this is south africa

“The Speciality”

Posted on August 28, 2015

(Note: We’ve covered this sort of thing before here and here.)

“Traditional” “herbalists” are still very much “a thing” in South Africa. I have to presume that this is the case, because I keep seeing leaflets advertising their services all over town. So I deduce that, much like 419 scams, people must actually be going to these “doctors”, because otherwise, these adverts would stop.
And while you might think that people are “somewhat foolish” to spend their money on some leaves that purport to give them amazing abilities in the sack or at the blackjack table, just remember that several (or more) of you go to a pointy-towered building every week in order to sing songs to an invisible sky fairy.

Each to their own.

Look. Every herbalist can bring back lost lover. That’s basic stuff. BOOOR-INNGGGG! (And, in addition, I “lost” her for a reason.)
But, as the Tall Accountant pointed out in the cooking smell-laden air at Hudson’s in Claremont last night, Dr Nassib is taking things to a whole new level with his “>>RESULTS GUARANTEED” “THE SPECIALITY” package:

Wow. Let’s just run through those items included in the “The Speciality”, shall we?

1. Get the power to be invisible

Bang. There’s no messing around with Dr N. He’s straight in with the big hits right at the top. Invisibility – an ability only previously seen (pun intended) in the Klingon’s cloaking device and Harry Potter’s… er… cloaking device. I have no idea if this is cloak-related, but just think what you could do with the power of invis… Oi! Get out of that changing room. Now! Now!!

2. Get the ability to fly like a bird

I see three options here: Either it’s very, very briefly, or it’s with some sort of mechanical assistance (like an Airbus A380-800), or he’s thinking of an ostrich.

3. Do you know that you can be in two places at the same time?

Woah! ~~Stand~~ sit back, Stephen Hawking. This is next-level quantum physics, alternative string theory universe stuff right here. How useful would this ability be in today’s busy, modern world?
Can I let you into a secret, dear readers? I’m actually in two places at the same time right now. (It’s just that in one of them, I’m invisible.)

4. Get the power to control the public (this is special for politicians and musicians

Ooh. It’s all gone a bit 1984. Some libertarians would argue that there’s too much of this going on already with our repeatedly, surprisingly successful, ruling party’s election results. This makes me thing that maybe JZ has been consulting with Dr Nassib, and makes me very sure that we need to keep our good doctor and “musician” and “would be politician” Steve Hofmeyr a long way apart. Seriously distant. For everyone’s safety and well-being.

4a. The power to close brackets

Not really. I made that one up.

5. Get all the magical powers that you need

Wait. ALL of them? But if I get all of the magical powers I need, why would I ever need to come back to you.

Aren’t you killing your market here? If I can make myself be invisible, fly, control the public or close brackets, I won’t need you any more, will I? This is an own goal of note.

6. Get the “Ndagu Ritual” to make you rich

I checked this out and found out that Ndagu is a Kenyan thing, and since they’re all massively rich up there, I can actually completely believe this one.

7. Get the “Bahat-Gaflah Ritual”to make you lucky in gambling (casino / lotto)

Look, there’s more to life than money, and regular readers will know of my penchant for all things Norwegian 80s Synthpop. Thus, I was delighted to win (with Dr Nassib’s assistance) a novelty prize at Grand West last night – an a-ha bath flag. I’ve been needing a bath flag for a long time, so this worked out really well for me.
Perhaps Dr Nassib should point out that when using the Bahat-Gaflah Ritual, you will only win stuff that is an anagram of ‘Bahat-Gaflah’, though.
It may be best to leave this one then, unless you actually want A Bag Half Hat or La Hah Bat Fag (I think it’s a sort of French perfume).

The Epilogue:
I began this post with the intention of taking down Dr Nassib and his seemingly phoney business. But as I have investigated the claims he made in his missive, I have realised that perhaps “The Speciality” package is maybe worth a shot. If even one of the promised results comes to fruition, you are, in some way, set for life.

And I do love my bath flag.

QsOTD

Posted on August 27, 2015

Quotes Of The Day – yes – plural. Like London buses, these things.

First off, some succinctly put insight into the world of the fad diet and the public reaction to it:

Nutrition is a complex minefield of information with plenty of vested interests playing their part. There is also a lot of legacy popular thinking around (read: stuff people just accept without any critical thinking).

That’s Joe Botha, speaking sense at Memeburn. Sadly, immediately thereafter, he does rather ruin it all by detailing his “lose weight quick” plan based on the enforced dietary timetable of our distant ancestors. (Save your time and bandwidth.) But, in typical Tim style, I’m going to take those lines (and only those lines) that suit my agenda and quote them here.

And then this from Australia’s Galileo Movement on Stellenbosch University’s latest breakthrough in renewable energy:

The industrialisation of our landscape for inefficient power production.

And yes, this is exactly the issue with solar and wind power right now. I know we need to make the switch away from fossil fuels, I completely accept that. But right now, there are simply no viable renewable alternatives out there:

@ivovegter The industrialisation of our landscape for inefficient power production.
— Galileo Movement (@GalileoMovement) August 27, 2015

The issue is the inefficiency of these technologies. And exactly how much space and how much of our environment do we really want to give up to this “inefficient power production”? Yes, SA has a lot of spare space, but that’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean that we need to fill it with solar panels and wind turbines.

And we’d need to, if we were to come anywhere close to solving our well-documented long term power shortages. That Stellenbosch project needs a mirror surface area of 220m² (never mind the space in between and around them, nor the same for the tower in the middle) to provide electricity for “about” 30 houses. But not at night, obviously.

Simply not good enough.

