Oily disastrous death of DOOM!

So I’ve been keeping half an eye out on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill news. In fact, ‘oil spill’ is putting it lightly. It’s the single largest environmentally destructive man made force EVER! Surprising then that the worldwide media has sidelined the whole affair in favour of Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence for violating parole… or some such rot. I don’t care if some juvenile lesbo has to spend TWO WHOLE WEEKS in jail for being an idiot. The only time ‘Li-Lo’ deserves to be put in the papers ahead of an environmental disaster of this magnitude is if they found… a cure for HIV AIDS made from a paste constructed primarily of her dried crushed bones, organs and brain matter.

I’m drifting…

In any case I thought I would summarise the whole oil spill and the way it was managed by those clever guys at the ‘BP science, engineering and brainyness’ division. Why, you ask? It’s just that I found looking at individual pieces and media reports gave a somewhat hazy and incomplete picture. Putting all those bits together will help us average people understand the steps BP have taken to ensure nothing but the best (or least worst) results from this whole ordeal.

April 20 2010: Blowout preventer on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico fails resulting in… a blowout>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, one of our deep sea rigs had a blow out in the Gulf of Mexico.” BP Engineer 2 “Erm, yeah we shoulda realised something would happen after Jay took apart the old blowout preventer for a valve he needed to fix his mom’s Studebaker.” BP Engineer 1 “So what are we going to do about mate?” BP Engineer 2 “This needs some thought… I’ll get back to you”

7 May 2010: Oil leaks out at a rate of approximately 60000 barrels a day for 17 days before>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, we could lower a huge box over the leak.” BP Engineer 2 “That’s a great idea Dave, that way we can minimize our losses by harvesting and selling the spilled oil!” BP Engineer 1 “What about the excess oil that leaks into the ocean?” BP Engineer 2 “Meh, it has to go somewhere…”

9 May 2010: The box-funnel idea failed and eco-warriors put pressure on BP Engineers to come up with environmentally friendly solutions>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, maybe the oil will stop spilling out if we shovel dirt into the hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hey, yeah Dave, I recon that will work. When I was I kid we used to hide stuff by shoveling dirt onto it…” BP Engineer 1 “Heck and getting rid of dirt is environmentally friendly too, EVERYBODY wins!”

11 May 2010: After failing to stop the leak (which has since grown to a maximum of 800000 liters a day) by dropping sand bags filled with dirt, golf balls and bits of old tire onto it (!!!) BP engineers need to find another new solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Say Chuck, what if we were to use a big old submarine to go down there and plug the leak?” BP Engineer 2 “You is genius Dave! But what to plug the leak with?” BP Engineer 1 “…Concrete?” BP Engineer 2 “Doesn’t that need air to dry and cure?” BP Engineer 1 “Heck no, how do you think they build them bridges in rivers…”

10 July 2010: Shoving concrete into the leak fails. The oil spill, now visible from outer space, destroys all life in its path. BP Engineers finally come up with a solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “So Chuck I noticed this morning that the water in my bath was prevented from escaping using a solid plug like device to cover the outlet hole.” BP Engineer 2 “What exactly are you trying to say Dave?” BP Engineer 1 “Well, if a plug can stop water from going down a drain surely we could use a similar device to stop oil gushing up from a hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hmm, a radical idea Dave. We would have to reverse engineer this ‘plug’ device to function the other way around but it sounds crazy enough to work.”

15 July 2010: The main sources of the oil spill are finally stopped after BP engineers effectively shove a plug into to hole really REALLY hard! A permanent solution to the oil spill has YET to be found but is expected to be in place by September. In the mean time the CEO of British Petroleum maintains that the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is a tiny tiny tiny amount relative to all the water in all the oceans on the planet Earth.

Phew! Thank goodness for that…

(Image http://3.bp.blogspot.com)

Have humans peaked as a species?

Having recently refreshed some Natural Selection theory, I started wondering about how humans fitted into the whole big picture. You see there are basic rules to the process of natural selection. Let me summarize:

Natural selection is effectively the recognized process by which living organisms on a species level are able to improve and optimize traits they posses to allow them to be more competitive both with other species and their own kind. This kind of specialization and adaptation doesn’t simply happen; it requires a particular set of circumstances to initiate and develop into something that translates into a physical/behavioural change that increases an individual’s fitness. I’ve listed the particular set of circumstances below:

1. Variation – change cannot happen unless there is some sort of background variation between individuals (outliers kick ass…)
2. Fitness consequences - that background variation needs to give some individuals the edge over others (never complain about life being unfair).
3. Inheritance - a favourable trait must be passed on to the next generation to be of any use (don’t keep secrets).
4. Limiting resources – basically you can’t win if you don’t have anything to fight for (so the ideal world is one where we are running out of everything… who’d have thought).

