I’ve recently been enjoying some vintage Black Hotels in the form of their 2009 album Films For The Next Century. Here’s Stone Wife with a rather sad video and a very catchy chorus:
Highly underrated, these Joburg alternative rockers are due to release a new album – Holidays – next month. Hopefully, there will be a few gigs to go with it.
Find them on Facebook here.
Infectious diseases are infectious. It’s kinda where they got their name from. I love infectious diseases, I always have. And, since I left University (about n years ago now) if it wasn’t for infectious diseases I wouldn’t have had a job.
Ever.
As I’ve mentioned several times on here, infectious diseases are far from being beaten by the supposed might of humankind. In fact, they’re actually winning our war against them, what with their rapid reproduction and their pacy genetic mutations. Still, we have had some small successes.
One of the other things which makes life difficult for us puny humans is the diverse tactics which we have to employ in order to achieve these positive outcomes. And here come a couple of good cases in point.
China has more than halved its tuberculosis (TB) prevalence.
Now, as you’ll know, TB is very close to my heart (not literally), and this is truly a huge battle for China to have won/be winning. It’s being fought with the joint weaponry of money, organisation and a huge expansion of a community-based disease control programme.
Lead researcher Dr Yu Wang, from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, said: “One of the key global TB targets set by the Stop TB Partnership aims to reduce tuberculosis prevalence by 50% between 1990 and 2015.
This study in China is the first to show the feasibility of achieving such a target, and China achieved this five years earlier than the target date.”
And it gives hope for other countries with high TB rates, South Africa included. And we do have, even as part of this apparently completely dysfunctional government of ours, a pretty decent guy heading up the Department of Health. I have high hopes that he will be very interested in this aggressive approach demonstrated by China. As we know:
TB remains a big issue in many countries, including India, Russia and many African nations. Better diagnostic tools and treatments are still needed.
Indeed. No quick fix here, but please be aware that I’m working on it.
And then a wholly different approach to stopping a wholly different disease – attempts to combat the recent Ebola outbreak in Guinea include banning the eating of bats:
[Health Minister] Mr Lamah announced the ban on the sale and consumption of bats during a tour of Forest Region, the epicentre of the epidemic, reports the BBC’s Alhassan Sillah from the capital, Conakry.
People who eat the animals often boil them into a sort of spicy pepper soup, our correspondent says. The soup is sold in village stores where people gather to drink alcohol.
Other ways of preparing the bats to eat include drying them over a fire.
And yes, Ebola loves bats. They’re widely recognised as the probable reservoir for the virus (i.e. where it hangs out before it kills loads of humans) and if you’re going to eat a bat packed full of Ebola virus, surprise surprise, you’re going to catch Ebola virus.
Ensuring that Guinea’s Ebola patients take a cocktail of antibiotics daily, as China has done with its TB patients, would have about as much effect as preventing those Chinese TB patients from eating bats.
None.
There is no one set approach here, no magic bullet. Different diseases require radically different methods of prevention and cure.
It’s nice that we’re beginning to get at least some of them right.
Another day, another video. But that’s the way the internet is going these days, isn’t it? Static pictures and mere words are becoming less trendy and with better speed (ha!) and greater bandwidth (haha!), video are where it’s at.
And this one is pretty cool. The new Bell’s Whisky ad from King James:
Very nice. Give those guys… well… you know.
Tomorrow, less video, more photos. Probably.
Finally, he gets around to it – just in time for the Friday night revellers to know that they’re going to have a great time tomorrow night.
The grey clouds over the mountain disappeared and took with them any worries of rain, leaving a pretty peach sunset as support act Bed On Bricks entertained us for a good 40 minutes.
It’s always a bit sad for support acts, but no-one goes along to see them. Still, great exposure for the Cape Town outfit who have been around for 10 years now and you probably know more of their tracks than you think.
But then, much to the delight of the screaming female hordes, Dan Smith, his grey hoodie and his hair – oh, and his three chums, of course – emerged to the theme from Twin Peaks. And even the annoying Afrikaans girl next to me shut up for a couple of seconds as they launched into a powerful rendition of Bad Blood, which set the tone nicely for the rest of the evening for the band, although sadly not for the annoying Afrikaans girl.
