The Nation is agog

according to reports


All I can say is, that the Nation is easily gogged.

This relates to a “Cellphone porn devastates family” story yesterday. The technology involved is certainly 2007, but the moral issues and outrage – a maiden’s honour besmirched etc – are pure 1807. Basically, a cellphone vidoe clip is circulating about two local teenagers enaged in sexual activity, which of course is shocking and unheard of.

Many commentators are debating the social impact of universal cellphone-camera ownership, especially in the wake of the Saddam execution debacle. In this case, we have a clip of a girl blowing her boy friend - presumably that’s what it was, seeing he must have have at least one hand free for filming. The technological problem is, that when at one time activity was performed by consenting adults or teenagers in the privacy of their parents’ homes, now this activity appears within 15 minutes for the world’s inspection on YouTube. Embarrassing yes, when the participants are identified as locals.

But the participants are of legal age, and I have to blow the secret to our more sheltered compatriots, that this is the sort of thing teenagers do these days. In other words, a similar operation will have taken place up and down the country hundreds of times on any given day, filmed or not, and dozens of similar video clips may have been posted on YouTube (and dozens of other sites). By this time tomorrow, dozens more clips will have been posted, and the ones from today will be history.

And the kids involved, if in the US, would be nearly old enough to be sent to die in Iraq, but not old enough to indulge in a bit of nooky.

Hardly reason, I think for a family to be ‘devastated’, the girl taken out of school (a ‘courageous action’, according to some cretin), and banished to another country; the distraught parties contemplating suicide etc etc. ‘The police are involved’ – don’t they have other things to do, like finding comet murderers etc?

No, as I said, this is not 1807. Bring her back, put her back in school (hopefully at 17 she is nearly finished by now, though she may have been neglecting her grades with extramural activities): with advice to be a bit more discreet in future, and ensure that cameras are switched off.

As for the boy, he seems to show a fair degree of computer literacy in successfully processing a digital video clip, networking it and uploading it to the internet. In time, he should get a good job in IT and be an asset to the country.

I don’t know what

gets people fired up over comets (the celestial kind). Maybe the pre-scientific astrological belief that they are portents of drama and disaster – notably the appearance of Halley’s comet in the year 1066 that preceded the Norman invasion of England.

In previous centuries, there were certainly some spectacular ones, stretching right across the sky. Nowadays, perhaps because of light pollution which drowns out celestial objects in urban areas throughout the world, these are almost non-existent – in fact, the more astronomers hype the arrival of the ‘brightest’ comet this century, the more you can bet the object will turn out to resemble a minute blob of cotton wool, visible with good binoculars on one night if you are lucky.

Comet Mcnaught (comets are usually named after their discoverers) however, made a decent spectacle over Namibia last week, watched by hundreds of people crowding the hilltops around Windhoek.

Comets are actually not very interesting – they are the proverbial ‘dirty snowball’, a few kilometres across, much smaller than a self-respecting asteroid, hurtling round the sun in a highly elongated or even open-ended orbit, which means they visit us only once. The tail is a cloud of dust blown out by the rays of the sun when the comet is closest – the tail fans out ahead of the comet, and is not dragged along behind like the tail of a cat as some people assume. When I said they are not very interesting, comets are of great interest in the formation of the solar system, but that is only relevant if you have a budget of a billion dollars or so to send a probe up to one.

It’s strange that on any clear moonless night, even in Windhoek (at least before the new State House switches on its thousands of fence lights), there is much more to see – the milky way arches overhead, either Orion or the Scorpion glitters down, and you have a clear view across the galaxy. With the naked eye, you can even see our neighbour galaxy – Andromeda – two million light years away. But the hilltops of Windhoek are empty.

All this would be just passing-the-time talk, except for tragedy. Mr. Swiegers, a well-known local auto dealer, was watching the comet with some friends on the outskirts of town, when armed robbers emerged from the darkness. They were of course after the observers’ digital cameras. A shot was fired, and Mr. Swiegers was hit and killed. Despite the easily identifiable cameras, no arrests have been made.

So Namibia is the one country where amateur astronomers need to go armed. We said at the beginning that the idea of comets being a portent of disaster was just an astrological superstition, but for poor Mr. Swiegers it was the literal truth.

A great cartoon in the paper today



of the Devil inquiring (in Afrikaans) about citizenship or at least temporary residence in the hellish climate now being experienced. [ack to Republikein]

It struck me, though, that the best solution in coping with the heat would be to abandon the ‘North European’ style working day, in favour of a siesta based arrangement. How about if the Namibian working day started at 0500? People would work until a brunch break at about 1000, then carry on until about 1330 when the heat is really beginning to kick in. But by then you will have done the equivalent of a normal working day, and you can go home to sleep it off. The afternoons would be quiet as the grave, under the burning sun, left to ‘mad dogs’ and the informal sector.

