Author: 6000

Pass!!!

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Well done to the Boy Wonder, who, having turned a whole 18 late last month, yesterday nailed his driving test at the first attempt:

I like the examiner’s three exclamation marks. All too often, we think of driving examiners as one of those professions who are just out to get us, trying to find ways to fail candidates. But they’re just doing their jobs, and of course they need to be firm and abide by the rules that they are given.

Looking at the mark scheme, this was nowhere near to being a close thing, and looking at the exclamation marks, she was clearly happy to give him the good news.
There was never any need for any punctuation, but she chose to show her human side.

Thank you, indecipherable signature lady.

Is this winter (at last)?

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I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we’re well into May, and we’ve only really had one brief spell of rain so far this year. And that wasn’t even a cold front: it was a cut-off low that wasn’t as bad as anyone really expected it to be. But however the rain fell, it was the only rain we’ve had in over 5 months.

I’m not sure if anyone is getting a bit anxious over this situation, given Cape Town’s recent droughty history. Maybe we’ve all been concentrating too much on the twin disasters of loadshedding and the upcoming election to notice how dry it’s been, but with the dam levels at just 62%, we really could do with a bit of precipitation now, please.

Fortunately, today looks like it might actually deliver. A proper cold front, with a gusty Northwester and anything up to 12mm of rain heading in sometime this afternoon before things thankfully resolve ahead of the footy match I’m playing on Wednesday evening. And then it looks like Friday might chuck a bit more at us, if we’re lucky.

Look, I know that we all wish that summer could go on forever. The sunshine is great for generating electricity, making the decision to braai a lot easier, and encouraging us to get out and about. Not least to the pub. But that’s clearly not practical in even the medium term. You have to take the rough with the smooth when breaking your eggs to make an omelette.

So get your firewood ready, wrap up warmly, and let’s face the 3 months of cold, wet weather so that we can actually enjoy the brighter, warmer stuff when it comes around again. And we can rejoice in not having to use standpipes to get our drinking water.

Polar bear anatomy joke only works until you actually think about it a bit

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Spotted online recently:

I haven’t been living in the UK for 20 years now. And I certainly wasn’t there this April.
But I am aware of several (or more) people who were. Among their number, apparently, were some people working for the Met Office, one of the world’s leading weather services, providing forecasts and climate data for almost 170 years, and Paul Cox, a right-wing comedian of whom I had never heard before seeing his tweet above.

Obviously, Paul wouldn’t want to hear that April had been (just) warmer than average, given that this sort of news doesn’t suit the GB News agenda. But then equally, I doubt that the Met Office really cares about the GB News agenda. And I don’t think that the Met Office would deliberately sully its image by just tossing out incorrect information to make Paul and his opinion-orientated cronies grumpy.

Presumably, Paul thinks it’s been colder than the Met Office data suggests and thus doesn’t agree with the Met Office’s statement, but then he’s likely relying on anecdotal evidence like it feeling a bit chilly when he went to pick up some fags at the Spar that Tuesday morning, rather than their more than 200 weather stations across the UK measuring:

…a large variety of different meteorological parameters, including air temperature; atmospheric pressure; rainfall; wind speed and direction, humidity; cloud height and visibility.

No axe to grind here, but I know whose data I think might be more accurate on how just warm April was.

But then Paul goes weirdly off-message and tries to compare the UK’s average temperature in April to:

A polar bears [sic] ball bag

I presume that by “ball bag”, he is using the colloquial term for scrotum.

The thing is though, the UK’s mean temperature for April was 8.3o, and a polar bear, being a mammal, has a body temperature of around 37o. Even allowing for the slightly cooler temperature required for effective spermatogenesis, the seasonal nature of this biological process in polar bears, their bouts of swimming in icy waters, and their light hibernation during the winter, the average temperature of a polar bear’s ball bag will still comfortably remain somewhere in the mid-30os.

This is clearly way higher than the UK in April – or any other month.
What on earth were you thinking about, Paul?

There is absolutely no chance that the average temperature calculated by the Met Office in April is warmer than a polar bears ball bag.

Now if only he’d suggested the bottom of a penguin’s foot…

Knife crime solved (but not stone/rock crime)

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Incoming from one of our crime correspondents back in the UK, this:

Knifes should BANNED!!

Claire’s gone in hard there. No messing around. No hesitancy. No doubting her feelings. Some question over what might be her home language, but that’s really beside the point.

