly along, to idiots in cars, who weren't in fact going anywhere.

Ahhh Jo'burg, city of a million contradictions :)

I cannot ignore this

Again, it is not my intent to create a depressive blog. My thought today was an almost fun post, below, BUT THIS CANNOT CONTINUE!!!

Four policemen, three of whom apparently sat in an office and ignored the woman's screams for help when she was allegedly raped in the bathroom of the Rustenburg police station, have repeatedly refused to attend an identity parade.

What the fucking fuck?

"Added to this and the death threats my client has received is that every morning an unmarked white car, which has no registration plate, is parked outside her house which we believe is part of the continuous intimidation tactics being used against her."

Right mr fucking zuma, bring ME the machine gun and i'll show you how it works.

Oh Dear God, please be with this lady.

Friday the 13th

So why is it remembered and feared?

Well the then poep ordered ordered the arrest (and torture and deaths) of all the knights templar. They were monks, who had become wealthy, and were in fact the first bankers.

The European continent was allied (subservient) to the poep, and thus all templars n that part of the world met rather gruesome ends. The rest fled to england, where the then king was arrogant enough to ignore the papal decree. For a while at least.

This turned Engand, and more specifically Scotland into havens for these fleeing monk businessmen. They had to go undeground though, and were assisted by the locals, who were unhappy with with the king and the poep.

The local groups who helped hide these men are what became the freemasons.

Sieg fail

And then, out all the misery and fucked-up-ness, you get something truly priceless.

Now

You know what, fuck this. I spoke at great length, as eloquently as ever (wink) about all the crap. Enough said. These are links in todays news that say everything.

Cops who raped woman in cells refuse to take part in identity parade

2 women, both nearly killed while cycling

Ex Interpol head's trial enters 22nd day

SA drops on world indices

Farm attacks claim more lives than Afghan war

Selebi claims Aglioti is a good friend of his

Schoolkid stabed to death

Cop, robber shootout shakes up Randburg

Woman shot in face

Suspended jail staff cost R1 million a month

This is 1 day's news. Crumbs, it isn't even all of it, not even half. It will be different tomorrow. Totally different stories, but new faces, new misery. I don't understand it.

Cops and robbers

South Africa, the place you are most likely to die violently. I went for a drive the other night. Aimlessly driving through our streets at night, and i was struck by single indisputable fact. South Africans do not go out at night.
They are all locked in behind high walls. The only glimmers of life are when passing a pub, and you see the drunken people laughing and staggering to cars. Which they then drive at breakneck pace through red robots to get behind the next high wall.

When you are driving, each intersection and stop is a danger. If not from those who bought their driving licenses in a lucky packet, then the hijackers who lurk behind shrubery, waiting to kill you, for your cell phone, and what is usually a very brief use of your car. If not them, then the police, who harrass, intimidate and now kill you, for being outside your walls.

The police are as much a problem as hijackers. Strange to say, that you never find police and hijackers on the same intersections, which would work for me. They seem to have pre-arranged patterns. Here, "Be aware for your own safety" is a signboard not to be taken likely. It is there because people have died for no good reason at all. Tired, distracted and often well fed and drunk, they did not see death coming.

The police are to be feared. They will stop you, harass you, and often arrest you, on some or other pretext, subjecting you to the hellish cells which exist in every police station. People get arrested for arbitrary traffic violations, get gang raped in police care, and their lives ruined fr ever. This is the reality of daily life in South Africa.

It is a direct result of the ANC and it's myopic idiocy. Fucking children in a candy store. They took their revenge on the police. First demilitarising it, then having a total cleanout of any and all whites, installing their umkhonto wesizwe cadres, trained by the communists to destabilize and wage total onslaught. They lost that fight, they were so pathetic at war they lost. They then donned blue uniforms, and continued the war against us. They're still pathetic, badly trained, badly disciplined, they are little more than golems, with a piece of paper containing their instructions in their head. And it seems that they can't read the instructions, either.

Crime spiralled out of control, supported by the courts. Criminals walked away from being arrested. Cops who used their firearms were instantly placed on special leave, and subjected to years of legal trials, for doing their jobs. The criminals had a constitutionally guarenteed right to life that over rode all other rights we pretend to enjoy. We all died. We are still dying. Day by day, lead poisoning (a natural enough death here) claims farmers, pensioners, soccer moms and kids. My cousin watched some ****** put a gun to his child's head. It'shappening. Cops died too, in their droves. Given specific instructions that they were NOT allowed to use any force on suspects, the criminals had free hands in their endeavours.

Now all of a sudden, some poepol on power realised what a farce the anc's policies have been. But, as ever,the stupid children have no sense. Now the police are shooting innocent people. A sweet seller (we have lots of these, a table with assorted sweets and fruit is a man's livelihood) who dares demand payment, well shoot him. Some guy sitting polishing his shoes, smoking a joint (it's traditional here, smoking marijuana, it's what we all do) but of course, that single joint is enoh to ruin his life forever when the police decide to harass him, so he ran, and was shot dead in front of his friends.

A woman, shot dead in a car. A child, sitting in a car, shot SEVERAL TIMES. Because, well the cops thought something. Fuck knows what that dipshit thought. HOW DO YOU SHOOT A 3 YEAR OLD???????

I've seen cops behaving illegally. I've seen illegal cops. 2010 is coming, have you heard about our "tourist police"? LOL ... they'll follow you from the airport, and rob you. If you're lucky no-one gets hurt. But they wear uniforms, carry guns, and have blue lights. If you are driving, and are stopped by policemen, you are in shit. The law states that you are allowed the option to drive to the nearest police station, but then you ae evading arrest, and will be shot. If you stop, you may be shot. If you do try race away, you will get shot.

WE are witnessing the end of civilisation. There was a quote i cannot remember by who, about the end, and it was along the lines of: "people will be shooting each other in the streets." It's here, now, every day, every place.

I don't know if there's a point to this post, i don't think so. This blog is just to record the world through my eyes, and im seeing this daily carnage. I can't read the news anymore, CONSTANT death and destruction, all pointless, and ALL due to the anc.

It's THEIR fault, big political wannabes with big mouths and small brains. They have the best police, bullet proofed cars, and a license to kill.

When the ANC refuses to listen

Found this this morning on the Mail and Guardian Website, I repint it in it's entirety. I never knew this piece of history, yet it underscores everything pefectly.

When the ANC refuses to listen
STEPHEN ELLIS: COMMENT - Nov 06 2009 13:14

This year has marked an important South African anniversary that no one has celebrated. It is 25 years since a tragic mutiny within the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe mobilised hundreds of MK fighters in Angola against the ANC leadership from December 1983 into the first months of 1984. Many of the fighters were veterans of the 1976 township uprising who had gone abroad in search of military training.

The mutiny is remembered in ANC legend as Mkatashinga or by similar names derived from a Kimbundu word for an exhausted soldier. It was the most shameful episode in the history of the ANC. But, more to the point, it is vital for understanding the ANC today.

