Idler, Friday, May 31, 2019

The perils of sat-nav travel A FELLOW driving to Rome from Newcastle, in the North of England, ended up in a German village called Rom after blindly following his car's sat-nav system. Luigi Rimonti, 81, had done the journey before but followed these new directions which suggested a far shorter route, according to Sky News. But instead of arriving in the bustling Italian capital, where he hoped to see the Pope, he pulled into a sleepy village of 67 people about an hour east of Cologne. That's a bit like setting your sat-nav for Nice and fetching up in Nkandla. But his problems didn't end there. When he stopped to puzzle at his surroundings - and the lack of a Colosseum - Rimonti forgot the handbrake and his Jaguar knocked over a "Rom" street sign. He tried to stop the car as it rolled back but got caught in the open door and fell over. He went to hospital but was not seriously injured. He waited for his car to be repaired and then set off again for the Eternal City. We're not told if he stuck to sat-nav. Who knows, he might even fetch up in Nkandla, where they don't have a Colosseum but they do have a Firepool. Daylight saving   QUOTE of the week - US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Daylight Savings Time: "If we change our times with the sole intent of increasing the amount of daylight we receive, that's an extra hour of sunshine that will warm the planet. That's one extra hour per day of extra heat warming our already unstable planet. We need to repeal Daylight Savings Time as a primary measure to decrease the rate of climate change. Less hours of sunshine equals less heat hitting Earth's surface. We're running out of time!" Cortez (Democrat) represents New York's 14th congressional district and is paid about $170 000 a year (R2.5m) plus benefits and a pension for life. Expertise doesn't come cheap.     Now twice? CAN the Sharks make it twice in a row in a home fixture tomorrow? Has the jinx been expunged? It's all or nothing. The damsels of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties are poised with their knicker elastic for the traditional fashioning of catapults for the celebratory feu de joie in which the streetlights are shot out. 'Erewego, 'erewego,' erewego!     iSimangaliso   HERE'S a spot of good news for environmentalists. iSimangaliso Wetland Park - a World Heritage Site - is to be hugely expanded. The expansion is one of 20 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) gazetted last week,

 

iSimangaliso borders a Mozambique MPA, forming Africa's largest transfrontier MPA. With an additional 970 366.57ha of ocean now falling under iSimangaliso, its combined terrestrial and marine area is some 1 328 900ha. The recent Sky News Deep Ocean Live project – TV broadcast from submersibles in the Seychelles -showed convincingly that MPAs restore the ecological balance on which we all ultimately depend. Yes, good news for environmentalists – also for two endangered turtle species, 1 200 fish species, 100 warm water coral types and whales, dolphins and sharks.     Tailpiece THE farmer is milking a cow. He's got a good rhythm going. A bug flies into the shed and starts circling. Then it suddenly disappears into the cow's ear. Next thing it squirts into the milk bucket, In one ear and out de udder.   Last word I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. JD Salinger