Knifes should BANNED!!

Given that this is an emotive subject and looking her upfront, overt statement, it’s unsurprising that others might choose to voice their own opinions on this subject. And Top Fan Sharon is right there, not even bothering with even basic punctuation, feeling that the words speak for themselves.

Yes I agree but how .

They’re the staple of every kitchen

Knifes are indeed the staple of every kitchen. Knifes and other utensils. And also food. But you never hear of anyone being stabbed to death with a spatula or a Asian-style pork belly with ginger and lemongrass, now do you? It’s clearly knifes that are the problem and that’s why knifes should BANNED!!

And, in theory, this somewhat draconian, but well-meaning plan, whilst making basic cooking and eating rather difficult, would likely eradicate knife crime pretty quickly. But the yoof of todayTM aren’t foolish. If they can’t stab you with a knife, they’ll just turn to other means of… er… “protection”, like spatulas stones / rocks ! . And as Sharon points out:

Can’t ban those.

Not like knifes.

The world is made up of stones / rocks ! and if we were to ban stones / rocks ! , then we’d have nothing to stand on. Banning stones / rocks ! makes the whole knifes should BANNED!! idea seem like a walk in the park. Although not Mortomley Park, obviously. The police cordons are still in place there.

The fact is that there is actually a really good law banning kids (or anyone else) in the UK from carrying knifes, and there has been since 1988, when MPs debated the motion “knifes should BANNED!!” in Parliament and came up with the Criminal Justice Act in response.

So knifes should BANNED!! albeit at the expense of the culinary arts. And with stones / rocks ! seemingly impossible to restrict or control. It looks like we might be losing the war on juvenile crime. Still, at least they chose to go down the stones / rocks ! route and they haven’t turned to firearms.

Or have they? How on earth (still here, made of of stones / rocks ! – can’t ban those) are we supposed to deal with that situation?

Claire’s back to sort us out:

yeah also gun!

I’m sorry, what? Pray explain, Dawn?

gun need banned

What? All of it?

Like under the extensive, far-reaching, oft-updated Firearms Act of 1968, you mean?

I think that what these erstwhile ladies are missing is the fact that actually knifes are BANNED!! and also gun – gun are banned, too. Also, stabbing and shooting people are banned. Even with a spatula.

It’s almost as if the people carrying the knifes and the gun, and doing the stabbing and shooting, don’t really care about what the law says that they can or can’t do.

Why, I’d wager that they’d even throw stones / rocks ! at each other (and probably everyone else, lol) if it was illegal.

It was worth a try, but it does seem that your well-meaning, poorly expressed, grammatically disastrous comments aren’t actually going to help.

Because, to be honest, all this nastiness actually comes down to the people.
But banning people is like stones / rocks ! –
can’t ban those!

The only thing that could actually make this situation any better is some legislation about social media.

Yes: Facebook should BANNED!!

Thanks, Crime Correspondent

An Incredible Aussie Air Complaint Statistic

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This is amazing. There were a total of 51,589 complaints about aircraft noise in Australia last year.

20,716 of them were made by one person.

This seems like a lot of dedication. Or a really weird obsession. Or – most likely – both.

Regular readers will know that I occasionally blog about the invasive noise of tourist helicopters coming over our house (there’s actually one going over right now…). But I have nothing on this individual.

20,716 complaints a year is is 56.75 complaints a day.
Just under 2.5 complaints per hour. Every hour, every day.

We don’t have much information about this person, but we do know that they live under a flight path (shock, surprise) in Perth, Western Australia. And so we can do a bit more maths.

Because:

On average, Perth Airport (PER) has 103 departure flight(s) each day.

Of course, planes have to arrive before they can depart. But because planes take off from one end of the runway and land from the other, if you are under the flight path, you don’t have noise from 206 planes, just 103 – either the ones coming in or the ones going out.

And so this person lodged a complaint for every 1.81 flights going overhead.

Incredible.

Look, I know that aircraft noise is irritating, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it can be bad for your health as well. But so can getting obsessed with complaining about aircraft noise (or anything else). And since Perth Airport has been around since 1944 – and even allowing for expansion over time – surely this person must have known what they were moving underneath?

Really, if it’s that much of a big deal to you (and it clearly is), just move house.

And if you think that they might not get a good price because of the aircraft noise, then simply use this logic to make sure you get a good price.