The reason for the mutiny was a refusal by the ANC leadership to listen to the views of its exile base -- the hundreds of fighters who lived in squalid camps in Angola, subject to arbitrary punishments and the whims of their commanders, and made to fight the rebel movement Unita in a war that was not theirs.

The leaders of the mutiny, known as the Committee of Ten, were incarcerated after they had surrendered. With the exception of Zaba Maledza, who died in detention, most were treated leniently, being eventually released.

But a second mutiny broke out in May 1984 among the same rank-and-file fighters. This time the mutineers fought a pitched battle against ANC loyalists and executed a number of commanders. Some of those implicated were court-martialled and executed. At least one committed suicide. Others were detained in appalling conditions.

The only member of the ANC leadership to come out of this tragic episode with any credit was Chris Hani, who had himself been punished 15 years earlier for daring to send to his superiors a memorandum critical of the MK leadership.

Partly on account of this precedent, but also because of his popularity generally, Hani was trusted by the mutineers. With an ANC member writing under the pen-name Tsepo Sechaba, I described Hani's role in a book published in 1992, Comrades against Apartheid. A new biography of Hani by Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp misrepresents our views on his role in ending the 1984 mutiny.

The ANC argues to this day that during its exile years it was obliged to employ a military standard of discipline and that it had to use tough methods against apartheid spies. But the authoritarianism the ANC acquired in exile went so deep that, even after its unbanning in 1990, the movement never really adapted to the culture of accountability that was so strong in the internal opposition to apartheid, especially in the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Cosatu.

After 1990, many UDF members saw no point in maintaining a separate organisation now that the ANC was back home. The leaders of both the UDF and Cosatu, which together had played such a vital role in bringing down apartheid, joined the ANC and were given jobs. Some have become mainstays of the government. They were initiated into an exile culture of democratic centralism that was foreign to the internal opposition to apartheid.

CONTINUES BELOW



According to Dr Mamphela Ramphele, former vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, South Africans have become used to hearing the leadership react to criticism with comments along the lines of: "You must be careful about how you use the freedom we have given you." The fact is that no one gave South Africans freedom. They took it for themselves in the end, not through a guerrilla campaign but through a political process that was never unconnected from the violence that had spread throughout society.

For some years black South Africans could take pride in seeing their leaders living the good life, in the belief that all would benefit in time.

Now, a new generation has arisen that doesn't remember apartheid.

People may no longer see ministers in million-rand cars as shining examples, but more as an elite that serves itself first.

As Ramphele also points out in an important article in The Star last month, the culture of authoritarianism the ANC acquired in exile has led it to regard development as something the state or the ANC (the two have become confused) gives to the people. This is a top-down process that does nothing to diminish the arrogance of those in power. When the bureaucracy is staffed by political appointees and is short of people with the requisite skills, the result is what the government euphemistically calls "a problem of service delivery".

The MK cadres in their camps 25 years ago, short of supplies and long on frustration, were also victims of service delivery. That is the connection between then and now.

South Africa has a democratic Constitution and vibrant democratic traditions. If these are to be used to advantage, bringing new hope and dynamism to the large number of people who feel excluded, then the political elites need to start with an honest self-evaluation. The memory of Mkatashinga is a good place to start.

Stephen Ellis is Desmond Tutu professor in the faculty of social sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Toyrun 2009

http://www.toyrun.org.za

It's almost here!!!

South Africans fleeced by taxes

It's official.

"Johannesburg - Tax experts reckon South Africans are among the most heavily taxed people almost anywhere on earth."

Go figure. I would imagine that it's not wrong per se, but the fact that in addition to being heavily taxed, we receive NOTHING in return. You cannot o to a government hospital, for fear of your life. You cannot go to a police station and expect help. You cannot walk freely in the streets. Our electricity is about to collapse, as is our water. We pay for everything, and in many cases, we pay double, ie police and private security.

"Finweek said that currently, 25% of individual taxpayers pay 75% of all personal income tax, which contributes close to 30% of total revenue to the fiscus."

The middle class are paying the bulk, as the rich have their tax write offs, like new mecedes-benzes, and the richest of the bunch, the anc oficials, probably have so many perks and exceptions they get back each year.

Like most south africans, i don't begrudge uplifting the poor, BUT THAT IS NOT HAPPENING!!!! The poor are staying poor, getting poorer in fact. And the anc? They just partying partying partying, any excuse, and any expense, nothing is too good for the comrades. They are drinking our country to death, not to mention stealing breaking profiteering looting and fucking over anyone else.

The tax man cometh. In addition to over 50% of petrol money going to tax, and the bad roads which we WILL PAY for which they are currently resurfacing, electricity is going up 45% each year for the next 3 years. It's unsustainable. Companies are closing, and the much needed jobs evaporating. Thie that have jobs are so tightly squeezed they always on strike.

I know i'm fucked. It's only a matter of time before i can't pay all the bills. What goes first? Medical insurance? The house (i can't sell becase the market is fucked), taxes? The bike (public transport would cost the same, and take literally about 6/7 times as long to get to work and back), electricity?

I'm NOT alone, and frankly, i'm kind of happy to see this simple fact acknowledged.

http://www.fin24.com

Marshall Law Ukraine

President's address to the Ukrainian people on the occasion of flu epidemic in Ukraine

Oh my god. That's all i can say. I was going to post extracts, but every single line is just ... important.

Go to theflucase.com for the text, and commentary.

van Gogh

Today's guest blogger is Vincent Van Gogh.

To be good – many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm – and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.

You don’t know how paralysing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerises some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares – and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t.’

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas.

But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs onto that, in short, breaks, ‘violates’ – they say.

Let them talk, those cold theologians.

The text is from a letter to his brother, Theo, written in 1884, and quoted in the London Review of Books by Julian Bell, in a review of a new English edition of Van Gogh's complete letters.

Taken in entirety from http://www.chris-floyd.com/.
The direct URL is: Let them talk, those cold theologians

S.A.L.T. in the wound

Here you have it, the Southern African Large Telescope. It is the most powerful telescope in the southern hemisphere, one of the most astounding scientific inventions of all time, it can see the edge of the universe, and it's beginning too.

But it doesn't work. Not properly, at least. And it's not the 11 metres wide lense, perfect and flawless. It does everything exactly as it was designed to do.

Except share that information with those who paid for it. We in south africa are used to it. You need a telephone or internt connection ... and well, it's a problem. There is one operator, and they are pathetic. Called Telkom, they are always referred to as "hellkom" (see hellkom.co.za) or "telscum", or "those phone fuckers".

They want 10 million rand for 11miles of fibre optic cable. I think that would make it the most expensive internet connection in the world. When they EVENTUALLY get it. The order was initially placed 5 years ago. Of course, once they start transferring data, they'll shit themselves again. About a year ago, someone needed to download 100gigabytes of data to south africa. Not only was it cheaper to FLY TO HONG KONG and back, but faster too. It took about 2 hours to transfer the data at an internet cafe at Hong Kong aiport, whereas it would have taken 2 and a half weeks here in SA.