Each song was performed precisely, professionally, energetically and individually. No fancy segues here, we had a song, we had a break of sound and light and then we had another song. And the light show was excellent, backlit silhouettes moving purposefully around the stage, while Smith smashed drums and headbanged his way through his performance up front, with such energy that he often seemed breathless in the interludes. Still, he managed to please the audience with the usual (but honest) “most beautiful place we’ve ever played” line (Joburg, you might not get this bit) and he seemed genuinely humbled to be in SA.
Overjoyed was ruined by our irritating neighbour talking loudly about her economics book, before we moved on to The Silence (song, not annoying girl) and then into a new song, Blame, with a heavy rock’n’roll theme coupled with the almost monastic Bastille vocals. Weird, but it really works and almost had a Depeche Modey feel to it – and that’s no small compliment. Laura Palmer was followed by These Streets and then another new one: The Draw. Decent stuff it was too, although Dan needs to sort his repetitive, weedy, computer-says-no “I hope you like it” introduction out.
Cleverly, (because we’ve covered this issue of bands playing their established hits versus the need to showcase new music before) each new song was followed up by a couple of well-known numbers – Icarus and Flaws in this case.
And then they were off, ahead of the three song encore of the quiet Get Home (shut up, just SHUT! UP! Afrikaans girl), Of The Night – in which the audience were invited to pogo at the appropriate time and the grand finale, obviously, Pompeii.
A great night, a really professional performance and just one of those concerts when you could simply enjoy the musical genius of the guys on stage. Smith is obviously very into his music and the technology surrounding it, even more interesting when juxtaposed against the raw power of his drum beating, but the presentation of the songs was utterly flawless. It was odd, because this very clinical approach – no extra decoration or fuss – would usually have completely spoiled any gig, but here, it made perfect sense.
Bastille are a very listenable band and the new stuff shows only a very slight variation from their already established form. The next album, therefore, should be full of promise, but in the meantime, if you have a chance to see them live, do yourself a favour and get there – it’ll be well worth it.
Some very atmospheric photos here.
Observation: There are huge numbers of cars on the roads of Cape Town and the routes down to Cape Agulhas which have cycle racks obscuring their rear number plates.
This is obviously illegal (if I had a better internet connection, I’d lob in a link to the specific law here, but I don’t, so I can’t), but that doesn’t seem to bother these motorists, presumably for three reasons:
Firstly, the old South African belief that rules are there for someone else and don’t, for some bizarre reason, apply to you.
Secondly, the complete lack of enforcement – because why should you give a toss if the local police don’t?
And thirdly, because of course the majority of these people are cyclists and don’t give a flying fishcake for the rules of the road anyway.
But then, I got a cycle rack for Christmas. And yes, given my stance on cyclists generally, that probably deserves some explanation.
And the explanation is this: Boy got bike for Christmas, boy wants to ride bike all the time, especially on the dirt roads, sand dunes and annoyingly snake-riddled tracks of Cape Agulhas. Being seven, he cannot do this alone. Two bikes in the back of a car just doesn’t work. And there will be a third just as soon as Miss 6000 realises what fun her brother is having.
Thus it had to be done, but my son (and daughter) will grow up cycling the way I do: obeying traffic signals, being respectful to other road users and not wearing lycra. Oh, and none of that stupidly expensive bike business, either, unless they’re going to do it for a living.
The cycle rack did give me a bit of an issue though – namely the number plate one above.
Presumably, extra number plates are hugely difficult, time consuming and/or expensive to get hold of, otherwise, all those individuals with bike racks would surely have just given a nod to the establishment by getting one and sticking it on the back of their sideways bikes. And here I group them with the Jaguar drivers that “can’t afford” hands-free kits for their cellphones and the Audi owners who “can’t source” car seats for their unrestrained children.
Yes, those dickheads.
And I only had Friday to sort it out – Wednesday and Thursday being public holidays and Saturday (today) being the day we were leaving. Where to start? Well, firstly, I looked in the Yellow Pages, found a shop that printed number plates and got one made in 5 minutes for R100. Then… well… actually, that was it.
Suffice to say, I now have even less time and respect for those cyclists who hide their plates behind their R30,000 bikes on their R3,000 racks on their R300,000 cars, because they’re obviously just arrogant, lazy, tight-fisted, lycra-clad tossers.