There are three German warships off the coast of Struisbaai

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I’m not saying that it’s necessarily anything to worry about.
(UPDATE: Or is there?)
I’m just saying that they’re there.

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The Hessen, The Berlin and The Karlsruhe are probably just hanging around out there about 20 nautical miles offshore and enjoying the late summer calamari season. My sources tell me that squid is a very popular dish in Germany. Right?

The Berlin is essentially a supply ship, a support vessel for other German Navy ships.

Built in 1984, the Karlsruhe is a Bremen-class frigate. It’s got guns.

The Hessen is a more modern (2006) Sachsen-class frigate.

HESSEN
It’s got LOTS of guns:

These ships are optimized for the anti-air warfare role. The primary anti-air weapons are the 32-cell Mk 41 Mod 10 vertical launching system, equipped with twenty-four SM-2 Block IIIA missiles and thirty-two Evolved Sea Sparrowmissiles. Point-defense against cruise missiles is provided by a pair of 21-round Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. The ships are also equipped with two four-cell RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile launchers.

For defense against submarines, the frigates carry two triple-launchers for the 324 mm (12.8 in) MU90 Impact torpedoes. The ships also carry a variety of guns, including one dual-purpose 62-caliber 76-millimeter (3.0 in) gun manufactured by OTO Melara.
They are also armed with two Rheinmetall 27 mm (1.1 in) MLG 27 remote-controlled autocannons in single mounts.

Oh yeah?
Well, I’ve got a catty that I picked up at the robots in Somerset West (although I’m not ever so accurate with it) and I also have a beagle, albeit that it’s a beagle that generally gets quite scared when confronted with anything bigger than a seagull. (c.f. the Hessen at a length of 143m and a displacement of 5,800 tonnes.)

Having compared the respective weaponry at our disposal (and despite having noted with some glee that they have no specific anti-beagle measures available to them), I think that the German warships can stay right where they are if they like, or they can can even come and take over Struisbaai if that’s what they want to do.

I, for one, welcome our new Teutonic overlords.

Confirmed positions this afternoon: here, here & here.

UPDATE: Obviously they’re here using the convenient old “bilateral exercise” story:

The aim of the bilateral exercise is to facilitate the sharing of maritime expertise and to strengthen the military cooperation between the two countries.

Sadly, given the distinct lack of any SA Navy vessels in the vicinity, I have a sinking feeling (pun intended) that the strengthening of military cooperation may have been a bit of a one way street.

Happycow

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Because a Happy Cow is well… a… Happy Cow.

 

And yes, it’s a real thing, setting you back $2,700 plus P&P:

“Cows really like the powered rotating motion of the brush,” says Lonnie Boltjes, distributor of the new “Happy Cow” brush which starts and stops automatically.
Made in Germany, the “Happy Cow” is a coarse-bristle nylon brush in the shape of two cones mounted point to point on a shaft powered by an electric motor. The brush starts up automatically when a cow bumps up against it. The motor runs for about 60 seconds and shuts off unless the cow bumps it again. If the cow’s neck chain or strap accidentally gets caught and starts to wrap, the brush automatically stops and reverses itself.
The brush is made in short sections, with the longest bristles toward the outside. As the brush wears down, you can pull off the inner sections and move worn outer sections toward the center, putting new full-size brushes on the outer ends.
“We visited a 59-cow dairy herd in Germany where the machine was being tested,” says Boltjes. “They put a timer on the unit to see how much it was being used. Within a 24-hour period the machine ran for a total of 16 hours.”

Totes getting (a smaller) one of these for the beagle.

* and yes, I am very aware that the happy cow in the video above is not actually a cow at all. thanks.

Dyson

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An abandoned factory in Sheffield apparently makes for an interesting photo subject. I know this because I saw karl101’s photo album on flickr and then I looked around some more and found some more photos here and here.

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I’ve lived the  Urbex life both vicariously and fairly regularly on this blog through people like silentUK and longexposure.net, and that’s been fun, but there’s obviously additional local interest for me in this one.

The company was founded by John Dyson who began mining clay and making bricks in the early 1800s. From the very beginning the business was a success. The 1834 Sheffield trade directory lists “John Dyson – Brick Maker, Stannington” which indicates that he ran the business on his own. However, by 1838 the business was listed as “John Dyson and Son – Black clay miners and firebrick manufacturers, Griffs House, Stannington”.