This article that i picked up on, the Guardian, pointed out a recent stunt whereby a company sent a data card VIA PIDGEON, since it was faster than any available internet connection over a 50km or so radius. The pidgeon delivered the data card before the internet transfer was even half way.

I can't make this shit up.

This is what the world sees, and i would imagine, laughs at. www.guardian.co.uk

a sudden sense

the spell is broken
the morning new
deep breath
cleaner air
colder too
one wonders
why
where comes this
unbidden peace
it'll be ok
all right
long journey
weary rest
safe

Working Class Hero

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

Thank you John Lennon

Story of the day

Man accidentally ejects himself from plane

WTF?

The man, a civilian joyriding with his air force pilot friend, accidentally grabbed the eject lever while trying to brace himself.

He added: "Much of the information has yet to be tested, but it is confirmed that a civilian passenger unintentionally ejected from a Silver Falcons Pilatus PC-7 Mk II Astra during a general flying sortie out of Langebaanweg Air Force Base.

He would have experienced 20G of acceleration while leaving the plane.

The retired instructor added: "All it takes is for the firing handle to be pulled up about 2.5cm and you're on your way out.

"You get one almighty kick under the backside and then you're gone.

South Africa vs Gaza

Now THIS is why i read Al Jazeera. I'm just going to post some highlights, but go read the whole article.

South Africa's legal war over Gaza
By Imran Garda

"We've identified about 75 South Africans who we believe served in the IDF at one point or the other," Boda says.

The lawyers say some of their evidence can be found on public profiles on social networking sites like Facebook.

Al Jazeera logged on to Facebook and quickly found photographs of South Africans proudly showing off their stints fighting for the Israeli army.

There is a dizzying array of similar photographs on the website, featuring smiling young men striking gladiatorial poses with weapons that, according to Goldstone, belonged to an army committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Beneath the pictures are captions such as: "These are the presents we sent the Gaza residents daily."

As a signatory to the Rome Statute, South Africa could theoretically arrest and prosecute these individuals for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity - which is why lawyers like Boda are confident they can set up a war crimes court in South Africa.

South Africa's most influential Jewish organisation, the Jewish Board of Deputies, strongly condemned the Goldstone report and has been quick to dismiss the Gaza docket.

Junk Art by Bernard Pras

Care of My Amazing Fact

You can follow the link on my blogroll, or here. Astounding find, truy inspiired artwork, the kind you can stare at for hours.

Andreas V12

Andreas V12 on Flicker

Beautiful.

Let's go fly a kite ...

Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite
And send it soaring

Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite
Let's go fly a kite!

Mary Poppins

Murdering rapists

News 24

So a guy gets arrested for rape. But when he gets released (assuming on bail) there are 38 women waiting outside the police station.

They then proceed to beat him to death. Well now, what's the chances he deserved that?

I would imagine about 100%.

Art and soul

“This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?
Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.
Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and loose. Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance.
So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty – describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember.
If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories?
Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. – And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it.
A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside.
For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted”
[Rainer Maria Rilke ~ 4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926]

Thank you Ara.

Frame crack

So i've had it welded now, by an aircraft mechanic no less. Thanks Mark.

Looks crap, but it won't crack further. Yamaha still hasn't gotten back to me, and the reasons they gave are invalid (apparently).

Hippy hearse

IOL

I wanna do this ... and have a bike sidecar hearse too ... hmmm ...

Funereal ...

Feelgood

R.I.P. Garth Stead

IOL
Garth Stead Photography

I found his work only a few weeks ago. He had taken photos which had significance in an american shooting of an innocent man.
But i got utterly taken in with his form, he genuinely had a talent with the lens.
Then the story that he had died, by his own hand. Strange.

May he rest in peace.

Incoming

Wow look at that baby go!! *grin*
brace for it folks .... you know all these hoomans get all crazy and such ...

:D

Bike

My bike's frame is cracked. All by itself, where frankly IT SHOULDN'T.

I'm not an expert, but i imagine that a frame cracking is about the worst possible thing to happen to a bike. I'm taking it to Yamaha, let me ear what they have to say.

And people tell me that excessive stunting is hard on the frame. Sure it is, WHICH IS WHY I DON'T WHEELIE MY FUCKING BIKE.

I don't get it.

oh fuckit

Yawl have a good weekend y'hear?

Rolling ....

Roll, roll, roll your joint, gently in the breeze ...
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a tease.

Service protests

61 held over delivery protest
2009-10-13 08:19

Johannesburg - Service delivery protests in Palm Ridge near Evaton have resulted in 61 arrests and 15 injuries, Gauteng police said on Tuesday.

The residents were arrested on Monday after protesting a lack of electricity, toilets and water, said Constable Lindelani Dladla.

She said 15 people were injured when police fired rubber bullets after residents pelted police vans with stones.

Protesters had dispersed and the situation was quiet and "back to normal" by Monday afternoon, said Dladla.

Those arrested would appear in the Alberton Magistrate's Court on Tuesday.

- SAPA
___________________________________________________________________________

It's easier to wound and arrest commoners, than to to arrest 2 or 3 criminal councillors. What's with that? These people do not have things promised and overdue. Does that not matter??
Service protests, these people are asking for, well by now demanding, basic services. No more. This is just down the road.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara's Children in SA

Wow, that's cool. I've just recently got some Cuban cigarettes :D

But Che's children are here, to promote the cause of the Cuban Five. Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez are in US prisons, unfairly, many believe.

Curious, although i suspect the anc's loyalties lie rather with the paymasters.

Oh and there's a movie about Che's life. Which they're promoting too. Petty politics and movie deals. It reminds me of the t-shirt with Che's face and something about fighting capitilism all your life, doesn't mean you won't have your face slapped on a t-shirt sold in a chain store.

IOL

Drugs

Prime Evil

So we're being primed, like an engine about to have the shit revved out of it.

IOL

The sources added that the efforts by local intelligence agencies to trace the Cape Town Somalis was disrupted when police commissioner Bheki Cele went on national television to say that the country's intelligence structures
were on top of the situation. This prompted the Somalis to go further underground.

"When I interact with our counter-intelligence people, they are more concerned about the Boeremag than al-Qaeda... But they are acting from an ideological perspective which is fundamentally out of sync with reality."

A source quoted in the Weekend Argus said: "What has been established is that the Cape guys are linked to al-Qaeda cells in Somalia, who are connected to the group in Afghanistan. We have established that most al-Qaeda operatives are relocating from Afghanistan to Pakistan, attracted by increased lawlessness in Pakistan.

An NIA official said yesterday: "This is classified information. If you publish it, this will jeopardise an operation already under way." However, the source said Cele had already said publicly that intelligence officers were on the track of the extremists.

"I do not mean to be alarmist, but the US was right to take these people seriously because, we now know that they have links with shady characters who have access to old military hardware in Eastern Europe," said the source.