Shops would keep to a similar schedule, but if necessary, they could open for an evening session for shoppers from say 1800 to 2000. People could eat dinner after 1900, when things are cooling off, and be in bed by 2100. This is not only healthy, but would give time and opportunity for some romantic interaction with your partner. (Not to mention that you could have had similar opportunity in the afternoon). You are not losing out on anything, seeing that there is **** *** to do in Windhoek at night anyway.

Other advantages – think of the saving in office air conditioners switched off in the afternoon (and in electricity at night from people going to bed early). Consider the benefits to our captains of industry, who are big in import/export to the Far East, seeing that by 0500 in Namibia, Delhi and Beijing are well into their business day. And because America is still slumbering, Internet speeds are amazing.

Of course in winter we could reverse things – get up at about 0900 on dark mornings……

There was a

light plane accident over the namib desert yesterday (in Namibia there seem to be a distressing number of them). The plane made a forced landing near the ghost town of Kolmanskop, near Luderitz.

What was different this time was that the passenger complement consisted of entirely of four lawyers. The lawyers emerged unscathed - the pilot was appreciably injured. A great opportunity missed to answer the question: What happens if you line up four lawyers end to end ??

[pic with acks to Republikein]

According to today’s rag, Namibia’s deputy Minister of Health, Ms. Petrina Haingura

saw a vision in which she was taken up to heaven and was greeted by an angel. The track record of God revealing Himself to politicians is not a happy one, after all, both President Bush and Mr. Blair were convinced that God had told them to invade Iraq. It’s a pity, while God was on the line, that He did not inform BB that there were no weapons of mass destuction, or that (seeing as he is omniscient) what a foul-up the exercise would prove to be. Still, there we have it – several hundred thousand dead as a result of the Godly instruction.

Apparently the message that the Angel had for the Deputy Minister was that all should repent, always a good idea for those practicing corruption, cooking their wives etc. But a bit unoriginal – seeing that the heavenly guest is a health minister, would it not have been more helpful (and more convincing) if the Angel had dictated her a recipe for a cure for HIV/AIDS?

In an earlier vision (the deputy Minister has apparently had several) she was taken up into heaven, where she saw a sleeping leapard. The only connection I can think of here is the legendary spoonerism where the tongue-tied priest announced the subject for his sermon: “The Lord is a shoving leopard…”
No, I think Ministers are more to be entrusted when they have their feet on the ground and their heads firmly connected to the earthly problems in hand.

There was a letter

in the ‘Namib-

ian’ paper

(the one which aroused the ire of the Founding Father, by criticising some fatherly pronouncement, and thus still suffers a ban on government advertising)

from a presumed UK nuclear enthusiast, who congratulated Namibia on ‘opting’ for nuclear power. I don’t see it’s any of his business, and anyway the country has not ‘opted’ for nuclear power (a sloppy headline) – it’s just one of all possible options for future energy needs. Fine. Nuclear power is great, but it does have some limitations, like the inability to power things like cars, trains and planes. Then there is the waste problem. The letter writer’s suggestion to bury the highly radioactive waste where the ore was first mined, is rather bizarre. Anyone ready for a Swakop which glows in the dark, even without the Christmas lights switched on?

Beyond this, there is a worrying tendency of some politicians and writers, who did not quite make it past Std 8 science, to assume that because a country has widespread deposits of (rather low grade) uranium ore - see pic of awesome pit at the Rossing mine - the country can produce heaps and heaps of nuclear energy for itself. This is not necessarily so. (On another level, consider the example of Ghana, which for a hundred years has been about the largest producer of cocoa beans but which has yet to manufacture its own chocolate bar). Namibia actually might be better off selling uranium ore and buying electricity. Because nuclear energy is difficult, much more so than chocolate. First you have to enrich your ore. This is technically and politically complicated. Politically, because any small 3rd world country which tries to start enriching gets the US very twitchy, and tends to get you membership of the Axis of Evil club.

Then you can’t just suck energy out of the material: you have to build reactors, which are not cheap (write down the largest number which you know a name for, and add three noughts). You have to ask the French, British or Russians to build one for you – more neo-colonial dependency. These reactors have a distressing tendency to go on the blink (ask our South African friends). Plus the occasional meltdown. They may not produce greenhouse gases, but they consume huge amounts of water, which Namibia does not have. Usually then, they have to be situated by the sea. The effluent then would kill most of the fish which the country also depends on.

Nuclear energy? Promising idea, but needs more work.