Home sweet
seastead
home
THERE seem to be various layers of unreality in this "seasteading" story of the couple who set up home in a tiny floating cabin on top of a spar, 14 nautical miles off the Thai island of Phuket.
Thailand has taken umbrage at this violation of its territorial sovereignty and sent in the navy to tow the cabin ashore. The couple – American Chad Elwartowski and his unnamed Thai girlfriend – were not home at the time, which is just as well because the Thai authorities are threatening the death penalty, or life imprisonment, for this heinous offence.
It seems there's an embryonic seasteading movement, which wants to create floating cities worldwide as a response to global warming and rising sea levels. There's even a Seasteading Institute that's apparently having discussions with the UN, according to Reuters.
Is any of this real?
And now it turns out that Chad Elwartowski is a Bitcoin dealer. Bitcoin is the crypto-currency that exists in people's computers and is an Eldorado/a mirage, depending on your point of view.
As I say, layer upon layer of unreality. Perhaps a seastead cabin off Thailand is the appropriate HQ for a Bitcoin dealer. Seastead mortgages available in Bitcoin.
It's a strange, strange world that's getting stranger.
Mystery
DISASTER in the Free State? A message comes this way from one Sonette Diedericks to Parys Nuus & Inligting (Parys News & Information).
"Weet iemand iets van die kerk wat afgebrand het?" (Does anyone know anything about the church that burned down?)
Ah yes, Parys, the Paris of the Free State.
Hunch
ROB Nicolai, Howick's resident theoretical physicist, says the authorities in Paris have questioned all personnel on site at Notre Dame Cathedral to try to discover what caused the fire.
Quasimodo said: "I never saw anything suspicious but I have a hunch."
Lunch
WHICH recalls the riddle: What's greasy and flaps about church steeples?
The lunchpack of Notre Dame.
Happy hippo
AN IMAGE comes this way of this week's floods in Durban. It shows vehicles making their way down a flooded road, headlights on, the water very high.
Ahead of them in the water is a hippo.
Fact or photoshop? Probably the latter but fiction so easily becomes fact these days.
Bee patient
A YOUNG woman went to Fooyin University Hospital in Taiwan, complaining of severe pain in one eye. Doctors examined her and removed – live – four tiny bees that were feeding off the moisture in her tear ducts.
The young lady was discharged, clear-sighted. The bees were sent to a research institute for further study, according to Huffington Post.
It seems the sweat bees of Taiwan live off the moisture in the eyes of humans and animals. They very seldom sting. We're not told about the Taiwanese wasps and hornets.
Tailpiece
A STREAKER runs through a golf club, a towel over his face. He runs past three women.
"At least that's not my husband," says one.
"No, it's not," says the second woman.
"He's not even a member," says the third.
Last word
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. - GK Chesterton
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