Moon bomb = bad idea

So they bomb the moon with a "nonexplosive" weapon. Yes ok.

And nothing happened .... no dust plume anywhere, and even the "live feed" was just a animation. Ah well, they have the data, they say, so we can look forward to more unscience.

I did get a few good chuckles over this though, have a look at these links, and enjoy :)

NASA Bombing of the Moon may create conflict with ET's, UFO's

Adios, Star People

World map

So ever map i have ever seen is a landmass map. But we know that's not really right is it? To some degree, at least. You can see where there is human habitation, roads and grey industrial areas and suburbs.

What i am always looking for in a map is where the people aren't. That is where i focus my interest, for hours at a time just soaking up the nothingness via paper. I have a very good imagination, all my teachers agreed on THAT.

So may i present my favourite map of South Africa ...



You can get more from www.worldmapper.org and you can select any region.

Jo'burg

This weekend i had the grave misfortune of being inside a 4 wheeled motor vehicle. Friday and saturday saw me driving around johannesburg in a friend's bakkie, going as far as pretoria and back, and around the "northern suburbs" of this mine dump.

Thank god for motorbikes. The utter carnage on the roads was mind boggling to say the least, and in about 400km i saw about 4 serious accidents, and 3 minor bumper bashings. A broken down bus, with the mechanic's bakkie next to it, efectivelyt reducing the busiest road in jhb, which at that point is 3 lanes wide (enough said) to ONE lane (!!??!?!) So everyone driving home and starting their weekend was late, and of course in ill humour.

I don't get it, i was just out there, in no hurry at all, not even watching any sort of time. I was polite, cautious and patient, and jees, i hated every second. If not accidents, it was the police closing off highways for road blocks. The construction that has reduced every highway in town to a rubble heap just added to the misery.

And the good news is that we'll pay for the priviledge soon! Strange though, how people are prepared to sit in traffic for hours at a time, yet get all aggresive when you don't do whatever it is they want you to do. Like letting them in front of you, when frankly, their natural "turn" is behind you. Not a big thing, just .... normal human stuff i guess.

Sunday was my reward. Did the Race for Victory, marshalling the little cycles along. Ended up riding through a nature reserve, koppies with no signs of humans, wonderful. I didn't see any game, but there was plenty of bokdrolletjies all over, so they must have been hiding ... i wanted to go join them!

It was a cold wet morning, and the clouds turned into mist we were so high .... man what an amazing, if brief disconnect from the world at large.

UN speech 2009

"All problems that exist in our world today emanate from the fact that rulers have distanced themselves from human values, morality, and the teachings of divine messengers. Regrettably, in the current state of international relations, selfishness and insatiable greed have taken the place of such humanitarian concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity, and justice."

Thank you President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Cynthia McKinney

IOL

A lack of blank pages in the passport of former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was the reason for South African Airways' refusal to allow her to board a flight to South Africa on Tuesday.

SAA confirmed the incident saying she did not have the required number of blank pages in her passport to travel.

SAA's Head Group Corporate Affairs, Robyn Chalmers said the Airline understands the inconvenience to the passenger involved but could not allow anyone with inadequate documentation to board a flight.

____________________________________________________________________

Bullshit. Inadequate blank pages? Pull the OTHER one, please. The ANC is very clearly under the orders of the Clintons.

Ping Irondad

I have a strange question, or problem, relating to the toyrun this year.

I'll end up posting everything in due course, but i've got a problem planning a mass ride, where certain people are expected to behave badly.

Perhaps you have ideas that can help .... i'd like to get ideas before i shoot my mouth off here :D

peace

911

OK so i need to post, something anything i guess. As ever, so much to say, which comes first, last, not at all?

Now a lot has happened in the news, from the sublime to the ridiculous. And while there is much that impacts me, and us, i feel no desire to say anything about it.

Remarkably little in my personal life, except teeth and pain. They have become synonymous in my mind :)

There is a small series of incidences worth mentioning though, and i hesitate to mention it, due to the "nut factor" involved ... i offer only as a small personal experience, true to myself and myself alone.

So i have a cell phone, as most of us do, except mine is problematic, and annoying, so mostly it lies in a corner with it's power off. It's useful for two things mostly, telling time, since i do not wear a watch, and reporting to me who has tried to contact me.

So in a typical day, i'll maybe look at the phone 3 times maximum. So imagine my surprise, when 4 times in one week, i pick up the phone, and it shows me the time as, you guessed it, 9:11.

I've read about this phenomenon, and as i said, it carries a nut factor. But what do you do, when you pick up the phone at night, and it says 911, and the next morning, cheking sms's, you notice it says 9:11. When it happens four times in one week, well that is strange, strange for any time, if it had said 9h15 every time, it would be as strange. But it hasn't been something arbitrary, it's been 911, the magic numbers.

I have no opinion on this. I am very specifically not having an opinion. Due a google search on this phenomenon, there is plenty about it. The fact that i experienced it is well ... odd.

Peace and love

Justice Goldstone, i salute you

New York Times Op-Ed

Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

[edit] The Jewish Week

The Obama administration is ready to use the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council to deal with any other "difficulties" arising out of the report, the White House official said Wednesday.

SUNSPOTS!!

I heard about it a few days ago, the big one in the bottom left corner. It was there, just not visible to us. But wow, it's nice and big. There also appear to be 2/3 smaller ones scattered.

Enjoy the energy rush people ;D

Song of the Sausage Creature

by Hunter S. Thompson

There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.

Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.

When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."

"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."

The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.

But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.

...

Hot damn, go read, THIS is the shit!!!! :-D

Why I Threw the Shoe

From: InformationClearingHouse

I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents - Muntazer al-Zaidi

By Muntazer al-Zaidi

September 19, 2009 "The Guardian" -- I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.

I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Russian Submarines

A short while ago i posted some pictures of some strange ice circles in Lake Baikal in Siberia. I can't find my post, but these Nasa images give the story.

Imagine my surprise yesterday while reading Pravda (in english) to come across the following information:

"The expedition to Lake Baikal started in 2008. This summer, researchers sought new species of flora and fauna, and dove down more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) to the deepest point of the lake, near Olkhon Island.

At the beginning of the summer, Mir-1 and Mir-2 worked in the southern part of the lake, and in early August the expedition moved to Baikal's north, where gas hydrates, cristalline solids where large amounts of methane are trapped within a cage of water molecules, were found. Gas hydrates are considered a possible alternative fuel."

The story relates to their next mission in the Atlantic, including the wreck of the Titanic. Very cool submarines i have to admit.

But beteen them, and the neutron telescope, Lake Baikal is a VERY busy place it seems. Pretty place too.

I can't resist :D

1. The roundest knight at king Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, ‘You stay here, I’ll go on a head.’
14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’
17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
18. It’s not that the man did not know how to juggle, he just didn’t have the balls to do it.
19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
21. A backward poet writes inverse.
22. In democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
24. Don’t join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

4, 15 and 24 .... absolute classics!!!

