Author Archives: alistair

Yearbook smiles related to lower divorce rate

The Economist has a very interesting article reporting experiments that show a relationship between smiling in a yearbook photo and divorce later in life.

The Experiment

The experimenters got hold of about 700 yearbook photos
The smiles in the photos were then rated
Smile ratings were then statistically compared with divorce in later life

The Results

Never divorced subjects had average smile ratings of 5.9
Divorced subjects had average smile ratings of 5.2 (a statistically significant difference)
Those who were least smiling were three times more likely to be divorced than those who were most smiling

It seems that statistically significant information can be gleaned from a thin “slice” of information. Smiles really do indicate personality.

The Lion King was a rip-off

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Lion King vs Kimba

Cracked.com has an article exposing “6 famous characters you didn’t know were shameless rip-offs”. One that surprised me was The Lion King which is pretty obviously a rip off from a Japanese cartoon called Kimba the White Lion.

They copied an incredible amount from the original Kimba cartoon. Several characters including the shaman ape, the hornbill advisor, the comedic hyenas, the evil uncle (it was an aunt in Kimba) were obvious copies.

Many of the scenes are also pretty obvious copies from Kimba. Disney, however, claims that all this is a coincidence. What a load…

Not convinced? Check out the examples below or take a look at this more detailed page.

Lion King vs Kimba

As the guys from Cracked say:

“Here’s a little experiment. Turn the tables, and try to create a cartoon series about a high-pitch-voiced mouse called “Mikey” and his friend “Ronald Duck.” Start selling merchandise for these characters, and see how long it takes you to hear from Disney’s lawyers.”

Free Willy was never really free

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An Orca in the wild It seems romantic to release captive animals, but I often wonder how long they last in the wild. Life for wild animals is tough enough – animals released from captivity must really struggle.

It seems that was the case with Willy (aka Keiko) the star of the movie Free Willy. New Scientist outlines the story in this article.

Summary:

The whale’s name was Keiko
He was captured in Icelandic waters in 1979 at about 2 years old
He then spent 10 years alone in a tank in Mexico
After the 1993 public pressure mounted to free Keiko and in 2000 he was transferred back to Iceland
He lived in a pen and was trained to swim out to sea with his trainers
He briefly interacted with wild orcas but stayed away from them in general
After his initial release he turned up in his pen 10 days later with an empty stomach (they tested)
He eventually migrated to Norway but started seeking out humans and soon became overwhelmed by the attention he generated
He was taken back to his pen in Iceland where he lived out his days. Even though the pen was open to the ocean he never left the bay again until his death in 2003

No chocolate in a Chomp

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chomp

There is no chocolate in a Cadburys Chomp.

Check for yourself. According to the wrapper a Chomp is: “Delicious Wafer Biscuit and Caramel covered in a Chocolate Flavoured Coating”.

A little research revealed that Chomps are coated in a substance known as compound chocolate. Compound chocolate is basically a cheaper and easier alternative to the real deal.

In fact, a little more Googling reveals that Chomps are really bottle of the barrel stuff. This article from “The Chocolate Blog” made me feel cheap for liking Chomps…

Tell people to vote against the ANC

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It seems to be established that you shouldn’t tell people who to vote for.

Bull.

You should vote DA or COPE.

There. I said it… Whatever you do, vote against this guy and his party.

malema-anc

It’s true that you shouldn’t intimidate or force people to vote your way. But, in my opinion, you should try to persuade them to vote the right way. That’s democracy.

It’s their vote, but your responsibility to get them to use it wisely!

The ANC are a corrupt, inept and dangerous in government. However, because of our country’s history the ANC are assured of an election victory again.

There are several reasons why you should still vote against the ANC:

To stop them from getting a 66% majority! That would allow them to change our constitution – something they have already threatened to do
To make your voice heard against the corrupt and inept government of the ANC. Votes against the ANC won’t be ignored forever
In some towns and provinces the opposition has a very good change of winning control from useless ANC local or provincial government

As for which opposition party to vote for, choose one that has policies you agree with. Surely you can’t agree with the ANC and their policies? They are nowhere near the party they once were.

I have strong feelings on who you should vote for – suffice it to say that if you vote DA or COPE you are doing your country a favor.

Make sure that you get out there and vote accordingly. And tell other people to do the same.

Our brains appear to solve problems unconsciously

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One day, back when I was a schoolboy, I got stuck with a particularly tricky programming problem. After unsuccessfully puzzling over the problem I decided to take a break and went for a walk with my family.

About an hour later, while chatting about something else entirely, I was suddenly struck by the solution – it just popped into my head. It was an excellent example of the subconscious mind ticking away at a problem.

Since then I have often wondered at how solutions seem to just pop into my mind. When trying to solve a tricky problem or brain-teaser the solution suddenly appears – but from where?

Sometimes I can follow my conscious thought process systematically arriving at a solution – but often it just pops into my consciousness.