We often perceive ourselves (humans) as the most influential living force on the planet. Quite a naïve view considering the only real power we have is an amazing ability to wipe out all life on Earth in the space of a few hours... It doesn’t take a genius to realize that our lifestyles at the moment are not sustainable. In order to restore some form of balance we could use a healthy shot of natural selection…

…Or couldn’t we?

Let us see how humans fare under those ideal natural selection circumstances mentioned above:

1. Variation - I think it’s fair to say that humans are quite diverse. As long as there is room on this planet for people like Steven Hawking and Julius Malema or Sarah McLachlan and Lady Gaga… I’ll give this a YES, MOST DEFINITELY (consider them opposite sides of the scale).
2. Fitness consequences – Hmmm, a tricky one considering basic human rights and upholding those rights (ahaha!)… Theoretically we should all be on par with regards to fitness consequences. Of course in an equal society some are always more equal than others. Then again, there is always the pattern suggesting that lower class society tend to have more children compared to middle/upper class society. In terms of natural selection, these should be the individuals with lower fitness that should be weeded out. In fact modern advances in health care have provided our unfit individuals ample opportunities to continue existing (it would be rather immoral to castrate all men before administering diabetes treatment or having mandatory hormone replacement therapy for women without 20/20 vision). Fitness consequences could theoretically work in human populations, I’m not too sure the whole “live your life but don’t have kids” idea will appeal to the flawed masses. Of course we could just as easily create a super race by starting an Olympian breeding program…just a thought.
3. Inheritance – I’m pretty sure we can once again blame modern health care for giving flawed humans more opportunities to breed than are absolutely necessary. This unfortunately leads to a future wherein the majority of humans rely more and more on artificial means of survival. Are we cultivating a future society of medicated wieners? Perhaps, we are already at that stage…
4. Limiting resources – I don’t think we have a problem here. Humans will fight over something as trivial as a rugby ball. We are so trigger happy that we will even go to war over petty meaningless speculation. People are rarely happy with what they have these days so the successful pursuit of wealth and material could be an excellent way to develop traits. Wait they have a word for that, it’s called capitalism.

The Verdict!!!

Humans are nature’s rebels. We are perfectly aware of and acknowledge the existence of natural selection yet we do all in our power to avoid the process. One could argue that if we want to do what is best for our species in terms of sustainability and improvement over generations, we would need to do quite a lot of unethical weeding or immoral rule implementation w.r.t. breeding. On the other hand, if we continue down the path we are currently on, we will more than likely end up a society constructed from a bunch of materialistic, capitalist, idiot druggies…

…so there

Of morality and brains

Just read some headlines… it seems as though 40 000 prostitutes will be entering SA for the World Cup in June this year. Let me assure you, the first thing that hit my mind after I read the title was not “I wonder why prostitutes like football so much?” No it was something else…

…more along the lines of “wait, hold on, this is South Africa, HIV/AIDS capital of the world. Why, oh why, do analysts predict such a great surge in the sexworker industry? Surely a wealthy man, rich enough to afford a lengthy stay in SA to watch his beloved home team kick a bouncy thing on a field for 80 minutes, would have a vague idea of what could happen if he… made rude with a prostitute here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning prostitution in countries with lower HIV prevalence. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I guess it’s because of my assumption that people with material wealth are also in possession of intellect (how would they accumulate said wealth without more than a handful of functioning brain-cells otherwise?). Anyone with an ounce of intellect should know that one needs to behave when one visits the HIV/Aids capital of the world.

There is a reason SA is Toxic green with a skull and crossbones on this HIV prevalence chart…

The more I think about this the less it makes sense, unless of course, these individuals had acquired riches the easy way (gambling, or selling some oil they siphoned from their back yards perhaps…). Let us do some math together to try clarifying the situation.

(EXITEMENT!).

We assume that 90% of 2010 World Cup tourists manage to get here by saving up hard earned cash (as opposed to dumb luck and easy earnings). The World Cup is predicted to bring in about 4.5 million soccer tourists. So roughly 450 000 of our soccer tourists got here the easy way (i.e. probably don’t have the intellect to realise how much at risk they are of contracting a deadly virus by using local sexworkers). Assuming one third of those are married/in a relationship and have come with their spouses (eliminating 2/3 of our 450 000 leaves us with around 150 000). I’m guessing that single men would make up about 2/3rds of what is left (call it the hypothetical football fanatic sex ratio…). So we are down to 100 000 potentials.