The Tytler Cycle

The Tytler Cycle is a theory of democracies formulated by the Scottish historian Alexander Tytler that states:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.”
___________________________________________________________________

Now i know whats wrong with south africa The average cycle is 200 years. We've burned through this in about 20 years. We are already at "apathy".

The US is due for collapse. Overdue, i should say. But in my reading there seems to be a cut off date for all the BS that side. September 30th. Fiscal year end.

China has given the go-ahead for companies to NOT honour derivatives. Japan and China are siding together against the states, in what can only be described as economic war. It's on. Obama capped trade on a number of chinese items, including steel and rubber. China is pissed off. Really.

And on another front, the state archives of russia were attacked earlier this month. 15 minutes is all it took for whatever special forces troops to reach the centre, and start attacking the vault doors. Oh, did you know that was about 2 weeks after Isreal threatened Russia over the return of information relating to CIA/Mossad activities, including the recent hijack of a ship, and of course activities relating to 9-11, which i want to remind you was a mossad operation.

It's happening.

Betelgeuse Supernova?

Fox News Thursday, June 11, 2009

The nearby, well-known and very bright star may soon explode in a supernova, according to data released by U.C. Berkeley researchers Tuesday.

The red giant Betelgeuse, once so large it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit if placed in our own solar system, has shrunk by 15 percent over the past decade in a half, although it's just as bright as it's ever been.

"To see this change is very striking," said retired Berkeley physics professor Charles Townes, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize for inventing the laser. "We will be watching it carefully over the next few years to see if it will keep contracting or will go back up in size."
__________________________________________________________________________

The red giant ... estimates are, that if it does go supernova, it would be as brightas the full moon ... from 460 light years away. Techically it would already have happened. But of course, 460 years ago, kind of thing. What cannot be ignored is the massive amount of various radiation that is heading our way too.

Another very good soutrce of info:

scienceray.com

Feast of the Cross

Wiki

In the Christian liturgical calendar, there are several different feasts known as Feasts of the Cross, all of which commemorate the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus. While Good Friday is dedicated to the Passion of Christ and the Crucifixion, these days celebrate the cross itself, as the instrument of salvation.

The cross ...

Health

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Krishnamurti

Toothpaste

So i made my own toothpaste, since shop bought was obviously not doing much. After 1 weekend my teeth are NOTICABLY cleaner, and feel better too. I gave it to my family, without any warnings, just here, try this.

All were surprinsingly enthusiastic about it. Baby took about 2 seconds to pull te toothbrush out her mouth and told me "it's nice".

I'm stunned really. So simple easy and frankly obvious, why haven't i done this years ago?

Simple: Bicarbonate of soa, about 1 teaspoon, mix with a similar amount glycerine. 2 generous pinches of salt, and thats about it. I've added cinammon, which is also a good anti-bacterial, and a drop of honey, because i can, because it adds flavour and well hey why not.

I got some peppermint essence, i'd prefer oil but of course you can't find it in the shops, i'll have to dig. So i am now a toothpaste manufacturer, cool huh?

Try it.

2 little dicky birds ...

Justice

From: IOL

Taxi driver Percyval Matji foresaw the possibility of Bernadine Kruger being killed and persisted in his conduct with indifference to the fatal consequences, a Pretoria Regional Court magistrate yesterday ruled, and convicted Matji of murder.

State witnesses testified that Bernadine was driving in the left lane when the taxi came from behind at high speed, hooting continuously. She looked over her shoulder and in the mirror, put on the indicator, and moved to the right lane.

However, the taxi followed, still driving fast and hooting. Bernadine tried to swerve back to the left lane, but the taxi hit the scooter. She landed in front of the taxi. It drove over her head.
_____________________________________________________________________

It doesn't bring her back, but it does re-inforce the existance of basic law and order. I hope, that this prevents similar incidents in the future, such stupidity and carelessnes HAS to be stopped.

Stone age tribe defends themselves

Against drunk fishermen .....

These guys should have known better, but they got drunk and their boat drifted over to the island. So the islanders did the only smart thing. Killed them and buried them on the beach.

Good for them.

Sydney morning Herald

"The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range."

Grace

Hello sun.
Hello bird.
Hello my lady.
Hello breakfast. May I buy you again tomorrow?

Thank you Ian Anderson.

Doggy wisdom

If a dog were your teacher these are some of the lessons you might learn…
When loved ones come home, always run to greet them
Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy
When it’s in your best interest practice obedience
Let others know when they’ve invaded your territory
Take naps and stretch before rising
Run romp and play daily
Thrive on attention and let people touch you
Avoid biting, when a simple growl will do
On warm days stop to lie on your back on the grass
On hot days drink lots of water and lay under a shady tree
When you’re happy dance around and wag your entire body
No matter how often you’re scolded don’t buy into the guilt thing and pout
Run right back and make friends
Delight in the simple joy of a long walk
Eat with gusto and enthusiasm
Stop when you have had enough
Be loyal
Never pretend to be something you’re not
If what you want lies buried dig until you find it
When someone is having a bad day
be silent …..
…sit close by.
…and nuzzle them gently.

Thank you to Ara and Spirit for this. Oasis of my Soul

South Africa Medically Speaking

Among other issues highlighted in the The Lancet online on August 25, 2009, are the following (for the full article, click on the link at the end of the article):

Since 1994, average life expectancy in South Africa has dropped by almost 20 years, mainly because of the rise in HIV-related mortality. Average life expectance at birth is only 50 years for men and 54 years for women.

South Africa has 0,7% of the world's population, but carries 17% of the global HIV burden. HIV prevalence seems to have reached a plateau, but there are 5,5 million South Africans living with HIV/Aids.

The overall injury death rate is 157.8 per 100,000, twice the global average. Road carnage plays a significant part: there are about 16,000 road traffic accident deaths every year. Around 7% of all deaths are alcohol-related.

The homicide rate is five times the global average: 38.6 per 100,000 people, with the highest rate among men aged 15 to 29 years. Still, the female homicide rate is six times the global average, and half of these women are killed by their partners.

It is estimated that a woman is killed by her partner every six hours in South Africa.

Although South Africa and the then minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, were signitories of the Millennium Development Goals, which were particularly focused on child and maternal mortality, our children continue to be victims. Far from reaching goals set then, South Africa has gone backward: it is one of only 12 countries in the world where infant mortality has risen since 1990. Every year, 23,000 babies are stillborn, and almost 75,000 children die in SA – 23 000 in their first four weeks of life. 12% of our children under 5 are underweight. Each year 37 200 children could be saved through improving coverage of the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission and safer infant feeding practices.

There are 4.9 physicians, nurses and midwives per 1,000 South Africans, double the World Health Organisation standard of 2.5, but most South Africans are still under-served: medical staff are clustered in urban areas. Not only that, but 79% of doctors in South Africa work in the private sector, where 60% of health spending happens, but which is accessible to just 14% of SA citizens.

Depending on what province they live in, only 9% to 28% of South Africans are covered by medical schemes.

