Good luck Pammie!

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While I’m not lazing in bed on Sunday, 6000 miles…regular and blogrollee, Ordinary Life (aka Pamie Jane), will be spending (she hopes) around 14½ hours swimming, cycling and running around and around the sleepy village of Port Elizabeth in the Ironman South Africa triathlon.

For those of you who are wondering, that’s:

  • 3.8km swim (through shark-infested waters, nogal!)
  • 180km bike ride, and then, just because you do,
  • a full (42.2km) marathon.

Nuts. Completely and utterly nuts.

If you want, you can track Pamie LIVE on the day via the ATHLETE TRACKER link on ironman.com.
Her race number is 875.

Good luck Pamie, from all of us at 6000 miles…

Note: regular readers will be aware of my dislike for large-scale athletic events which disrupt the daily lives of local residents. This event, however, is completely fine by me as it is some 750kms away in PE.

Look out Zuma!

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OK, so he may have other things on his mind today, but Jacob Zuma must also now face the fact that ex-pats are going to be voting in the April 22nd election, as predicted in 6000 miles… January 27th post.

Following court applications by opposition parties (namely the DA and the VF+), the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) backed down on its initial refusal to allow ex-pat voting and – as long as interested people overseas registered their interest by the end of March – allowed them to vote.

Well, the numbers are out and Jacob Zuma and the ANC must be quaking in their boots. A total of 16,300 people are now registered to vote overseas. Assuming a reasonable turnout on the day of say, 50%, that’s about 8,000 votes shared mainly (presumably, anyway) between the DA and VF+. Scary numbers, indeed.

Yes, yes. I recognise that this was an exercise in exercising one’s rights, but honestly, what an utterly pathetic waste of time and money: like the political version of Earth Hour.
I am completely unsurprised that the parties involved have failed to mention the numbers, because frankly, they’re embarrassing. Compare and contrast their response with their spin about “standing up for voters’ constitutional rights” and the fanfare when they won the court ruling over the IEC. You can’t spin figures this poor.

I’m putting this one down as an own goal of note.

Coconut Crab

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Couldn’t resist. This is great.

The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world and is probably at the limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can get under the prevailing conditions. Their body is divided into four regions; the cephalic lobe, forepart, trunk, and opisthosoma. It is a highly apomorphic hermit crab and is known for its ability to crack coconuts with its strong pincers in order to eat the contents.

crab1
Bin raider (credit)

And should you have the misfortune to get pinched by one of these monsters (and assuming you’re still conscious), you’d do well to remember this gem, from Victorian naturalist Thomas Hale Streets:

It may be interesting to know that in such a dilemma a gentle titillation of the under soft parts of the body with any light material will cause the crab to loose its hold.

Yep. Tickle it. Either that or just batter it with a rock. Quick as you can.

Fighting ire with fire

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From here, via here.

With the G20 protests taking place in London today, Guido takes us back to previous occasions when demonstrators have bitten off more than they could chew:

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail. What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement. “We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “Sod off, Swampy.”

Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. They were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,” a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.”

Mr Beresford said: “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.” Last night Greenpeace said two protesters were in hospital, one with a suspected broken jaw, the other with concussion.

Classic moments. And I can quite see where those oil traders were coming from. Since my dismissal of all things Earth Hour on here and elsewhere on the web, I have had bunnyhuggers, lefties and bunnyhugging lefties chastising me at every opportunity. Not very pleasant and not very conducive to debate on the subjects at hand. And damn annoying, if I’m honest.

If Earth Hour was so very important, then why don’t they try it every night? Or would that make them miss Desperate Housewives and “Grey’s” (as it has annoyingly become known)?
All about priorities, I guess. Like the hypocrisy of those “eco-warriors” giving their desperately ill child drugs which had been tested on animals. Or the Noordhoek residents who drive 120km round trip to work each day, but consider themselves “green”, because “they do their bit for the environment”.
Oh yes. They certainly do. Probably not in the way they imagine though.

What the whiners about Earth Hour don’t seem to realise (aside from the fact that it made almost completely no difference to South Africa’s energy consumption) is that not everyone chooses to share their point of view. I didn’t go out of my way to waste electricity for 60 minutes. That would have been unnecessarily antagonistic, expensive and equally pointless. I just sat there and watched a bit of Top Gear, while eating a spicy lamb pizza. Apathetic, you might call it. Conscientious objectionism, I might argue.

But even my expressing my viewpoint is apparently not allowed anymore and the vitriol and bile has been free-flowing from the greenies.
Well, sod them. Their continuing insistance that Earth Hour made any sort of difference (especially here) and their ongoing nastiness towards non-participants invite ridicule. If you have more to say, you’re welcome: the comments window is just below.

Bring it, Swampy.