DINNER PARTY INTEL...

The topics you have to be able to discuss this week

1. Hard tackle

Beer has long hitched its wagon to sport, but the hard stuff has stayed quietly on the touchline. Now one of the nation’s iconic “brannas” brands has joined the rugby scrum.

Klipdrift has announced its sponsorship of the SA leg of the rugby Sevens world series. The matches will be played at Cape Town Stadium from September 9 to 11, when it is assumed that spectators will be let in, and a lot of that brown fizzy drink consumed. Klippies and Coke seem to go together like rucks and mauls.

2. Snow dune

The Sahara is one of the hottest places on earth (Cape Town notwithstanding), but it can also be one of the coldest. Last month snow fell on the desert.

Prof Jasper Knight of Wits University says it’s unusual but not unprecedented. Snow needs cold temperatures and moist air and though the Sahara can reach 50ºC it can also drop to -15ºC, as it did in 2005.

Saharan snowfall historically may be more common than we think, says the prof. “It would be interesting to use anthropological evidence and oral histories to explore this possibility.”

3. Loaded for boar

The people of the San Francisco Bay area (among the most liberal in the US) have a tolerant attitude towards the area’s wildlife, from rattlesnakes (“who deserve respect”) to coyotes. Now they are drawing the line (or a bead) on feral pigs.

The pigs tear up lawns, rip through golf course fairways and — horror of horrors — disturb the harvests in Napa Valley vineyards. The state legislature is expected to pass a bill that will make it easier for hunters to kill them. “They are a pest,” said a member of the

California

Fish & Game Commission who helped write the bill.