Plastic, plastic everywhere …
NOW it's official. Micro-plastics have contaminated every part of the world's oceans, including the remote Southern Ocean. They are affecting not just the whales, the penguins and other marine life, they've entered the food chain and are slowly killing off the human race.
When you look at what the human race gets up to, some might say that's no bad thing, but let's get real – this is no time for abstract philosophy. We have to do something about it. Three generations down the line the position will be critical, according to Sky News, which is itself campaigning against plastics pollution.
The information comes from seawater samples collected on the 45 000-mile Volvo Ocean Race. Micro-plastics are everywhere.
Dr Luiza Mirpuri, medical adviser to a Portuguese foundation that is also campaigning against plastic in the oceans, describes the findings as "catastrophic". Plastic, she says, is "slowly killing the human race."
Fortunately, the remedy is pretty straightforward. Just stop using plastics for food wrappings, containers, straws and bottles – revert to paper, cardboard and glass, the way we did it right up until relatively recently.
Recycling of plastic, and deposits on plastic bottles, can be only a partial solution. Go back to paper/cardboard wrappings and you kill the problem stone dead.
Let's face it, we have a throwaway culture worldwide. But paper bags and straws biodegrade fast as they are washed down our drains into our rivers and towards the sea. Any glass bottles that find their way into the sea grind down into granules that become part of the seasand.
The switch would be inconvenient, of course. An oil by-product would become redundant. But the alternative technology is there and merely needs to be boosted.
Does humankind have it in its genes to rescue itself?
Mugshot
AT FIRST glance this seemed like a mugshot of one of the habitues of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties. But it turns out it's an English bulldog called Zsa Zsa that has won this year's World's Ugliest Dog contest.
It's the underbite, the excessively long tongue and the slobbering that suggested the Street Shelter late at night.
The dog's owner, Megan Brainard, of Anoka, Minnesota, in the US, gets a prize of $1 500 (R20 350) from the contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair at Petulma, near San Franciso. The annual event is in aid of the adoption of dogs that have lost their homes.
Tattoos
THERE'S been the dickens of a row over England footballer Raheem Sterling having an M16 assault rifle tattooed on his leg. Now an American with a handgun tattooed on his forehead has been arrested.
But the arrest was not because of the tattoo. Michael Vines, 24, is prohibited from carrying a firearm, because he has a rap sheet that includes multiple narcotics convictions, according to Huffington Post.
When he crashed his car into an electricity pole the other night, at Greenville, South Carolina, in the US, firefighters saw him toss a handgun into the grass. It turned out to be a fully loaded Smith & Wesson .38.
Vines seems a charming character. It's not actually illegal to have a gun tattooed on your forehead (or on your leg if you're a footballer) but it's surely so offensive it ought to be.
High flier
THE English county of Derbyshire has launched its own space programme. Last week the pupils of St Anselm's Preparatory School launched into the stratosphere a homemade pudding tart known as a "bakewell".
But they didn't use a rocket. They used a high altitude balloon with tracking devices attached, according to Sky News. Its position can be tracked on a computer and it has been traced to a position high over Lincolnshire, way out of sight.
The school science project hopes it will reach an altitude of 350km.
Nobody knows whether the balloon will eventually return to earth, nor if so where. But if it should land somewhere – yum yum! - the tart is likely to need defrosting. It's currently at a temperature of minus 46 degrees centigrade.
Tailpiece
THIS fellow is in a bookstore. He asks a woman behind the counter: "Do you keep stationery?"
"No, usually I wriggle a bit."
Last word
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
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