Flying tonight

Posted on

Actually not. In fact, by lunchtime, I’ll be where I need to be, geographically speaking. But there’s no link like a manufactured tenuous link, so here’s an insurance ad from SA involving aeroplanes for your perusal/enjoyment.

Very good. The jury is still out on this insurance company, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure quite how the South African Constitution allows for them to choose to insure one gender but not another (and then, what of those individuals identifying as transgender?).
The only reasons I haven’t delved deeper into this are:

a) There are many more, more important abuses of the Constitution going on, and we shouldn’t distract the experts from their work on those, and
b) It doesn’t really affect me very much. I’m just curious as to how it works and as to what happens when someone starts “1st for Whites”.

In the meantime, the ad people have free rein to stereotype blokes as much as they like, a free rein which they are using… freely.

Travel time

Posted on

Commitments in places that aren’t Cape Town mean that I’m not around to blog today. But never fear: I saw this situation arising some time ago and I have pre-prepared a pre-prepared post for you.

(Before you get too excited and thankful, it’s not very good)

Since I’m travelling today, I thought we might do something geographical, so herewith the wikipedia page of the Extreme Points of Earth.

It tells you interesting things like where Point Nemo (so called because people are always trying to find it) (possibly, anyway):

The Pacific pole of inaccessibility (also called Point Nemo), the point in the ocean farthest from any land, lies in the South Pacific Ocean at 48°52.6?S 123°23.6?W, which is approximately 2,688 km (1,670 mi) from the nearest land (equidistant from Ducie Island in the Pitcairn Islands to the north, Maher Island off Siple Island near Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, to the south and Motu Nui off Rapa Nui in the north east).

I’m not going anywhere near Point Nemo. Unless things all go a bit MH370.

And:

The most remote airport in the world from another airport is Mataveri International Airport (IPC) on Easter Island, which has a single runway for military and public use. It is located 2,603 km (1,617 mi) from Totegegie Airport (GMR; very few flights) in the Gambier Islands, French Polynesia and 3,759 km (2,336 mi) from Santiago, Chile (SCL; a fairly large airport).

I’m not going anywhere near there either.

All in all, it’s pubquiztastic stuff though. So get learning, because I’ll be organising a test just as soon as I am back.

Avalanches!

Posted on

Not the big, rumbling wall of snow coming down the side of a mountain with the sole intention of killing you, but rather the Australian electronic music group who gave us this in 2000:

TIL that the manufacture of this sort of musical composition is called “plunderphonics” – the ‘theft’ of various soundbites and samples and their amalgamation into some sort of musical collage.

Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative.

Must have missed that one. Sorry, John.

Either way, this is a great example of it, as was this earlier in the week.

Balance

Posted on

The Isle of Man Tourist board recently commissioned stone balancing artist Adrian Gray to balance some stones on the Isle of Man. Then they commissioned photographer Mikael Buck to photograph the balanced stones on the Isle of Man, all with the aim of promoting the natural beauty of the island:

“The Isle of Man has such a range of stunning beauty spots that we wanted to bring attention to the selection available in a new and quirky way. Each of the locations featured offers something different for visitors to see to give a great first-glance of what the island has to offer.”

said tourism boss Angela Byrne.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I rather like the results (there’s a whole gallery available via this link), which were featured in newspapers all over the world Britain:

stone-balancing-8_3375065kStones at the Sound

stone-balancing-wa_3375055kStones on Bradda Head (also the site of this guy’s tower handstand)

As a art project, it’s quite cool.
As a PR exercise, it’s been excellent, with loads of publicity and media exposure, including, we’re reliably informed, a post on South Africa’s Best Loved Blog™.

Meanwhile, at 31 Junction Road

Posted on

Well, this is awkward.

Google Streetview has spotted many interesting things in its time – see Aaron Hobson’s art here, for example – but few things could be more Gauteng than this apparent hijacking caught live in February this year:

31 Junction Rd - Google Maps - Google Chrome 2015-07-23 084627 AM.bmp

Here in SA, where crime is often problematic, the private security industry is booming. Generally, they are quite good at keeping things in check, but the system does seem to be struggling a bit in the image above.

Link