So much face

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When your kids get stung be a bee, it’s wholly unpleasant for all concerned (not least the bee). But when your dog gets stung by a bee, the results can be totes hilar.
This is the face that I came home to this evening:

image(for comparison, here’s what an unstung Colin looks like)

Colin being a puppy and this being her first bee encounter, the vet suggested we bring her in for steroid and anti-histamine injections, so I wasn’t laughing quite so much on the other side of the bill for those, but still – look at it – JUST LOOK AT IT!!!!

Colin is confused by the huge size of her face, but has eaten a big dinner and seems otherwise ready get on with life as normal.

Up high

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We’ve all had the feeling when you wake up in the morning and find – with disappointment – that your palms aren’t at all sweaty. It’s annoying and potentially upsetting and, but what many people don’t realise is that it’s easily cured by looking at just a few urban climbing photos.

These young people know no fear (although, interestingly, you never see an urban climber past the age of about 21, do you?) and they do the hard yards (upwards) so that your palms can sweat from the comfort of your own laptop.

Right – checked your palms? Let’s go:

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I don’t know if it’s because I have a rational brain, but I find that I can easily (and graphically) envisage what would happen if something were to go awry and this bloke was to slip from here. (And in this case, ‘here’ is the crane at the top of this). *dry heave*

But then, there’s some sort of nature thing at play here too, because even on the Boomslang yesterday, ‘only’ 12 metres high, I was worried about the kids. Not about me. Just them. And that’s got big railings up the sides of it. Not like some ledge on the side of a building 70-odd storeys up. Which begs the question, WHAT IN SWEET JESUS’ NAME IS THIS GUY THINKING??!?!?

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I can’t even grip my mouse anymore. Bring tissues! (careful now)

If this hasn’t butterflied your tummy enough and got those palms weeping, then there are plenty more where those came from, and that place was here.

Flowers

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We decided that it was time to get the kids out and about again after a whole week (and a bit) of sickness. They’ve been hit hard and we’ve been forced to keep them at home and relatively calm and still. This hasn’t gone down well with the two of them, because inside, calm and still are not things that they enjoy. Thus, they went a bit demob happy around Kirstenbosch this afternoon. No harm was done, but they may have over-exerted themselves a little; a fact indicated by the manner in which my 8 year old boy had to be carried into bed this evening.

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Kirstenbosch is great whenever, but it’s especially colourful at this time of year: something I know my parents will be jealous to be missing. So this post is for them, although you too can see some flower (and alpaca, obviously) photos in this album here.

Science Gun

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I like the idea of a Science Gun.

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We scientists like things to behave as they are expected to, because… well… that’s how they’re expected to behave. It’s simply unfair that we observe and document these organisms for hundreds of years and then one of them suddenly decides to break the mould, just trying to be clever. That’s what evolution is for, and that doesn’t happen overnight, Mr Emu.
Capisce?

Crime: sorted

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Incoming: Great news from SAPS (The South African Police Service)!

After a weekend which will inevitably be filled with murder, rape, burglary and violence across South Africa, all will be sorted from 10am on Monday, when the police service hold their prayer day. Yippee!

According to the media release:

 The prayer will among other things focus on the following:

  • Safety for police officers
  • Reduction of crime in general
  • Reduction of gender-based violence

But will it work? Well, apparently, yes it will, because they tell us that:

A collective prayer has the power to protect and save police officers and preserve the nation. Police officials are responsible for protecting the community and our prayers can help save our police officials from harm.

It does make you wonder why, given the power that a collective prayer obviously possesses, no-one has come up with this idea before. Why waste time with community intervention, detective work and shooting miners when we could all come together, say a few words and kill all those birds with one stone, thus finding ourselves all leaving in a harmonious utopia?

Except, they have tried this before: last year:

The SAPS’s National Prayer Day is at the SAPS’s Tshwane Training Academy in Pretoria West from 10:00 to 12:30 on Tuesday, 13 August 2013. Employees of the South African Police Service are encouraged to attend this worthy event. It is through the divine intervention of the Almighty that we stay protected and reach our goal in the fight against crime.

Yep – the divine intervention of the Almighty will sort everything out, starting at 10am on the 13th August.
So, how did that work out for them, then? Well, here are a few lines from a synopsis of the crime stats released last week:

  • For the first time in 20 years the number of murders and the murder rate has increased for a second consecutive year.
  • This means that there were 809 more people murdered than in the previous year.
  • There has been an increase in all categories of robbery over the past year.
  • Vehicle hijacking increased by 12.3% to 11,221 incidents. This means that 31 motor vehicles were hijacked every day on average in 2013/14.

Oops. And, tragically:

Between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2014 a total 68 police officers were killed in the line of duty.

So, one has to ask where this confidence in the power of the prayer “to protect and save police officers and preserve the nation” has come from?
Perhaps, like the big guy upstairs that their prayers are aimed at, it’s all just made up.

The media is cordially invited to attend the prayer service.

No thanks.