Talent from wherever
WHEN the ship is leaking, you plug the holes. Danny Jordaan, the president of the SA Football Association, has been made metro mayor down in Nelson Mandela Bay – Port Elizabeth.
Is this a trend? My scouts tell me it is. Heyneke Meyer is being considered as the next national commissioner of police, much riding on the way the Boks perform in the Rugby World Cup.
Haroon Lorgat, of Cricket South Africa, is likely to become the next governor of the Reserve Bank.
A government task team is currently scouring the world of sport for suitable figures in administration who would be candidates for government and parastatal positions – boxing, wrestling, karate, table tennis, hockey, baseball, even jukskei and bok-bok. No sports code is being ignored.
This is the future. Inspan administrative talent wherever it is to be found.
But, sigh! It’s a two-way street. The entire board of Eskom are being seconded to the Sharks.
Quiet Zone
TAKE me to the Quiet Zone. It’s a place in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, in the US, that has no cellphones, radios, TV, microwaves, social media, PlayStations, sound systems – none of today’s disruptive clutter.
A BBC programme describes how, approaching the Quiet Zone, the car radio fades to static, the signal disappears from the mobile phone.
The Quiet Zone is 34 000km2 in extent. It is home to the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope, which covers 9.3 hectares and is taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The GBT telescope listens to radio signals from outer space. And because of the mind-boggling distances involved, some of these were apparently transmitted milliseconds after the Big Bang.
Shhhh! And that’s why no electrical disturbance is allowed in this vast area. The 200-odd people who work there live as their great-grandparents would have. If they want to listen to music it’s on old-style LPs – none of this downloaded digital stuff.
Take me to the Quiet Zone. There I just can’t watch the Sharks every weekend.
Spell it out
THE spellcheck on our computers is infallible, not so? Nothing to worry about these days.
Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong.