Dry The River

If, when he left this comment, Jon Liddle was attempting to generate some sort of interest in his son’s band’s new album, well then, he’s succeeded. I’ve had a quick wander through their back catalogue and – while there’s a bit of gospel, a lot of beard, some violin and more than the occasional hint of banjo – it’s well worth a listen. This ain’t no Mumford and Sons/Lumineers mashup. Thankfully.

Recording in Iceland was about shutting ourselves off from our daily lives and our heavy touring schedule to rediscover what Dry the River means to us. We suspected it would be some kind of otherworldly experience, and it was: beautiful and alien, lonely and taxing but ultimately rewarding.

So yes, the tenuous link was Iceland: its wild beauty and solitude. And they did a documentary on just how that worked out for them:

MOAR SCENERY!!!!

Apparently:

The end product, Alarms in the Heart, is so heavily engrained with that process, that strange location and the experience of being there, that you have to take the two together.

I’ll be giving the album a full listen and I’ll let you know how that goes, but in the meantime, here’s Gethsemane: which features on the documentary from about 8 minutes in and just. fits. perfectly.

My son doesn’t have a band, but when he does, I’ll probably advise him to head to Marion Island (SA’s equivalent of Iceland, I guess) to record that difficult second album. “Fewer beards,” I’ll also tell him.

Safety first.

UPDATE: More information about Dry The River? Here.

It wasn’t me…

Incoming, this message on the 6000.co.za Facebook page:

Thought of you immediately!

Now, usually, I would be flattered to be thought of immediately on many occasions; it’s nice to be at the forefront of people’s minds. However, having said that, I’m not sure that the death of a man from bubonic plague and the subsequent sealing off of a city of 30,000 people in China is one of those occasions.
And I want to make it absolutely clear that I had nothing to do with this incident.

What is interesting is the publicity that this story has got. As I write, it is the most read article in the World News section of the Guardian website in the last 24 hours. And, given the pretty stiff competition (MH17, Israel and Gaza, Sheffield United manager Nigel Clough trying to buy another striker), that’s fairly impressive stuff. Yay microbiology.
The thing is, sporadic cases of bubonic plague are actually fairly regular occurrences all over the world:

Updated Plague Map 2010 with Country lines

With even (as you’ll have noted) a handful of cases in the USA each year:

CasesbyYear_barchart_1970-2012

And yet, no-one has ever – to my knowledge, anyway – thought of me immediately in any of these situations. Perhaps because they haven’t made the international headlines, which makes one wonder why this one has. True, it’s a rather draconian reaction by the Chinese authorities to one death, but then it’s not like they’re not renowned for that sort of behaviour. It does rather leave one wondering if the Guardian journalist in question saw BLACK DEATH! and didn’t do any background reading before breaking the story before anyone else got chance to. But then, I can’t believe that a journalist would put sensationalism before research.

Either way, I’m always happy to hear about microbiology stories in the news (it is, after all, the best Science in the World) and what better place for you to share it with a willing audience than via the 6000.co.za Facebook page, which you can like by visiting it (the blog facebook page, that is) here.

Thanks Debra

UPDATE: Sky News finally catches up with the story, add nothing.

Fill It In

Much excitement on Social Media over the weekend as #Underdog, the canine found alive at the bottom of Kimberley’s ‘Big Hole’  (the town in the Northern Cape, not the chick on Sea Point Main Road), which was kept alive for several days by tourists throwing it scraps of food, was rescued.
Viva ER24, Viva!

The Big Hole is the largest man-made (hand dug, no machinery involved) hole in the world. It’s more than 50 storeys deep.
Cape Town’s shiny new Portside building would comfortably disappear into it, with height to spare.
It took 50,000 men 42 years to excavate. 22 million tonnes of earth was removed.

It’s Big.

Anyway, news of the heart-warming rescue has spread to the UK and to the Daily Mail, who did a lovely piece on it.

And it was there that we find this comment:

kbh

WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!??!?????!??!?!!!??!?!?

And then there was John’s reply:

kbh2

Stereotypical Irish suggestion, typical Yorkshire humour. Excellent.

Now I’m off to wash my hands, having had to link to “that newspaper”.

Worth a look

Incoming on 6000.co.za’s Facebook page (go LIKE it now and never miss another post), this message from Keith Murray:

sitw

 

Flattery will get you most places here at 6000 miles… (and Castle Milk Stout donations will almost certainly fill in any gaps), so I popped over to SmilingInTheWind.com and had a look.

And it’s really interesting. An epic roadtrip around SA, with dog and girlfriend in tow.
Go and read the Travel Journal there – with some wonderful photos of sunsets, wildlife and much more of this beautiful country.
Thus – even without the additional of Milk Stout – I’ve added it to the blogroll and I’m going to be keeping an eye on it.

Nearly there

I was just going through my usual Sunday morning routine of curing inoperable brain tumours in little children by clicking Facebook LIKE buttons, when suddenly, there was incoming communication from @JacquesR:

Three years after launching it, this Cape Party petition for Western Cape independence is 4/10 of the way there: http://www.mypetition.co.za/index.php?page=sign_petition&petition_id=135

And he’s right.

Western Cape to become an independent state.

Why is it listed under “Crime”? The Cape Party are just a bit rubbish, they’re not criminals.

The other thing I can’t understand is how such a significant attempt to install an independent government in the Cape has slipped under the radar for so long. I think we’ve all had the feeling that too many political organisations rely solely on the ballot box and the democratic process.
But, as we know, that simply didn’t work for the Cape Party as they only managed to scrape 0.09% of the local vote.

It’s a tall order to govern any country effectively when fewer than 1 in 1000 people are supporting you. In fact, as the ANC have showed us, it’s apparently pretty tough to govern any country effectively full stop.

As far as I am aware, the ANC has yet to resort to online petitions. Given their efficacy (the petitions, not the ANC), one has to wonder why. After all, recently, several petitions on Change.org have been attributed the reversal of a United Airlines Dog Policy. And if clicking a checkbox means that your spaniel can fly across the States, then I’m obviously all for it.

In fact, many people believe that online petitions are the worst examples of “slacktivism”, like dancing on a beach, wearing a certain colour of clothing or sticking a red plastic rhino horn on the front of your car. That is, it’s an all too easy way to make yourself feel that you are doing something, when actually, you are having no effect whatsoever. It’s merely a panacea for your conscience, not for the problem you are supposedly highlighting.

To me, it speaks volumes that the Cape Party’s online petition  is floundering at 40% completion after three years of trying. So even when all people have to do to express their support is to click a link , they don’t.

Someone once said: “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results”. The fact that the Cape Party continue to push for Cape independence and expect people to agree with them simply proves that they are all quite, quite mad.