In terms of sexworkers (or steelworkers as spellcheck prefers to see it…): Offshore sexworkers wouldn’t bother coming here if the local sexworker industry was enough to cater for the event (so let’s say that the local prostitutes …’servicing’ tourists, number around 50 000). Media reports that the 2010 WC will also create a large amount of opportunistic sexworkers (let’s say 10 000). This leaves us with 100 000 sexworkers…

OH MY GAS! Do you realise what this means?!

If my estimations are correct, EVERY male soccer tourist (or female with a strange soccer fetish) that gets here the easy way will have an enormous horn and a teeny brain. I would steer well clear of these immoral fornicating baboons if I came across them come June.

The problem with New Years

So here we are, the beginning of the year 2010. I just can’t believe that it has already been 10 years since this…

So all the crazy ‘end of the world’ folk have moved their apocalypse date to 2012 because some stupid Mayan (or was it Inca?) calendar carved out of stone by an ancient man (who also had a thing for throwing people off the edges of pyramids, putting large bones up his nose and castrating Portuguese explorers with blunt instruments…) who didn’t bother to carve dates beyond 2012 because his wrist got sore and nobody really cared back then in any case…

No, the end of the world is coming but not yet (we still have a good 200 years or so). Besides, with all the dosh being invested into finding another planet for us to colonise as opposed to, …I don’t know, FIXING THE ONE WE ALREADY HAVE! We are sure to be right as rain to simply pick up and leave when the shite hits the fan (HAH! FAGS! Who do they think they are fooling… honestly!?).

Enough ranting about the change of years... It really doesn’t mean a thing at all. Just another opportunity for people to celebrate… because people get bored with the olde ‘eat, work, shit and sleep’ schedule, they feel the need to do something different. Breaking the monotony of a working class life probably does wonders to maintaining ones sanity. New Years is a great way for the average person to recharge them batteries and be optimistic about the future. Make that resolution, strive to improve yourself and become what you always wanted to be.

It’s sad in a way, I get the impression that people only have this outlook on life on New Years eve and the 1^st of Jan before it’s back to the old… ”screw it I’m happy with things the way they were” school of thought. People should treat every day as New Years day (no I don’t mean get pissed and stab someone with a broken bottle before being stopped by the cops and booked for being over the limit on your way home), they should wake up EVERY morning and make new resolutions, then stick to those resolutions because every day is just as important and filled with potential as the last. You can’t just lump 365 days together in a year then pretend as if one year was better or worse than the last! That’s like liquidizing an entire gourmet 5 course meal before eating it then saying it tasted like puke and asking for your money back (did that make sense just then…? Oh well, it did to me.).

My point remains nevertheless, anyone who looks forward to the benefits a new year can bring are observing life from the wrong scale. These people, in my opinion, are missing out on the finer details of day to day life by progressing annually rather than daily.

Happy New Year!!!

(and I should probably apologise for ruining it for everyone… NAH!)

The day I got it wrong

(Warning! this is a long and serious post with no traces of arb or humour)

So there I was making plans to take my basset hound Charlie for his first ever puppy social with two friends. It was a pleasant day and I expected everything to go well. I mean, how could three people walking their dogs in the park on a nice day possibly go wrong…

Well it did go wrong.

VERY wrong.

I offered to pick up one of my mates and her pooch on the way to the venue to make life a bit easier and for some company on the way. She agreed and off we went together up the hill to meet up with the rest of our party. Now, people that know me tend to put up with my silly hygiene issues and carry on with life. The issue in question in this situation was the fact that I don’t allow dogs to sit in the front of my bakkie (bakkie = truck or utility van). People in front, dogs at the back I’ve done it on many occasions (there is a canopy so it’s quite safe) and it hasn’t ever been a problem.

We went on to pick up my dog and then off to rendezvous. This is where the story takes a turn for the worse. At the rendezvous we get out the car to meet the rest of the party and check on the dogs at the back of my bakkie. I open the top half of the door only to be greeted by one dog (Charlie)… where was the 2^nd one?

Turns out my friends’ dog saw her owner leave, jumped through the window and into the front of my bakkie to follow and got closed shut in there in the process.

“Arrgh! A dog in the front of my bakkie!” I thought as I went through to the passenger door to fetch the dog with the intention of returning it to the back of the bakkie. BAD MOVE… as soon as I opened the door I realised that this dog was not going to allow me (a complete stranger) to pick it up. At that instant I froze giving the dog an opportunity to jump out the cabin and onto the road. She tried to run toward her owner but there was a deep gutter in the way and the only alternative to get to said owner was past me. She scooted past my legs and in a consequent failed attempt to grab her I ended up scaring her across the road where, as fate would have it, a car was driving past.

