We need Paul

Those who haven’t realised that Spain is going to win Euro 2012 are resorting to all kinds of farm and semi-wild animals to help them predict the outcome of the matches.

Citta, a sagacious Indian elephant in Krakow, Khryak, a beer-loving prognosticating pig in Kiev, and even Fred, the ferret (who is actually an otter) have been hauled into telephathic service by the bookies to forecast winners in this year’s tournament.

And Yvonne, the runaway cow, has already got it spectacularly wrong.

Yvonne the runaway cow predicted German defeat in Euro 2012 opener. Source

Perhaps a fish will get it right?

However, none, not even the most purportedly perspicacious of these hairy or hairless critters actually has even the slightest knowledge of soccer; not one of them is a trustworthy expert of the beautiful game. None of them is Paul, the only  non-prokaryote on this planet who actually knew his stuff.  

And the stats prove it...

Prescient cephalopod

Witness, 21 Jul 2010 

REPUTABLE scientists would likely have distanced themselves from all the recent flippant falderal concerning the apparent psychic powers of Paul the octopus. After all, how could a creature with a brain smaller than that of Paris Hilton (see J. Gardener, The Witness, July 16) foretell the outcome of an inherently unpredictable game?

Scientists are a sceptical bunch and demand strong evidence that the effect they have observed (say, the outcome of an experiment) was not just a statistical fluke, unlikely to reoccur.

By convention, a result is generally accepted only if there is less than one chance in 20 (50 in 1 000) of it not being just a chance outcome.

So how did Paul do? The chance of successfully predicting the outcome of eight football matches in a row (as he did) by simply sucking his tentacles — that is, by a run of pure luck — turns out to be less than four in 1 000 (p = 0,00391, in scientific parlance). The cephalopod does, therefore, seem to be significantly prescient or the Word Cup was rigged and he was in on it.

CRAIG MORRIS

Pelham, Pietermaritzburg

 ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A monument to the magnificent Paul, at Sea Life Aquarium, Germany

 

RIP Paul

Kindness rocks

A cappuccino of kindness and some Smarties to go, please...

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around” (Leo Buscaglia)

I so often forget to be kind. Simple acts of kindness can warm one’s heart, and give you a new spring of hope in your step. The following three acts of kindness have remained with me.

The first deed of kindness involved cappuccino sachets, my beloved, Anita (who is hooked on them) and a total stranger. Anita once went into a supermarket in another town to buy bread (and emergency Smarties for me) and ended up in the checkout queue behind a lady whose trolley was well stocked with boxes of Nestlé cappuccino sachets. The lady told Anita that they were on sale that day, but there unfortunately happened to be only one box remaining for her. After the lady paid for her groceries, she dropped a box in Anita’s trolley, saying “Here’s an early Christmas present for you.”

source

The second story of deeply touching kindness has got nothing to do with accountants, but involves somebody I’ve known since birth – my older brother. During a stay in hospital recovering from an injury that left the lower half of my body paralysed, I was permitted to leave the hospital for the first time for a weekend back home. As our cottage on the farm was not wheelchair accessible, I travelled down, lying comfortably in the back of my brother’s bakkie (pickup), to his house on the coast. Getting out into the wheelchair on arrival was not easy, and another chap came to assist my brother to lift me out. “Eish!, he is heavy”, warned the assistant. Holding me firmly, my brother replied “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

And the third little story involves Smarties, and a chap called Scott in Cape Town whom I have yet to meet, but with whom I have had many interesting (short) conversations via socal media. Scott, a journalist, intrepid father, and all round astute fellow, had gleaned two things about me from our interactions: (1) that I take grass seriously, and (2) that I take Smarties even more seriously, being the reigning Smartie-eating champion of the SA Navy. Well, one day, I received a parcel from an unknown sender, which, when shaken, rattled suspiciously. Now I do know how to deal properly with suspicious packages, having once spent 7 hours in the tiny Port Elizabeth airport. I spotted a dodgy looking package lying there and reported it to the security lady. She picked it up, gave it a good shake, and then put it under the check-in counter. The rattle of my parcel did, however, sound pleasingly familiar, so I incautiously ripped it open. Inside was a whole packet filled with special 75^th Smarties Anniversary retro hexagon-shaped boxes, imported especially all the way from the UK, the birthplace of the Smarties, by Scott in Cape Town.

Kind-flavoured Smarties taste the very best 

Today I call you Tree

Today I call you Tree

Today I call you Tree

I  linger

languorously

lazily

‘neath your outstretched shady limbs

Today I call you Tree

I listen

joyfully

wondrously

to your feathery, living song

Today I call you Tree

I harvest

bounteously

gratefully

your ripened homegrown gifts

Today I call you wood

this day

the Tree

died

in me

Permission to groan

It's holiday, so time for some verbosity - Let these Tom Swifties verbease you into the long weekend. Only one of them is about grass, and it's not a very good one.

“You are completely missing my point” said Tom bluntly.

“My 18-wheeler was not blocking the entrance to the fuelstation” replied Tom truculently.

“I suppose it’s time to get out the mower again” sighed Tom forlornly.

“It is my garden, and my tree, and I’ll pee wherever I feel” retorted Tom doggedly.

“Making pancakes is like so easy” said Tom flippantly.

“I suppose I’ve have to spend another week in hospital” sighed Tom patiently.

“At last I’ve got rid of all the pesky electricity out of my new coat” rejoiced Tom exstatically.

“That’s the last time I’m feeding the crocodile” said Tom off-handedly.

“Don’t be silly. Bungee cords never break!” snapped Tom.

 Any more?

The Bolas spider

Gaucho cowboy spiders in our grassland

A particular type of lasso, known as Bolas (or boleadoras, balls) has been used since Pre-Columbian times to capture wild animals, and is still used nowadays by Gauchos, or South American cowboys, to lasso cattle. It comprises three or more heavy balls at the end of three joined cords that is spun above the head and then thrown to entangle itself around an animal's legs to bring it down.

Ivory and silver Gaucho bolas

There is a grassland-dwelling spider that does the same thing... As David Attenborough breathlessly explains, the bolas spider hangs from a line of silk, emitting a pheromone tailored to attract a particular moth of its choice, then snares its prey with its spinning web-made bolas.   

John Roff, who discovered a new species of bolas spider in the grassland area of our local botanical gardens (Pietermaritzburg, SA), describes its deft action:  

"The spiders first constructs a few silk lines, known as trapeze-lines, from which they hang using their hind legs. A short silk thread, the bolas-line, is then constructed, with from one to several sticky globules (bolas) fixed to the free end. The bola consists of a large globule of gluey mass containing a mass of fibres . The bolas-line is rotated (with a second pair of legs), catching prey, usually moths in flight."

Here is the local bolas spider in action (video thanks to Charlene Russell, WESSA)

 

Light, rock, water and grass

This blogpost was originally intended to be a cogent and concise exposition on the importance of montane caespitose (tufted) perennial grassland in the hydrological balance of the mountain catchments of South Africa. It ended up as some photos and the briefest of poems ... with some views of our incomparable Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) grassslands.
 

 

Grass

mediates

Light, Water and Soil

holds

the Earth

Just saying...

Of all the everyday plants of the earth, grass is the least pretentious and the most important to mankind. It clothes the earth in an unmistakable way. Directly or indirectly it provides the bulk of man's food, his meat, his bread, every scrap of his cereal diet. Without grass we would all starve, we and all our animals. And what a dismal place this world would be! 

Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964