The Economist has this fascinating article about an experiment illustrating that the subconscious mind is responsible for at least some problem solving.

Experiment:
Experimental subjects were faced with a brain-teaser had their brains scanned while they attempted to solve the problem.

Results:
Several seconds (up to eight) before a subject had a eureka moment his/her brain waves altered significantly.

Interpretation:
This seems to show that the test subjects had subconsciously solved the problem several seconds before they consciously realized that they had the solution.

We are hopelessly ignorant of the workings of human consciousness. I truly hope that during my lifetime experiments such as this one will reveal this fascinating miracle.

Julius Malema – threatening UCT

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Julius Malema is seriously frightening. The things he says, and the positive attention he gets for saying them make me sad about South Africa.

Yesterday he was at my old university, UCT, threatening to remove the management of the university once the ANC comes into power.

I get angry when I read some of the things this fool says. I get sad when I see how many people in our country agree with his statements…

Quotes from his speech at UCT yesterday:

“Forces that are opposed to our revolution are still here. We must change the management of this university and also the lecturers.”
“Don’t provoke us, it is us (ANC) who brought the nonsensical apartheid regime down. No opposition (party) will ever defeat the ANC. We want them all to combine so that we can defeat them”

Julius Malema: 100% for Zuma, 20% for woodwork

Persistence hunting – humans running antelope to death

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Kalahari bushman after a successful persistence hunt of a male kudu A while ago I watched a David Attenborough documentary that showed a bushman man running a Kudu to death. It was pretty amazing stuff – by persistently chasing the kudu through the heat of the day he was able to exhaust it to the point of collapse.

(Watch that part of the documentary on YouTube – 7 minutes)

I was very impressed (and sorry for the Kudu) but assumed that this was highly unusual.

It turns out that in ancient history persistence hunting (as it is known) was actually very common. In fact some anthropologists believe humans hunted in this way before they had tools such as spears and bows.

Our bodies are so well adapted to endurance running (especially in hot conditions where prey easily overheat) that these anthropologists believe persistence hunting was an evolutionary force in humans. It seems we are specifically evolved to be able to run a large antelope into heat exhaustion.

Some examples (many more in the other articles):

Running on two legs is slower in a sprint, but more efficient over long distances
Humans have toes that are far shorter than all other primates. This has been shown to be a big advantage – but only when running over distance
Hairless bodies and our all over sweating allows running in the heat. Antelope aren’t nearly as efficient at getting rid of heat – they must stop to pant

Interesting stuff. Here is another short article on the subject.

I recommend Loot.co.za for online book purchases

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I regularly buy books online. It’s much cheaper and often easier than buying books in stores. The best site for buying books online in South Africa is Loot.co.za. Definitely better than Kalahari.net.

I still browse book stores all the time. This is my process:

Find interesting books in a store. Take a photo with my phone to remind myself later
Look up all interesting books on Amazon to read reviews
If I want a book add it to a wishlist on Loot.co.za
When I have a few books on the wishlist I put through an an order

This process helps to ensure that I get great books. Using Loot ensures that I get EXCELLENT prices. I highly recommend these guys – they run an excellent operation.

Price
Until recently I would always shop around the find the cheapest prices before buying books. I soon realised that was a waste of time – Loot is always the cheapest. Every single time.

Take my latest book order. I saved R116 (about 20%) by ordering through Loot.co.za!

Item	Kalahari	Loot
Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)	R173	R113
A History of South Africa (Leonard Thompson)	R153	R140
The pig that wants to be eaten (Julian Baggini)	R105	R93
Tales of the Unexpected (Roald Dahl)	R105	R93
Overnight delivery*	Free	R8
TOTAL	R563	R447

Delivery
Loot has several delivery options and they stack up well against Kalahari. On my last order overnight delivery to me costed R8! Post office delivery is normally free.

I’ve had no problems with deliveries from Loot.co.za

Disclosure
I highly recommend using Loot.co.za. In the process of writing this blog post I found that I can get vouchers for referring Loot. I thought it only reasonable to disclose that if you click the Loot.co.za links in this post (and make an order) then I’ll get a R8 voucher… Trust me, that’s not why I wrote the post.

National Geographic visions of the Earth

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Each edition of National Geographic Magazine has a section called Visions of the Earth – basically a collection of great photos from around the world.

I was looking over some of the older ones and was blown away by some of them. Here are a handful of the best.

This one was taken with the lens half submerged. If it wasn’t from National Geographic I wouldn’t believe it was real. I’m still skeptical…
National Geographic picture of a fisherman

This is one of the best photos I’ve seen. I had to read the explanation to understand what was going on. It’s taken near sunset in the deserts of South Africa. There is a massive sand dune rising in the sunlight in the background.
dunes

Alligator claw. Awesome.

There are many other excellent pictures, but I restricted this post to three that I really liked.