Though the state's focus on health is significant, comprising 10,8% of total goverment spend, the price the population pays for mismanagement is dire: if the policy of free antiretroviral therapy provision in public health services had been adopted in 2003, 330,000 lives could have been saved between then and now.

the burden of TB has more than doubled since the year 2001. KwaZulu Natal is the hardest hit with an HIV prevalence of 39,1% and a TB notification rate of 1,066 per 100,000 people.

Find more at the Lancet

Water

We had a child drown in our pool a while ago. After life had moved on a little, i went for a swim. It remains one of the most horrifying experiences i've ever had.

It TOLD me what had happened. I felt the fear, felt the terror, anguish, helplessness and the silence. The immediacy had past, it was, like watching a snuff film. Almost. More real. It was more real.

Water has memory, since then i've never doubted it.

I found this article, origionally russian, of course.

Do Not Offend Water - It Remembers Every Word You Say
By Vladimir Borovoy
Translated by Anastasia Pulich
Pravda.Ru

1-17-6

QUOTE
One day theoretical science will no longer have doubts about water's memory while high tech specialists will be making "water" computers controlled by telepathy


There seemed nothing to be as simple and as well studied in the world of science as water, until recently. The proverbial chemical description, temperature metamorphoses from ice into steam, solvent properties - that is about all. Deeper studies into the Nanoworld are ready to shake faith even in the water's simplicity. Just for one fact that it turns out water has memory and understands human emotions and words.

According to physics that we study at school water does not form any long-lived structures (if there is no other substance taking part in the process). Of course, there is so called hydrogen bond, due to which molecules are joined in chains, but such formations exist a tiny moment of time. Theoretically it means that water is hard to structure: at least all the stories about magnetized water or water that "remembers" substance once dissolved in it have been labeled as asientific for a long time. Nevertheless, it has been several years already since quite serious-minded scientists with the help of ultraprecision instruments began to study the ability of water to form those long-lived structures.

Russian scientists are among the leaders. In 2003 at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences Russian scientist Stanislav Zenin upheld a thesis on water's memory. The thesis' author owns a laboratory and studied clathrates, stable compounds (that can live up to several hours!) consisting of 912 water molecules of half-micron or micron in size. You can even see them through the phase-contrast microscope. Clathrates are almost electrically neutral in distilled water. However, Zenin found out that their electroconductivity could be changed. Bonds between the clathrates' elements can be broken with the magnetic stirrer and then water becomes dead and unordered mixture.

If a tiny amount (even one molecule) of any other substance is added into water clathrates start "adopting" its electromagnetic properties. In the end Zenin engaged psychics and healers - people who do not enjoy respect in the world of science - in his work on thesis. He found out that some representatives of this dubious occupation can change water's electroconductivity drastically with the power of their thought. Zenin defined water as substance in phase-informative state with a structure suitable for data storage. He called it a biological information tank. He distinguished water's primary and long-term memory.

Primary memory becomes apparent after a single impact. It is a reversible change in water's structure and a reflection of the new electromagnetic picture on clathrates' surface. As for the long-term memory, it is a complete transformation of the matrix clathrates' structural elements as a result of long information influence. This means that you do not have to be a psychic to form a certain structure of water. It is enough to pass a certain emotion to water for some period of time.

The same conclusion was made by Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto. He discovered that water can really form ordered structures that turned out to be crystals. Each of them is unique and reflects the electromagnetic properties of water. Microcrystals are studied with the help of photographs. First of all, water drops placed into Petri dishes are quenched for two hours. Then they are placed into special apparatus that is a sort of refrigerator combined with microscope and camera. Here the newly-formed crystals are examined at temperature of 5C below zero. The most characteristic ones are photographed.

Dr. Emoto and his team study water from different sources of the world and also water that was effected by music, image, television, thoughts of a single person and a group of people, prayers, words typed or pronounced in different languages etc. Emoto discovered that there was a significant difference between crystals that listened to Beethoven and heavy-metal. Words "angel" and "devil" form structures that are similar and completely opposite at the same time.

Of course, Dr. Emoto can be also called a person with vivid imagination who uses equipment for purposes that have nothing to do with science. The Japanese scientist thinks that everything in this world possesses common vibration frequency, resonance wave (hado) that is able to transfer human emotions onto all surrounding objects.

That is why one has to thank food that he/she eats, avoid negative emotions and pray more often. Such conclusions make scientific community laugh. But that is not always the case. Many researchers show interest in the findings of Dr. Emoto. Some are looking for the ways to transform processes that occur in water under the influence of electromagnetic radiation of the human brain into signals that are comprehensible for computer. In other words, they want to invent a computer that would be operated by thoughts.

Others want to teach water storing the binary code. There are also those who try to find out if it is possible to change physical and chemical properties of water for special purposes (for instance, making it viscous in order to cool nuclear reactors with less energy consumption).

Such tendencies can one day result in the situation when theoretical science will no longer have doubts about water's memory while high tech specialists will be making "water" computers controlled by telepathy.

We are ...

Unless we take off the blindfold, toss away the yarmulke, set fire to the veil, and behold ourSelves as we truly are - divine in all our parts.
We are the whore and the holy one, yes.
We are the ground and the depths of space.
We are the wave and the particle, yes.
We are the zero point and the circumference.
We are god - together, making and shaping and creating.
And the moment we really awaken to this, there is no going back.
We hold the internal fires of the stars and the destiny of all life within us, for there is no part of Us that is not of the Gods.

Thanks to Aquila ka Hekate for this reminder.

Happy Spring Day

If you go down in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go down in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Ev'ry teddy bear who's been good
Is sure of a treat today.
There's lots of marvelous things to eat
And wonderful games to play.

Beneath the trees where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
That's the way the teddy bears have their picnic.

Picnic time for teddy bears
The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today
Watch them, catch them unawares
And see them picnic on their holiday.

See them gaily gad about
They love to play and shout;
They never have any cares;

At six o'clock their mummies and daddies,
Will take them home to bed,
Because they're tired little teddy bears.

If you go down in the woods today
You'd better not go alone.
It's lovely down in the woods today
But safer to stay at home.

For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic.

Peace and love

Image from here

Exoplanet WASP-18b

From http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/55066637.html

WASP-18b orbits incredibly close to its host star, circling just 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km) from its surface. From such a ringside seat, the planet's star-facing hemisphere broils at an estimated 3,800°F (2,400K).

What has Hellier's team scratching its collective head is not that WASP-18b is so hot (it's too dense to simply evaporate), but instead why it exists at all!

Here's the conundrum: With roughly 10 times the mass of Jupiter, it's hefty enough and close enough to raise a significant tidal bulge on the star. And because it orbits in just 22½ hours, faster than any other confirmed hot Jupiter and much faster than the star spins, this tidal interaction is likely dragging the planet inward to its doom — and fast.

