Check out these pics from Hanoi, Vietnam. The guys over there have just gone crazy with cabling – no waiting for bureaucracy. Need a cable from A to B? No worries, we’ll just run it along next to all the others.

I like this kind of chaos, and it must be a pleasure to be able to “just get things done”. It’s a bit how I imagine London or New York back when things were crazy and people could just innovate and get things done. We live in such a controlled world these days…

Only problem is that this is not sustainable – imagine trying to fix a problem in one of the cables in that mess!

I often wonder why people like some of the music I dislike – or why I like the music that I do.  Turns out that some of it might just be a matter of liking what you are used to.  I read about a study in which the guys were trying to show that people like what they know – the ‘familiarity effect’.  They took a batch of rats and raised half listening to Schoenberg, the other half listening to Mozart.  Later, they put the adult rats into a cage in which they could choose the music playing by moving to a certain side of the cage.  Guess which music they preferred…

The familiarity effect has also been shown to be present in humans.  So maybe if I listened to enough hip-hop then I could actually learn to like it.

What a beauty! I had never even heard of this species of cat until recently – the variety of nature never ceases to amaze. Clouded leopards have been in the news recently because some scientists have (somewhat controversially) claimed to have found a new species in Borneo.

Where would you come out if you were to dig a hole through the earth from Cape Town? Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific!

This site has a program which allows you to check out the opposite side of the world from any location. What’s pretty interesting is that almost all land on earth is opposite ocean (except at the poles obviously). Africa and Europe are opposite the Pacific Ocean; North America and most of South America are opposite the Indian Ocean.

I wonder if there is more too that…

When Jules and I were in Kleinmond we saw a sign saying that there were some orchids growing in the fynbos. We wondered what makes an orchid an orchid. So here it is…

Orchids are the most diverse family of flowering plants – 25,000 species!

What makes an orchid an orchid?

• They have both the male and female reproductive structures fused into a single structure called a “column”.
• Every orchid bloom has 3 sepals (the leaves just around the flower) and 3 petals.
• They also (usually) have a highly modified petal called a lip, or labellum – a landing pad for bugs.

Other interesting facts:

• Vanilla is actually an orchid! It is the only orchid widely grown for non-beauty reasons.
• The largest orchid can grow to more than 20m long.
• The name “orchid” comes from the Greek root orkhis, meaning “testicle”.
• In their natural environment, each orchid species is dependent upon a specific type of insect to carry out its pollination.