[Puts on Jeremy Clarkson Top Gear voice]
A boat gets rescued…
Batman consults his smartphone…
A spider eats a mouse…
A church is turned into a swimming pool…
An amazing 3D printed sundial…
An academic says not to worry about burning cars…
…And Richard Hammond visits a brewery in Norfolk.
[comprehensively fails to punch an Irish producer]
No puffadders this time, although there was a Cape Mole Rat (Georychus capensis) carcass on the beach near that puffaddery spot. Maybe it had been puffaddered…
Elsewhere in the pics, more startrails efforts (I still think I’m getting better, slowly), a beagle, some (or more) rainbow shots and a scorpion which got instagrammed.
And then this:
I’ve posted many Suiderstrand sunsets on Flickr and on here before, but up until now, absolutely none of them had featured the Heavy Lifting Vessel Xiang Rui Kou. I’m happy to say that this heinous omission has now been rectified. More of the Xiang Rui Kou on Flickr via the link below.
Oh – and it’s full of elephant photos too.
Any plans for a restful evening after the drive back from Agulhas were swiftly scuppered when we discovered that the freezer had decided to go all Cosatu on us and embark on an unprotected strike. Probably a PCB issue, I’m guessing, but that doesn’t help much right now.
Everything was still cold, but (critically) thawed. Safe then, if you are ready to eat it now. Either cook it tonight or chuck it away.
We cooked it tonight.
Having just had a meat delivery from our Karoo slaghuis (careful now)*, there was a lot to cook. The neighbours helped us out by taking a lot of very decent meat, and then we went through boerewors, steaks, chicken, lamb, burgers. Loads of the buggers.
The beagle assisted by devouring whatever it could. Thanks for that. And then those emergency kids meals: chicken burgers, fish nuggets, fish fingers. Our (amazing) nanny was happy to hear that half her street is going to eat on us tomorrow evening.
Veggies and chips will go to people at the robots. Mrs 6000’s PJ Pops will be drunk by her. Waste not, want not.
I had high hopes for a decent blog post with some pretty pictures from the weekend.
Maybe tomorrow.
* it’s a butchery. He’s good. Details on request.
Fashion is cyclical. Beards are back in, after 35+ clean-shaven years.
I don’t wear one myself, but I am aware of some individuals that do. And some of them work in laboratories. Eww.
Why eww? Because you’ll surely remember the 1967 research of Barbeito et al. entitled:
Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men
No?
Allow me to reacquaint you with their work:
An investigation was conducted to evaluate the hypothesis that a bearded man subjects his family and friends to risk of infection if his beard is contaminated by infectious microorganisms while he is working in a microbiological laboratory.
It’s a serious thing, and it’s why we wear lab coats and gloves (and sometimes more PPE) when we’re working in the lab. It’s why we wash our hands thoroughly each time we leave the room. And it’s not just to protect ourselves from contaminated and/or infection. No-one wants to wander out of the lab and give spread germs, disease and infection to everyone they meet. (Although this does depend on who they meet, I guess.)
So we’re all covered and washed, but… but what about the guy over there with his beard? Well, Barbeito et al.’s methods to investigate whether bearded men could carry germs out of the lab were pretty cool:
They sprayed some non-pathogenic (non-disease causing) bacteria into real beards on real men and sampled the beard at 30 minutes and 6 hours)
The 30-min interval was selected to represent two work situations: (i) the time necessary for a man to complete a laboratory operation in a zealous attempt to avoid loss of an experimental series despite a known accidental contamination of his beard before he rejoined his associates with an unwashed beard, and (ii) the time required for an immediate shower and change of clothing, after an accident that contaminated the beard and the before association with fellow employees or family.
The 6-hr interval was selected to represent the time between an unrecognized contamination of the beard and family contact with the unwashed beard.
“Sorry dear, I’ve brought some work home this evening.”
Then they sprayed Botox and rubbed infected chickens against a beard on a mannequin. Seriously.
Yeah, that image will stick with me as well. Apologies for that.
Clean-shaven men (and presumably, clean-shaven mannequins) were used as controls, just to see that any significant results were genuinely beard-related.
And…?
Yes. Beards are dirty and dangerous and yucky and are (now) full of Serratia marcescens and Bacillus subtilis var. niger and Newcastle disease virus and Clostridium botulinum toxin, type A:
The experiments showed that beards retained microorganisms and toxin despite washing with soap and water. Although washing reduced the amount of virus or toxin, a sufficient amount remained to produce disease upon contact with a suitable host.
Do you have a beard? Do you work or live with someone who has a beard?
This experiment suggests that even if they don’t work in a lab, and even if they do wash their beard, it’s still horribly full of nasty bacteria and cornflakes* and stuff. You will might get an infection.
Consider yourself warned. And go get a shave.
* possibly, anyway.
This headline explains a lot about what’s happened in the world so far this year.
I was well aware that there were many things that were more popular than thought. Capetonian examples of this include views of Table Mountain, bad driving, the Cape Town 7s rugby tournament and crapft beer.
But for thought to have sunk so very far down the list of popular things, down even below “onshore wind farms”, for it to be so very unfashionable… well, suddenly the current sorry state of the planet is explained.