The Earth-Moon system is a good example of such a tidal yin-yang. The Moon likewise raises tides in Earth's oceans, and their mutual attraction transferring angular momentum between them. However, because the Moon orbits much more slowly than Earth turns, the tradeoff is gradually pushing the Moon away from us (1½ inches, or 38 mm, per year) and our day is ever-so-slightly getting longer (0.2 second per century). But in the WASP-18 tidal dance, it's the other way around — the planet is spiraling inward, and the star's spin is speeding up.

Dead microbiologists, lots of them.

http://www.infowars.com/list-of-dead-scientists/


Been looking for this.

We apologise

For the inconvenience, our lenses are dirty.

more spacey stuff

http://home.exetel.com.au/bmgoau/space/008_1561b2.html

Open it in a new window. The controls are google-earth-ish, you can zoom in and out, and move around ...

I believe it's a composite from the Hubble telescope. Very nice :)

pretty pictures

life

Isn't it just ... hey?

24 Hours later i sit here again. Head and heart full. Little more tired, yet somehow at peace. Baby is getting better, slowly. But i only care that she is indeed healing.

Read Steppenwolf again last night. So forgive me for being a little distracted. Reality is a blunt object sometimes. "Life is only a tragedy because we are so caught up in it, to the gods it is nothing more than a particularly brutal comedy" - dunno who said that, too tired too google it, but it's good.

Humour is the thing, the smile. At oneself primarily, of course. And through that lense the rest of creation. I find it particularly encouraging to find the universe no more twisted and fucked up than my silly self, misery loves company ;-) But the lens is the thing. Somehow that is so. I am suddenly reminded of being a photographer, where you have the ability to take something that other people do not notice, and create a statement, that stands alone for all time. How YOU perceive the universe is more important than the universe.

I'm running off on a tangent, but so be it. The old story of his version, her version, and the truth is commonly repeated, but the truths inherent are pervasive. When people hold beliefs, and u nderstandings, the universe moulds into those. Thought, word, action. Something like that. And when people have in incorrect view they act wrongly. And they will still justify that belief, and take it as the universe because for them it is. Wisdom overcomes these limitations, and understands the role of the self in colouring and changing the world. At this point, a certain clarity is achieved, a view that is shared by men across time.

The crux is this though. Life is sad. That is the truth as i see it. Not terminally, and certainly not always overwhelmingly, but definitively, it is. For us humans at least. I cannot say why it is so. But us humans, who created this sadness, are able to instantly transform it into the most beautiful spectacle. Oh it is so clear how easy to live, to laugh, to love? And yet ...

I read Terri's blogpost this morning, and instantly resonated. For her a small quote from The Steppenwolf. Hermine speaks of how right animals are, more so than men.

"Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a Puma or a giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment.They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't want to impress you. No play acting. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don't you agree?" I did. "Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sad - I don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it is with life and everything, and is sad in earnest - he always looks a little like an animal. He then looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual."

I need to log off. My son is waiting to be collected from school, he is feeling unwell. And people ask why i never plan my life, or at least pretend to. Still, it's a good day for a short walk. Last night was a good night to be out, the wind caught my soul and gave it a good view of the surrounds. Stars were bright too.

peace and love

Last Night

I spent in the pediatric ward of a local hospital. Suffice to say i was tired enough to get a short, yet deep sleep. The kid needed drugs. Painkillers. Lots. By 3AM the hospital had finally quietened down, and the nurses looked relieved.

So friday evening she had a sore mouth, this is the three year old girl, Jody-fae. We assumed that she had bitten her mouth, as she had before, and she confirmed this. Bit her lip. *shrug*

Saturday it was still sore, and by sunday we were administering our own first aid, panado, etc. Sunday night there was a visible ulcer, obviously not good, and the pain was becoming more constant. The good daddy, on monday morning took her to the doctor, since no, this cannot be allowed to continue.

He assured us that it was a viral infection aligned with the flu she had recently been suffering with, too. Medication home. Next day even worse, so the good mommy runs off this time. Since by now, Jody-fae is in constant pain, and is now refusing to eat or drink.

Doctor says that she must be admitted to hospital, or else dehydration becomes a factor. The doctor then prescibes the INCORRECT diagnosis code for our medical aid, and when i phone the medaid get told they will not admit.

By lunchtime wifey was in an emergency ward. Child is screaming constantly, is slightly feverish and refuses anything to drink, or even bodily contact, like holding her hand. Trust me, ER was the right place :(

By four o'clock, when i arrived, they had started (!) and by about six we had shoved needles into her, suppositories up her arse (she doesn't like them either) and nothing had changed. She was admitted and taken upstairs to await blood test results. By ten PM we saw the doctor start her rounds in the ward.

Herpes.

From some arbitrary medical site: (http://dermatology.about.com/cs/oralherpes/a/oralherpesbasic.htm)

Fever Blisters and the Herpes Simplex Virus
Fever blisters are caused more often by the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) than herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2). As a matter of fact, more than 85 percent of the world's population has been infected with HSV-1. These infections follow the usual course of herpes simplex virus infections in that the first outbreak is usually more painful and lasts longer than recurrent infections.

Fever Blisters - Primary Infection
The first time the skin in or around the mouth comes in contact with the herpes simplex virus; the outbreak occurs inside the mouth -- on the gums, tongue, and throat. This is called gingivostomatitis. This first infection occurs most often in childhood, and the highest incidence of infection occurs between 6 months and three years of age. Children get pain, fever, swollen lymph nodes, and may have difficulty swallowing. These symptoms last for about a week and resolve spontaneously. Children with gingivostomatitis are at risk for dehydration if the pain keeps them from drinking fluids. Water-based popsicles are sometimes used to provide hydration and pain relief.

On monday morning the doctor missed this, and by last night (tuesday?) the child was convulsing with pain, screaming constantly, and still with nothing more than a suppository for comfort. The total idiocy is beyond me. I was SO angry, SO fustrated and frankly pissed off.

I'm home now, taking the day off, tomorrow too. Going back later to keep her company. And safe. The fucking hospital swopped her at birth, not the same hospital, but a private one too. So no, she is NEVER alone.

I'm going to curl up in a sunny spot and sleep. They didn't have coffee there, and um just getting over the withdrawal symptoms. Maybe by tonight i can buy her a chocolate :D As i understand her world view, going with daddy to go buy a chocolate at the shops rates as the bestest thing that is possible. I'm good with that. Although i guess the vending machine will be an interesting diversion. By the way, what's with that? Vending machines full of coke (any colour you like) and chocolates. Yay for health, leastways no cigarettes being sold. Chocolate, it's not a DRUG is it? *wicked grin*

Perseid meteor shower

Ok, after the last rant, something to smile for.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/about/pressreleases/3513246.html

"The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event beloved by millions of skywatchers around the world, returns to the night sky this coming week. But moonlight will interfere somewhat with the view.

Sky & Telescope magazine predicts that the Perseid shower will reach its peak late on Friday and Saturday nights, August 11-12 and 12-13 (for viewers in North America). The rate of activity should pick up after midnight until the first light of dawn.

