Toto…

…I don’t think we’re in Africa anymore.

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There’s something wrong with this, isn’t there?
Google Maps seems to have gone a bit Apple if it thinks that the Southernmost Tip of Africa is actually some distance into the ocean.

This could lead to all sorts of confusion with continents and countries claiming to be bigger than they actually are: North Korea Syndrome, I think it’s called.

Anyway, we were there yesterday (the Southernmost Tip, not North Korea):

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…and we left with dry feet, so today’s lesson is not to believe everything that Google Maps tells you.

But… wait…

“Woman mistakes superglue for cold sore cream” mumbled the headline (because it’s lips were stuck together, see?)

Oops.

The woman, in the southern city of Dunedin, could only grunt as she made a midnight emergency call.

“Ambulance received a call but, due to the muffled speech, they were unsure whether it was a medical event or whether someone had been gagged,” said Senior Sergeant Steve Aitken.

It had been a frightening experience for the woman because her breathing was impeded by a heavy cold, he said.

Speaking after treatment at Dunedin Hospital, the 64-year-old woman said that while fumbling for a tube of cold-sore cream in the middle of the night, she had mistakenly picked up one that held superglue.

We all make mistakes. This is amusing because it all ended well.

But then, this:

“I have all my ointments in a tray in the cupboard, so I got out of bed and I dived into the tray.”

“I couldn’t smell it because I was blocked up. And then I got into bed and thought: what have I put on my mouth?”
The woman, who spoke to New Zealand’s TV3 channel, said she then discovered her mouth was glued shut and dialled the emergency number.

Wait the what now? To have all your ointments in a tray in the cupboard is a good plan. No-one wants to wander into your bedroom and see your ointments lying all over the place, now do they?

But at what point, and in what world, does Superglue become one of “your ointments”?

The OED defines ointment as:

A highly viscous or semisolid substance used on the skin as a cosmetic, emollient, or medicament; a salve.

Whereas it describes superglue as:

A very strong glue containing a cyanoacrylate adhesive.

It could just be me (it’s been a long week), but I’m failing to see a connection here. Surely only an idiot would class a very strong glue containing a cyanoacrylate adhesive as one of their ointments.

Perhaps it would have been better if this had ended in death and Darwin Award. Although that may be a bit harsh, as I am reminded of that one time my wife mixed up her lipstick and my Black & Decker hammer drill, and I’m very glad that she’s still around.

Wind Turbine Kills Really Rare Bird – WHAT NEXT?

And continuing with matters electrifying

“OMG! We’re all going to die!” So say the environMENTALists anyway, citing global warming and coal and fossils and whatnot. Thus, they are all behind the wholly barmy plan to only generate electricity through “green” means, namely wind and solar. And while I have no issue with the renewable energy thing per se, their instance that it should be at the exclusion of everything else is short sighted and, frankly, stupid.
Also, it irritates the hell out of me (and there’s a lot in there) that I have to listen to their constant whining on the internet, which (here at least) is fuelled by dirty black stuff from Mpumalanga.

And anyway, as 40 birdwatchers found out this week,  renewable methods aren’t that green anyway, as they watched, dismayed, as an extremely rare white-throated needletail, sighted only 8 times in the last 170 years get killed by the fast rotating blades of a wind turbine in Scotland.

Dead. Not resting. Not pining for the fjords.
Dead. No more. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Gone to join the choir invisible.

About 30 birdwatchers travelled to the island to see the unusual visitor, which has only been recorded five times in the UK since 1950. However, they then saw it die after colliding with the wind turbine.

Birdwatcher David Campbell, from Surrey, told the BBC Scotland news website that the incident took place late on Wednesday afternoon. Mr Campbell, who is now making his way home to south east England, said: “We just watched the whole thing with dismay.”

Horrible. What a way to eliminate a species. And while the authorities say that they place wind turbines thoughtfully and carefully to prevent this sort of incident, it didn’t prevent this one, now did it?

However, while I blame the wind turbine, it does seem that Mr Campbell has a bit of a history around rare birds:

He added that on a previous bird watching trip he had seen a migratory wryneck hit by a train.

And I think we can probably work out who emerged from that little encounter more unscathed, can’t we?

But, Mr Campbell aside, there’s a serious message for South Africa here, especially since Eskom has just got the go ahead to build a monster 46-turbine wind farm  just down the road from the beautiful Namaqua National Park. I suspect that you, dear reader, can do the mathematics here.

The wind farm is to be called “Sere”:

…the Nama word for “cool breeze”

Does anyone know the Nama word for “widespread and horrific massacre of migratory birds”?
Just asking.

And then there’s the solar thing. Because the bunnyhuggers insist that wind is safe (which it’s obviously not if you’re a rare bird or if you don’t like explosions) and they also insist that solar is safe too. Why on (what’s left of the) earth would you believe them?

What if the last of our already endangered rhinos stumbles into its local solar array? I don’t think that it take a huge amount of imagination to see that it would almost certainly be cooked instantly. And while it would probably make a very tasty snack, it would be gone. Dead. No more. Shuffled off th… look, you get what I’m saying.

“Oh. That will never happen!” say the greenies.

Ja. Right.

Just like the white throated needletail “will never” fly into a wind turbine.

It’s plainly obvious from the white-throated-needletail-sliced-to-death-in-a-wind-turbine incident and the hypothetical rhino-scorched -by-concentrated-sunlight issue that we need to shelve these sort of dangerous projects until independent research has shown exactly how much of a hazard they are to our endangered species.

I’m almost tempted to launch an online petition.

Almost.

UPDATE: Does anyone have any data on wave power killing dolphins?

Imaginate

Excuse the short posts and video sharing. Busy week this week and so not too much time left for blogging. Sentences even being fragmented.
But this busy life doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking of you and so, take a look at this and tell me what you think. It’s the new one from Stunt Bicyclist Danny MacAskill. You may remember him from such posts as Way Back Home.

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Jury’s out for me. I’d prefer more real world and less kids’ toys. But you cannot deny that some of the stuff he does is utterly bewildering.
Mindblowing, even. My mind, in fact, was blown.

Twice.

There’s a bloopers section during the credits too, indicating that the filming must have taken many weeks for broken bones to heal and bruises to disappear:

The seven-minute film took over 68 weeks to shoot, with some tricks taking up to 300 takes to get right.

“The ball front flip to the train tracks took about 250 takes,” MacAskill said. “It was a lot harder on the cameraman than on me! He was having to run up and down with a steady cam.”

That from the review in… er… The Telegraph. Who knew?

Music (a big part of stunt bicyclist videos) is from Houston.