Hello

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Everyone’s been going barmy over the new Adele song Hello. Not least my daughter who wants to sing all the things that Adele sings. As songs go (musically, at least), it’s quite nice. Not really my taste, but I can respect the writing, the production and the talent she has. The great news is that Dubai-based producer ConsoulTrainin has given us a soulful, deep-housey remix and it’s properly good:

                         Oh noes. this video has been removed.

There’s some other interesting stuff on his soundcloud page too, including a Julyan Dubson Remix of Kygo’s Firestone and – if you’re less into pan-pipes – his own cover of Baby D’s 1996 hit Let Me Be Your Fantasy.

Agar plate art

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Ah yes, two of my most very favourite things: microbiology and art. Well, apart from the art. But still – this has a more than tenuous link to The Best Science In The World™, and it’s quite pretty too.

It’s art, made by microbiologists, using bacteria and fungi grown on agar plates – the sort of thing you see in a darkened lab in CSI series. Utilising the fact that different bugs grow in different colours on different sorts of plates, it’s not too hard to design a masterpiece – the only problem is that you can’t see what you’re designing while you design it – you have to wait 24 hours (probably at 37ºC) for the results to appear. So delayed art, then.

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Here’s a Salmonella and Shigella butterfly on a sunflower. The black of the butterfly has been generated by the Salmonella spp. producing hydrogen sulphide.

And here’s a five plate recreation of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, courtesy of a gutload of Proteus mirabilis, Acinetobacter baumanii, Enterococcus faecalis and Klebsiella pneumonia. Eww.

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I have done this before, although not to this kind of standard, I’ll admit. But as a junior in the lab in Oxford, we used to design Christmas tree plate art using Serratia marscescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Rhodococcus equi as a seasonal greeting for the staff working the Xmas shift the following morning. Depending on who was working that shift, there was always the temptation to use far more dangerous bugs, but professionalism generally prevailed and no-one was permanently injured, as far as I recall anyway.

See more examples of plate art here.

SA to allow child trafficking (or something)

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We’ve mentioned several times previously on here about the new draconian legislation requiring all children travelling in or out of SA to have unabridged birth certificates ready for examination, plus the ridiculous other rules about affidavits, letters of consent and even court orders (this one being one we unexpectedly stumbled over at immigration at CTIA last week) allowing one parent to take the children out of (or bring them into) South Africa . This, we were told, would prevent the 30,000 cases of child trafficking taking place in SA each year (a figure which AfricaCheck found was utter BS). Also, we were assured, this would have no effect on tourism, one of SA’s most important and healthy economic necessities. Tourism duly fell by 6% on the back of these new regulations.

Hashtag awks.

Fortunately, while everyone else was looking the other way, (mainly in the direction of burning toilets and police vans) on Friday, the government did a huge u-turn and relaxed the rules around taking kids in an out of the country:

CAPE TOWN – Government has announced changes to the controversial visa regulations.

Tourism minister Derek Hanekom made the announcement at a Cabinet press conference earlier today.
Hanekom says the concessions will be made to limit the impact the current regulations have had on tourism and economic growth.

The minister says it will no longer be mandatory for inbound travellers from visa-exempt countries to carry unabridged birth certificates for children travelling with them. But it appears that unabridged birth certificates will still have to be presented by South African children leaving the country.

These changes are the result of government’s inter-ministerial committee.

And they are doing a few other things as well, which you can read more about here.

This is good news for the tourist industry, certainly, but it hasn’t helped my family out at all – as you read, the regulations stay firmly in place for us. In addition, I simply can’t believe that this ANC government has turned its back on 30,000 innocent trafficked children, just for the sake of a quick buck. Because that’s basically what’s happened, isn’t it? They told us that there were 30,000 kids being moved through SA each year, they stood by the figure, even when others tried to shout them down, and now they’re basically saying “Meh, f*** ’em”.

Maybe if I benefited in any way from these rule changes, I’d feel differently, but I just have to invoke Helen Lovejoy:

Won’t somebody please think of the children!

…because our beloved Government clearly no longer cares about them.