It happened so quickly in front of my very eyes, I remember every detail. With the direction of travel, momentum and fear this dog had, I thought she was a goner. I winced in helplessness as the car approached. Then I observed something quite strange, call me crazy but it appeared as though the dog hit some sort of invisible barrier literally centimeters away from the cars bumper and tire. She let out a Yip redoubled backwards and spun around holding her front left paw in the air in pain before running across to the other side of the road.

We proceeded to take the dog to the vet her owner crying uncontrollably all the while. She decided not to take a lift with me… and even though I followed and tried to be there for her, I kept getting the feeling that my mere presence was unwelcome. This was perhaps the most uncomfortable I’d ever felt. Sensing her need for space (from me the guy that almost killed her dog) and not quite knowing how to react I decided to keep my distance at the vet. I stuck around for a bit before realizing how useless I must have looked and said goodbye shortly after finding an excuse to leave and get my mind off the situation.

I’ve apologized and offered to help in any way I can since, but I just can’t seem to shake off the whole ordeal… It’s even distracting me from my work. I keep thinking of how much of a pillock I was to prioritize my personal hygiene issues ahead of that little doggies safety. I keep thinking about my friend in tears. I keep thinking about how I could have been more responsible and prevented the whole thing from happening and about how things could have turned out so much worse.

The dog has since been X-rayed and fully checked up. Thankfully she is okay (a bruised muscle).

In any case I really just want to get over all this and carry on with life. I thought that getting it off of my chest in a post could do the trick. I will probably have to endure a fair amount of pointing, sneering and general cold stares from the dog lover society that has since kicked me out (I don’t blame them). Pity, I quite like them even though they will probably never be as friendly to me again. I guess this is the price one must pay for being an idiot. The worse case scenario is that word of my deed spreads quickly and that I’ll have to endure a fair amount of being ignored or worse still, I'll have to put up with fake friendliness from people that don’t like or respect me any more.

Ahhhhh…. (EEbEE smiles)

That worked really well. I feel much better after getting it off my chest. People make mistakes… shit happens. Get over it and move on. Why should I care about what people think of me. One thought one goal. The rest is noise.

Was I meant to be born when I was born?

After having a short conversation about birthdays with the Raven-disciple (happy birthday for tomorrow btw…I’ll dedicate this post to you seeing as I’m too far away to give you a real present) I started wondering how appropriate historical events occurring on MY birthday are to my personality…

I mean, surely if everything happens for a reason, there would be some reason for my being birthed on the 24^th of July. Who can argue with that logic…

So I did some research (a google search for “24^th July”) to see what amazing stuff happened on the day I was born. I was expecting stuff like “peace treaty signed between two warring nations” or “breakthrough in modern hygiene”… geez even a famous birthday would have done the trick “Darwin was born on this day” for example. Instead, I found these…

1411 – Some Scotsmen with issues have a big fight and everyone dies.

1847 - 148 Mormon Pioneers establish Salt Lake City. (Mormons! Seriously!!!)

Various years – I found out that loads of ships sink and (for some strange reason) mudslides occur on my birthday drowning/killing hundreds of innocent people… (perhaps I should stay away from ocean cruises… …and mudslides!?)

1948 - Marvin the Martian makes first appearance on Looney Tunes (this could mean that either me and 1/365^th of the worlds population are ALIENS or…well nothing)

Various years – loads of mediocre novelists, mediocre cricketers and mathematicians I know nothing about were born on 24^th July too.

In terms of 24^th July celebrities, I went through a list of around 200 and only recognized ONE name (I clearly don’t read enough Heat magazine)...

…and here she is!

Jennifer Lopez – I could claim that she is a double whammy, being both a singer and an actor, were it not for the fact that she can’t actually sing …or act. She isn’t even pretty (the famous ass is disproportionate and hilarious in my opinion (someone should tell her…)).

Okay in all fairness there were 2 useful things that happened on the 24^th July. For instance:

1823 - Slavery was abolished in Chile (Score!)

1911 – Machu Picchu rediscovered by …some dude (I have always wanted to visit this place).

The most amazing events in recorded history (I’m sure that there are millions) have a 1 in 365 chance of falling on the 24^th of July. Yet all I got was some crazy Scotsmen having a drunken punch up and numerous insignificant disasters. Honestly who cares if California had a heat wave in 1935 on the 24^th July… if THAT can merit its way onto the Wiki list they must be desperate!

I must change this! I need to bring honour to the day of my birth!

Watch this space.

(So what happened on your birthday? It can't suck as badly as 24th July I'll bet...)