You'll need no equipment but your eyes. The moonlight in the sky will hide the fainter meteors, and so will artificial light pollution, but the brightest meteors should still show through."

Not visible from SA, and the southern hemisphere. Bt it's happening nonetheless. While we're at work ... *chuckle*

Fuck the USA

News 24

Durban - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with South African President Jacob Zuma on Saturday in a bid to improve strained ties with the country.

So they send the bitch. Local news is full of her doings *spit*

Come to get land for a military base they say. Right. THIS is worth throwing a petrol bomb for. Fuck the US, and it's military, and stay the FUCK off my land.

Touchable holograms

Check this out: http://www.alab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~siggraph/09/TouchableHolography/SIGGRAPH09-TH.html

Mid-air displays which project floating images in free space have
been seen in SF movies for several decades [Rakkolainen 2007].
Recently, they are attracting a lot of attention as promising tech-
nologies in the field of digital signage and home TV, and many
types of holographic displays are proposed and developed. You can
see a virtual object as if it is really hovering in front of you. But
that amazing experience is broken down the moment you reach for
it, because you feel no sensation on your hand.
Our objective is adding tactile feedback to the hovering image in
3D free space. One of the biggest issues is how to provide tactile
sensation. Although tactile sensation needs contact with objects by
nature, the existence of a stimulator in the work space depresses the
appearance of holographic images. Therefore some kind of remote-
controllable tactile sensation is needed. That is achieved by our
original tactile display [Iwamoto et al. 2008]. The following paper
explains the technologies employed for a “Touchable Holography.”

War crimes charges against SA citizens

News 24

Selected quotes:

" ... The Palestinian Solidarity Alliance (PSA) and the Media Review Network (MRN) are listed as complainants in an affidavit, called the Gaza Docket, handed to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigation..."

" ... "The evidence contained in the Gaza Docket indicates overwhelmingly that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Israeli Defence Force during Operation Cast Lead and there is prima facie evidence.... which indicates that South African citizens and/or residents are implicated in the commission of these crimes," a memorandum reads..."

" ... It is supported by around 3 500 pages of evidence, including evidence by Human Rights Watch on the "brutal military onslaught on Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force"..."

" ... "We do have damning evidence that there are individuals, South Africans, who are serving in the Israeli defence force and that is a violation of our own internal laws but also a violation of international laws," ... "

" ... He added it was South Africa's duty and responsibility to take actions against the "apartheid state of Israel"..."

*applause*
I'm going to be watching this carefully.

EDIT: News 24

A response from the Jewish Board of deputies in response the the charges against a certain Davd Benjamin:

" ... "This amounts to little more than a clumsy attempt at manipulating the Judiciary for partisan political purposes," the organisations said in a statement..."

But now, most clearly it is illegal for a south african citizen to serve in a foreign military. More so that not only were they serving, but was serving in what has been clearly identified as genocide.

So much as those ex-soldiers were arrested in Zim a while ago for planning some or other coup, these guys need to face up to their actions. And south africa should NOT beome a haven OF ANY SORT to mercanaries or foreign soldiers or criminals.

PS. I noticed Justice Richard Goldstone on the advisory panel for the investigation int the Gaza Genocide, although (apparently) neither Israel nor Gaza fully co-operated with his enquiries.

Date synchronicity

Did you know that on August 7, 2009?

At 12hr 34 minutes and 56 seconds the time and date will be

12:34:56 07/08/09

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Pig on the wing

Damn, it isn't every day i find a column this good. Chris McEvoy is the guys name, and this column was very well said.

From: Channel 24

"... And do I even need to mention alcohol? Booze is such a brainless, poisonous life-fuck of a narcotic that it makes tik, heroin and all the rest seem about as dangerous as a particularly weak cup of Earl Grey tea. More than half of all road deaths and (reported) cases of domestic violence (give or take a percentage or two) are directly linked to alcohol. Dop kills way more people than all the scary illegal narcotics combined. But a good drink (in other words, three or seven drinks, in SA-speak) is an obligatory component of almost any leisure activity. Sports, braais, the festive season, dating and divorce all seem so meaningless without booze that, as a non-drinker, I barely have reason to ever leave my house..."

"... Meanwhile, epidemiologist Tom Jefferson is quoted in Spiegel Online as saying that the scare is nothing more than the result of the pharmaceutical industry licking its lips at the prospect of a profitable pandemic..."

Wild applause from the peanut gallery.

My Biker Code

I ride purely, and only, because it is fun.
I ride because I enjoy the freedom I feel from being exposed to the elements and the vulnerability to the danger that is intrinsic to riding.
I do not ride because it is fashionable to do so.
I ride my machine, not wear it. My machine is not a symbol of status.
It exists simply for me, and me alone. My machine is not a toy. It is an extension of my being, and I will treat it accordingly, with the same respect as I have for myself.
I strive to understand the inner workings of my machine, from the most basic, to the most complex. I will learn everything I can about my machine, so that I am reliant upon no one but myself for it's health and well-being.
I strive to constantly better my skill of control over my machine. I will learn it's limits, and use my skill to become one with my machine so that we may keep each other alive. I am the mistress, it is the servant. Working together in harmony, we will become an invincible team.
I do not fear death. I will however, do all possible to avoid death prematurely.
Fear is the enemy, not death. Fear on the highway leads to death, therefore I will not let fear be my master. I will master it.
My machines will outlive me. Therefore, they are my legacy. I will care for them for future bikers to cherish as I have cherished them, whoever they may be.
I do not ride to gain attention, respect, or fear from those that do not ride, nor do I wish to intimidate or annoy them. For those that do not know me, all I wish is for them to ignore me. For those that desire to know me, I will share with them the truth of myself, so that they might understand me, and not fear others like me.
I will never be the agressor on the highway. However, should others mess with me, their aggression will be dealt with in as severe a manner as I can cast upon them.
I will show respect to other bikers more experienced or knowledgeable than I am.
I will learn from them all I can.
I will not show disrespect to other bikers less experienced or knowledgeable than I am.
I will teach them what I can.
It will be my task to mentor new riders, that so desire, into the lifestyle of the biker, so that the breed shall continue.
I shall instruct, as I have been instructed by those before me. I shall preserve and honour traditions of bikers before me, and I will pass them on unaltered.
I will not judge other bikers on their choice of machine, their appearance or their profession. I will judge them only on their conduct as bikers. I am proud of my acomplishments as a biker, though I will not flaunt them to others. If they ask, I will share them.
I will stand ready to help any other biker that truly needs my help. I will never ask another biker to do for me what I can do for myself.
I am not a part-time biker. I am a biker when and wherever I go. I am proud to be a biker, and I hide my chosen lifestyle from no one.
I ride because I love freedom, independence and the movement of the ground beneath me. But most of all I ride to better understand myself, my machine and the lands in which I ride, and to seek out and know other bikers like myself!

And suddenly ....

... nothing happened .....


... but it happened very suddenly ....