Dyson’s were manufacturers of refractory material, ceramics for the steel industry – basically making the tiles which lined the inside of the furnaces and ladles used in steelmaking – they also produced fire backs and other household ceramic bricks for the likes of Agas, fires etc.

As with all industry these days, however, China does it more cheaply. But rather than going under like so many other British businesses have, Dyson reacted to this by building a plant in Tianjin in China. They still supply “technical ceramics and thermal technologies” to those people and industries who need technical ceramics and thermal technologies.
I guess 2015 China is a far cry from even the 1970s in Sheffield, though:

I worked at Dyson in 1970. When I was there we mostly made teeming refractories for steel making. They lined the blast furnaces, ladles and moulds. The pipes for “uphill” teeming were stamped out in wet clay (mined from the local Ughill quarries) in drop stamp moulds. Every so often, someone would be a bit slow taking his hands out of the way of the stamp and would lose the end of his fingers. Almost everyone in the factory was missing bits of fingers, crushed by the stamper.

Eina.

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Given the number of photo albums and sites devoted to it, I guess that the Dyson Ceramics factory in Sheffield must be the most accessible derelict factory in the world. What’s interesting to me is the respect with which it appears to be treated by the explorers and photographers. Easily mobile items (like the bottles and stamping kit above) appear in photos from both 2010 and 2014 – people are going in there to take photographs, not souvenirs.

Bohemian Like You

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One for my readers beyond the Lentil Curtain. It’s the Dandy Warhols from 2000 and this song has a story to it:

The song was written by Courtney Taylor-Taylor after seeing a woman pull up in her car to the traffic lights outside his apartment.

Where will you be when the inspiration strikes, eh…?

While this song has nothing to do with Liverpool, it will always remind me of that poor, victimised city.

I was ambushed there by market research people from Vodafone, who played it to me in late summer 2001 (just ahead of it being a big hit in the UK). If I recall correctly, I was on my way back from the Isle of Man to Oxford, following a week of escapism from real life after being dumped by the girl of my dreams. The boat from Douglas had arrived early in the morning and the train back down south was due to depart late in the afternoon, so I was getting drunk killing time in the city centre when the Vodafone people came for me with their clipboards.
I was taken to the back of the city hall or some theatre or somewhere, answered about 20 questions, told them that the song was great, and got paid £10, which further assisted with getting drunk killing time.

For completeness, Vodafone (probably on my say-so) went ahead with a hugely successful worldwide ad campaign featuring the song. And the girl of my dreams and I got back together a couple of years later and settled down in sunny Cape Town by the sea. White picket fence and all.

Everyone’s a winner.

“Dilute to taste”

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We all know what great work homeopaths do, and now they are doing some more great work in Gambia, under the welcoming gaze of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. He’s the guy that discovered the cure for HIV in 2007, which is why we don’t have any HIV anymore.

Fortunately for the impoverished village of Manduar in western Gambia, British homeopathic the Gambia Wellness Foundation are on the scene, using the power of dilution to cure all their ills.

The Telegraph asked Professor David Colquhoun of University College London to comment on some of the GWF’s many successes:

The homeopaths: “We once arrived at a village where a child had accidentally swallowed some bleach or some similar detergent. We immediately prescribed Sulphur 30C (a homoeopathic remedy used for skin conditions) to give to the child frequently. On our next visit, the parents came to see us to specifically thank us for saving their child’s life.”

Prof Colquhoun: “Sulphur 30C contains no sulphur, and even if it did it would not be the slightest help for bleach poisoning (if that’s what it was). The child recovered with no help from the pills.”

But it’s during the next rebuttal that the Prof comes out with this gem of a quote on the extreme dilutions used by the pseudoscientists:

A 200C pill is a dilution of one part in 10 to the power of 400. That’s a molecule in a sphere bigger than the known universe.

Still, as he points out:

Water is good if they are dehydrated.

Western people with their own money and other options who insist on going to homeopaths? Well, they’re idiots, aren’t they? Moonbats. Muppets. Hippie tosspots.

But when you live in a tiny, 3rd world African country, under a despotic, homophobic president who sanctions witch hunts and kidnaps journalists; one who can conveniently avoid paying for real medicine by inviting and thus tacitly legitimising quacks from overseas to “treat” you; when you have homeopathy forced upon you and your children as a substitute for real medicine that might actually do you some good?

When you’re a bunch of educated British adults being charlatans, masquerading as doctors and squeezing out real medics from doing a proper job of helping those in need?

Well jeez. That makes me rather annoyed.