I’m not blaming the science or the scientists here. They’re doing their best. They’re progressing, developing, and they’ll get there. But renewable energy remains expensive:

The researchers have calculated Germany’s rapid switch to renewable energy sources like wind and solar is adding another €28 billion a year to the electricity bills of consumers and businesses.

And inefficient:

What happens at night?
As there is no light at night, no energy will be produced. The PV plant will import electricity from the utility to keep operations on site going.

Ooops. The simple fact is that we’re just not there yet.
And that’s why we can’t (and shouldn’t) be making the switch right now.

If only there were some clean, efficient, proven method of producing electricity that we could use.

Amsterdam Transport Photos

Posted on August 24, 2015August 24, 2015

Sometimes, you’re looking for something to post and then two things come along at once. Maximum irony would be if that were something to do with London Transport Photos, of course, but that didn’t happen.

However, just as I was about to run with these spectacular images of the Tall Ships arriving for the Sail Amsterdam 2015 nautical festival – and I probably would already have written and run were it not for the difficulty in choosing which photo to use, because they are incredible (I’ve deliberately left this one of Russian ship Kruzenshtern as large as I can, but you can click it for even more effect) (and this was my second choice, by the way)…

…anyway, that would have been great, but just as I was about to put the post up, I became aware of this equally splendid image:

(again, click it to see the full size version)

…of an Emirates A380 (probably EK147) landing on Schipol’s 36R runway in a crosswind. Blimey.

And I was struck by the double tenuous link of ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Transport’.
What are the chances, eh?

The rest, as they say, is history.

I found this under my hotel door

Posted on August 19, 2015August 19, 2015

“Something tells me I wasn’t supposed to get the South African cricket teams plan/strategy for the New Zealand team batsmen and bowlers under my hotel room door… I wonder if this means Dale thinks he’s sleeping in my room tonight?..”

Well, that’s blown their plans wide open…

After: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/19/south-africa-dossier-new-zealand-cricket

[PDF]

UK retail innovation

Posted on August 18, 2015August 18, 2015

…and why it might or might not work in SA.

Recent visits to the UK have left me irritated that my homeland has chosen to move on and develop – especially in the technology arena – since I’ve been away. How very dare they?
Trains, buses, pubs and restaurants all have free wifi. You can use NFC to find your way around shopping centres, or log in to your local bus stop to get a live map of where your bus is and when it’s going to arrive.
Google Now works! (well, sometimes)
And then there’s the shopping stuff.

First up, the online ordering stuff. It just makes sense. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work here either, and I don’t quite understand why more stores don’t offer it. If Takealot can manage, why can’t other places? Maybe it’s a critical mass thing, because the shops in the UK have had to adapt or die, so they’ve all pushed their online option hard. When you order online from your supermarket, you get what you asked for, and you get it when you asked for it. If you’ve ever used our local system, you’re probably not using it any more, because those two things don’t happen and it’s a disaster.
But if you’re missing the opportunity to impulse buy, then there’s always ‘click and collect’ – the hybrid of traditional and online shopping – whereby you order on the net and then go and pick up your shopping at the local store. This saves you the delivery fee and means you don’t have to be at home to receive your goods. You can also decide if you need another 4 pack of Murphy’s when you go to collect your groceries (spoiler: you do).
All of this means that fewer people are actually in the supermarkets, and it’s so actually a much less stressful experience when you do go along.

It’s not just food and drink, either. All the major clothing stores offer the same services, so you can shop online and either get it delivered or pick it up at your local store. And if stuff doesn’t fit, you stick a big returns label (supplied) on the bag and drop it off at your local post office. Simples. It’s no fuss, because if it was fuss, people wouldn’t do it, just like you’re not doing it with PicknPay right now.

If you actually want to go to the supermarket and walk around the aisles, in some stores, you can wander round with a barcode scanner and Scan As You Shop. This means that you can pretend to have a raygun and shoot aliens (although you may be charged for items you didn’t actually get if you hit them inadvertently while pretending to be Flash Gordon).
And then there’s the option to scan your own stuff at the end of the shop. Apparently, the phrase “Unexpected item in the bagging area” has been voted one of the most irritating things in the UK, and is being phased out. And it’s not always straightforward either:

Shoppers are stealing more than £1.6 billion worth of items from supermarkets every year as frustration with self service tills leads to theft, a survey found. One in five people admit pilfering items at the checkout, but the results suggest people steal regularly once they realise they can get away with it – the majority admitting they first took goods because they couldn’t work the machines.

But for foreign visitors (especially those with kids), scanning your own shopping is actually quite fun. And if you don’t have kids, it can actually be quite quick as well.
Sadly, it would never work in SA though, as passing zebras would constantly trigger the barcode readers.

And finally, contactless payment. Like us here in SA, the UK has long had chip and PIN payment, but there, you do everything yourself. (To explain to anyone not in SA, generally, we hand our cards to the cashier and they put it in the machine for us.) (We also have attendants who fill up our cars with petrol, and fairly regularly, someone at the entrance barrier to car parks to press the button and hand us the ticket.) (Yes, I know.) But contactless payment is the one where you just wave your card over the machine and it takes the money off your account.

Now, my SA card (it’s the exciting accountant coloured one on the right) has this facility too, but I’ve yet to find anywhere to use it here. Whereas in the UK, it’s everywhere and it’s all too easy to wave and spend without even thinking about it. And yes, I suppose that there are some security worries with this system, but wow, it’s so damn quick and you suddenly realise just how much impact having to enter your PIN has on making you understand that you are spending money.

This certainly isn’t a OMG – Look How Much Better The UK Is Than SA post, but the integration of technology into the retail process has definitely made it better for the consumers over there and they are way ahead of us in this area. The good news is that hopefully, the best bits of these advances will trickle down to South Africa – there’s actually no reason why these ideas wouldn’t work here – and we can all live happily in the future together.