Ever had one of those days where the most fun you've had was watching all the red bars on your de fragmenting hard drive turn blue?
I'm having one of those days right now. I've been endlessly working on my theses, correct here, edit there, cut out here, paste there, type here, delete that, find references for this... AAARGH!!! It's so monotonous that I look forward to any break or possible escape from the hellish cycle. I found some relief staring at my defrag for around 5 minutes before realising how desperate I was and watching half an episode of Top Gear to regain some sort of sanity.
Writing up is far from easy, even if you have everything you need in front of you and all you need to do is assemble bits and pieces into one sensible paragraph. If I could just work my way around these mental blockades I could probably finish off the rest of my thesis in two days! Instead I have budgeted two weeks to complete the work.
You think you are living in a modern world, a world where people are finally beginning to understand the way things work. Using science, logic and technological advances to solve problems is the norm.
No it isn't.
Some crazy backward bastards go and ruin everything by believing that a rhinos horn has medicinal value! According to 16th century pharmacists (yes, 16th century!!!) the magical horn is said to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, libido, being possessed by the devil... but rhino horn does none of these things. These people may as well treat their condition by eating their own hair and nail clippings. Heck they may as well drink a glass of water, it's far more useful medicinally.
Thereafter, a group of even crazier money hungry sods go and harvest horns from live animals to meet the demand. A win win situation? I think not! Armed with aforementioned technological advances, poachers have become devastatingly efficient at harvesting horns. Rhino numbers are declining and so on and so forth...
THE SOLUTION
Okay it's pretty easy and I can't imagine why it hasn't been tried yet. You see the horn has tremendous value, it must have if poachers are able to form well organised armed teams in helicopters (!!!) to harvest a few (dozen maybe) horns a month at the most. Horns are also very scarce which drives their value up, this is logical. So what if...(let me put this into perspective)... what if authorities were to flood the market with fake rhino horn. If it is traditionally dispensed in a powder form simply drown the black market in fake product (it'll be just as effective, medicinally, as the real stuff).
Brainless customers will be happy because they could get their product cheaply.
Poachers would stop hacking rhinos to bits because selling chickens wings on the black market would be far more profitable
Rhino extinction probabilities would be reduced significantly
Hippies would stop their endless moaning on the subject (they'd find something else but we can be happy in between complaints)
I often think back to when I was a kid. Back to a time when our developing brains had just grasped the English language and discovered its true potential. Sure we learn the basics first, ‘mama’ ‘papa’ ‘give me ..........’ but we progress ever so quickly from there. We learn to manipulate, lie, make and set moral boundaries that stay with us for the rest of our lives. Language and the ability to communicate is a powerful tool that is often taken for granted.
Back to my topic… I feel that one of the more interesting communication milestones reached as we grow is that of debate. It fascinates me that we learn this ability so early on in life given the rather pointless nature of discussion and informal debate in the life of a 4 or 5 year old. Still, we persevered and perhaps benefited from it at the end of the day (character building some would say…).
After having failed miserably at communicating our point across to adults (“…and that’s why I NEED a bag of Easter eggs and a large net for school tomorrow.”) we lower our standards and have the most imaginative and drawn out discussions with other random 5 year old kids we stumble across at school. I thought it would be fun to revive one of these childhood debates. Partially because it would be a terrible shame to have gone through all that and not used it to our benefit in a discussion now that we are older and more mature (of course we are).
Here goes…
Discussion topic: My Dada (grandfather) is way cooler than your Dada.
I really do believe that I had the coolest grandpa and I’ll be impressed if anyone can come close.
My Dada.
Sure he wasn’t a perfect man but he did have a band. He played almost every type of Indian instrument beautifully. I remember him happily jamming with all his sons in the lounge of our house at over 70 years of age. He even rode motorbikes! My dada was originally a builder and to my knowledge helped in the making of some of Durban’s finest buildings. He also managed to bag the daughter of the owner of a once successful soda pop company as his wife (go figure, chicks had a thing for guys in a band back then too…).
In his later years he occupied himself by building fine furniture (most of which is still in use at our home). It would have been nice to see him in action as a young man. Alas the majority of my memories of him are of him pruning the roses in the garden wearing his beige hat or in his workshop swearing in frustration at workers he caught mixing cement the wrong way or something along those lines.
How cool was your gramps then?
(Alternantively you could revive another debate topic that stood out from your past.)
