How to solve the rhino horn saga

It being Rhino Day and all...

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).

1. Brainless customers will be happy because they could get their product cheaply.
   
2. Poachers would stop hacking rhinos to bits because selling chickens wings on the black market would be far more profitable
3. Rhino extinction probabilities would be reduced significantly
4. Hippies would stop their endless moaning on the subject (they'd find something else but we can be happy in between complaints)
   

The art of presentation, Japanese PechaKucha

I have recently been exposed to a new form of speed presentation. PechaKucha is a Japanese presentation method wherein the presenter assembles a collection of 20 pictures to accompany a talk on… well any particular subject of interest (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/). The presenter is limited to 20 seconds per picture/slide and so concludes the presentation after... (Math YAY!)… 6 mins and 40 seconds (or at least about that long).

So I downloaded and viewed a random example to see what it was all about. Unfortunately the topic was on safety and structural integrity of modern ‘fancy’ architecture (not something I care a great deal about). The presenter droned on for 6 odd minutes about how important the designers job is and how so many lives depend on the success of his/hers structure… boring shite okay…

The amazing thing about all this though is that I remember everything he said, my brain made the links between those pictures and the words he said so easily that I could probably give his exact talk after viewing his presentation just once. It normally takes me all of 30 seconds to blank out and start thinking about dinner when someone is giving a talk that I am not remotely interested in.

I guess what I’m saying is, PechaKucha is an amazingly effective form of speed presentation. It’s like force-feeding geese to enlarge their livers for extra profit, except the feed is information and the enlarged liver is your mind! …did that make sense just now?

Image (www.toothpastefordinner.com)

The ten minute post + the secret to life

Okay so I dared myself to write a blog post in ten minutes. Here it is.

I’m pretty good at complaining about stuff and ranting but the truth is, I really don’t care a rats ass about the stuff I complain about. Why, you ask? Well it’s just that I’ve reached a point in my life where my priorities have shifted away from materialism and so called issues… I’ve now refocused on something WAY more important than all of that.

(seven minutes left)

You see, your life is only a dream in the greater scheme of things. Did you know that all humans are EXACTLY the same age? Our souls were cast at the exact instant in time on the plains of creation. Fate plays a role here too. All the souls that we met on the plains of creation are in fact, the very souls we are destined to meet in our worldly life. The ones you became friends with there are the ones you have become friends with here, the ones you greeted once in a corridor and then forgot about here were greeted once there… and so on, and so forth. It’s all part of the big plan. Now things get a bit weird for humans (and djinns but I’ll have to fill you in on that at a later stage) in particular because, unlike all other seen and unseen organisms, humans have been given the gift of free will.

(three minutes left)

Basically your life and the path it takes towards success or failure will be determined by your ability to say YES and NO at the right/wrong time. Simple isn’t it… now, loads of people have lost the ability to distinguish between the right and wrong time to use the appropriate form of free will… the equivalent of a morally correct vs. immoral person. The lines between right and wrong kind of get blurred because these people are constantly trying to convince themselves that they have been using their free will correctly when they haven’t.

(30 seconds left)

My journey has been a success of late but I would hate to bore you with details so I’ll just spill the beans on the secret to living life right now.

OOOoooo sorry, ten minutes are up…

Perhaps later.

The ‘D’ word

What’s the deal with women and dieting!

It frustrates me sometimes. You see I share an office with several humans of the female persuasion and witness their strange obsession with ritualistic dieting almost on a daily basis.

You see, I’m the kind of guy that likes to snack while I work. Slowly munching on a choc chip cookie or nibbling on some murku (crunchy deep fried Indian snack made with chickpea flour) while working allows me to focus for longer periods of time and avoid being distracted by the internet or mindless background office chatter. I’m also the kind of guy that doesn’t like to eat alone. Eating isn’t just the process of shoving food down ones throat to meet energetic needs (although one would get this picture from reading my thesis…). For me it is a positive stimulus, an explosion of flavours and textures that tickles my senses and changes my mindset and mood depending on what it is that I’m eating. If something tastes great I feel good on a number of levels and wish to share this same experience with the people around me. This has transformed eating into a bit of a social activity in my life. Needless to say, when I snack, I always offer everyone.

90% of the time the response or implied response from most of my female office mates is ‘NO! -that will make me fat/-keep me from getting thin’ (the other 10% ‘Yes’ reply is reserved for those occasions when I happen to be offering chocolate). I feel that ritualistic dieting completely destroys the wonderful aspect of life that is eating.

I had a discussion about dieting with a mate the other day. My argument was that it is pointless dieting if fate has already decided if you are going to be fat or not… just go with the flow and you’ll be happiest. He countered by saying that fate (if you believe in it) in that case would already have decided who will diet and who will not. To which I responded ‘…um…yeah…’.

I still feel a certain amount of pity for people on diets and to make myself feel better I have come up with the perfect solution.

(In my best Verimark-man voice)

“No longer will dieters ever have to be deprived of the joy of eating. Ladies around the world and gentlemen that use skin products I give you the ‘Poopchute actuator 5000’ (Figure 1).”

Figure 1: The PA5000 Miracle diet cure is an implanted

duct made from biodegradable PVC.

“With the PA5000 you can eat as much as you like and not gain weight! Simply flick a switch to divert unwanted food away from your digestive system at the oesopagus. You will chew, taste, feel and even swallow your meal in the normal way but all of the food will go right through to your anus without being absorbed in between.”

“If you decide to eat some broccoli after those 8 cheeseburgers all you have to do is flick the switch again and your body will return to normal and absorb all of natural goodness of the broccoli while simply letting the cheeseburger pass through. You may ask yourself ‘what about all of the wasted food?’. Do I have some great news for you!!! Call now and you will receive a free Faecapelletinator 5000! You can use the FP5000 to turn the cheeseburgers into handy 2cm cubed pellets which you can feed to your cat or some poor people. They are perfectly hygienic and packed with carbs and calories”

Phone now toll free on 0800 PA5000.