“Less more heritage,” says Ruth

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The Isle of Man Facebook group. It’s like the Cape Agulhas Whatsapp group, but blue instead of green.

It’s populated largely by older people who can get confused by the internet from time to time.
Like Ruth:

“Less more heritage,” cries Ruth.

“For responsibility for tourism it’s cruel,” she adds, sagely. Because it is cruel.

“Wake up call we need heritage.”

Indeed. We need less more heritage. I think that’s already been raised in your comment.

Aside from the amusement at the car crash of the above outburst, I particularly enjoyed the fact that two people liked the post.

They must have understood more than I did. Like, any of it.

The Impossible Dream

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It’s been a hot day in Cape Town, and it’s been a busy one too. I would love to be sitting at home in front of a warm TV right now, but it’s Monday evening and it’s Dodgeball training, so I’m out in my car park. Given that I am out here, I would love to be sitting in my car park with the windows down and the fresh breeze blowing the heat of the day away.

Sadly, there appears to be a raw sewage issue somewhere in the vicinity. It’s literally nauseating.

Anyway, not much I can do about the thick pooey odour enveloping everything here.

So here’s a video I watched earlier. A great tale, 17 years in the making, some amazing videography, and some important lessons about recognising when it’s time to give up.

We all have our impossible dreams and we all have our limits. How we choose (or are able) to balance one against the other, and how much value we place on each will likely define our successes. It doesn’t have to be running marathons. For example, Forest Drive (Bishopscourt, not Pinelands) kicked my arse again today. That’s a 750m bit of asphalt, not 42km of American city roads, but that’s my current nemesis. But I’ll return on a cooler – but equally steep day – to fight back.

And I will beat it. Or I’ll give up.

One of the two.

Great timing

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Thursday was the day that Climate Scientists announced that the world had made it a whole year with an average global temperature >1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. And if you click through on that link, you’ll be able to read about many of the other records that have recently been broken as mankind does its best to trash what’s left of the planet.

It probably wasn’t the best day that the UK Labour party could have chosen to announce that they were dropping their £28bn a year “Green Prosperity” plan, halving the funding due to “the economic climate”. The actual climate isn’t the only climate that is struggling, then.

When you are an opposition party, it’s easy to make grand statements about how much you are going to spend, and all the plans you are going to carry out once you’re in government. No-one can hold you to them, because you can’t do them anyway, because you’re not in power. But suddenly, with Labour surely almost certain to win the upcoming election in the UK, they’re having to backtrack on their promises.

But with the world experts crying out for more funding for environmental and ecological issues, more buy-in and more commitment from governments, the perfect timing of this climbdown was a disaster.

Talking of disasters…

During his 2024 State Of The Nation address on Thursday evening, President Ramaphosa talked up the progress that the government had made in tackling loadshedding, which was running at Stage 2 throughout his speech:

“Since SA’s renewable energy programme was revived five years ago, more than 2,500MW of solar and wind power had been added to the grid, with much more in the pipeline. More than 120 new private energy projects were in development after regulatory reforms enabled private investment.
These are phenomenal developments that are driving the restructuring of our electricity sector in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices. 

Through all of these actions, we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach.”

About an hour after he made that statement, loadshedding was raised to Stage 3.
And three hours after that, it was raised to Stage 4.

And now we’re on Stage 6. No electricity for 12 hours each day.

Again, absolutely wonderful timing.

“…we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach”

Utter nonsense. Any light at the end of the tunnel has clearly got nothing to power it.

Alkali metals in water

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The girl child came home buzzing yesterday after a Chemistry lesson in which they got to chuck some Sodium into some water. This reminded me of that iconic Open University video where they do the same demonstration with a number of Group 1 Metals, namely Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium and Caesium.

Don’t bother with the first bit (unless you really want to). The fun starts at about 1:06, so scroll straight through. And it’s definitely worth a minute or so of your time, so do bear with it, even when they insist on putting the equation for the chemical reaction across the screen, 1970s style.
And do put the sound on so that you don’t miss the deadpan commentary, with lines like:

You can see that things become gradually more terrifying as we go down the group.

The involuntary whistle and abrupt end to the video are perfect. It’s not like they didn’t know what was coming, and yet…

We’re going to need another beaker, Ted.

I miss those carefree (by which I mean “H&S-free”) days in the laboratory.