The Opinion Pieces are an eclectic bunch on current affairs & history often with a human interest aspect. The Movie/DVDs reviews are mainly on documentaries with a smattering of movie reviews.
For those who did not have the benefit of a classical education, Samuel Coleridge wrote the lyric, The Rimes of the Ancient Mariner, in 1797-8. It is about a sailing ship on a long sea voyage which finds itself in a terrible storm but gets to better weather by following an albatross. For whatever reason, the mariner shoots the albatross which leads to bad luck for the ship. The ship’s company are pissed off with him and hang the albatross around his neck. He is the only eventual survivor of the series of calamities that befall the ship and its crew. For SMAC’s take on the relevance of this to our world today, read on
In his second term, the oldest elected president has already issued a bewildering array of executive orders that are illegal, borderline illegal or controversial and has otherwise conducted himself in an unprecedented, unconstitutional and unbecoming manner. He has taken aim at all the arms of the federal government system, and is tearing them up one by one, not because they are immoral, but because they stand in the way of his and his rich buddies’ feral brand of capitalism.
Trump’s second term will go down in history as one of the most chaotic governments the world has ever seen short of a bloody revolution. He has declared (economic) war on every country in the world and aims to destroy or bend to his will all federal institutions, universities, law firms and journalists, in fact, anyone or any organisation who has the temerity to call him out. But while this is going on he is busy with the steal.
Trump is not particularly talented, but he has no shame and his biggest strength has always been his ability to monetise his name. Winning the presidency for the first time was a match made in heaven. It fed his ego while it fed his wallet in a variety of indirect ways such as people or delegations who wished to meet with him stayed at his hotel. Directly, he started pushing all manner of merch such as a Bible, hypocritically endorsed by himself. If Trump could think that war heroes like John McCain were losers for being captured, he must privately think that Jesus was the biggest loser in history for allowing himself to be crucified.
But his first term was just his Apprenticeship until he was fired by the Electorate. Luckily for him, the second time around he was not facing a sentient Zimmer frame, but a wonky and not particularly sentient Zimmer frame. This time he found himself much better prepared. Project 2025 had compiled a 920-page document on how he could wield virtually dictatorial power via executive orders. Apart from continuing his trivial pursuit of merch, the world presented some unique opportunities, namely the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. While cognizant of the potential of a much-wanted Nobel Peace Prize, he sided with Putin as he eyed real estate development opportunities for himself while pressurising Zelensky to allow the USA to exploit their rare earth minerals. A 3-in-1 win if he could pull it off.
Next up, the Israeli bombing of Gaza into an uninhabitable pile of rubble tweeked his inner real estate reptilian brain. He saw that the Israelis preferred the Gazans to be gone and, since it was by then an unliveable pile of rubble, he proposed that Gaza be redeveloped into a Middle Eastern Rivera obviously with him and his buddies having first dabs. Both projects have yielded nothing yet except a lightly pencilled in deal with Ukraine.
Schmoozing with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi recently, he accepted a $500 m jet for his foundation when he leaves office and all manner of real estate development deals for Trump Inc.
But he hadn’t forgotten his merch. In a 2019 tweet, Trump thought that Bitcoin and the like were Kryptonite and could “facilitate unlawful behaviour, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” But his stance changed dramatically during his re-election campaign and he started championing it. He was preparing the ground for his ultimate merch, the $TRUMP meme coin. Although crypto currencies are merely computer algorithms, meme coins are another story and have no substance or utility whatsoever which probably resonated with Him. He might have been a late convert but he literally hit gold when he launched $TRUMP on 17 January, 3 days before his inauguration. He issued 200 million coins via the Solana blockchain and held back 800 million. The price soon rose to a peak of $77 but is now languishing at around $13 so many people must have burnt their fingers. This happens quite a lot with Trump investors as six bankruptcies will testify to. Nevertheless, speculators continue to trade at the rate of 20-50 million trades per day and Trump gets a cut of the transaction fees as well. On 14 February, Fortune magazine noted that while ‘investors’ lost about $2 bn, Trump made an estimated $350 m from the initial sales and, together with his partners, made a further $100 m in fees.
My brother found a series of six historic postcards all written on by the same person. This fact is deduced from the fact that all the cards bear the same handwriting. This conclusion is substantiated by the fact that all of the cards form part of the same ‘framed’ series of postcards. As none of them were posted he reckons that it was a visitor who bought them instead of taking photos as few people owned cameras in those days. Instead, they added notes to serve as an aide memoir. It is interesting to see how that person viewed PE at the time.
Main picture: View across Market Square towards Whites Road
Frederick Fitzsimons might have been at the apex of his profession as a herpetologist with worldwide recognition but Johannes Molikoe, a mere snake handler, had even greater recognition. Whereas a trickle of visitors would visit FitzSimons, a flood of people demanded to attend a show with Johannes Molikoe as the star of the show
Main picture: Amongst those enthralled by Johannes’ show in 1947 was the Royal Family. Frederick William FitzSimons is on the right
I was amazed the other day when I found out that my brother, Dean, actually at least half listens to me even when his eyes glaze over if I get too scientific. He had been watching a program on an attempt to find the remains of Amelia Earhart and/or her plane. It seems as though everyone had searched in the wrong place because the International Dateline had thrown them out.
This triggered a memory from more than 20 years before in Dean’s synapses when I had explained how one of our SA developed Satcom antennas had failed on the other side of the world – San Diego to be exact. I was working for Omnipless at the time, a highly successful SA company that had developed a range of products for use with the Inmarsat satellites which provided global telephony anywhere in the world via satellite. The products covered the full range of portable ground-based systems, through vehicle mounted systems to both small and large maritime systems and small and large aircraft systems. His memory was vague (I forgive him) and he thought our failure also had to do with the International Dateline. He was a bit confused as it had nothing to do with the dateline but it indeed had something to do with being on the other side of the world.
F77 antennas installed on a large ship
The subject of this blog is the mysterious failure of one of Omnipless’s latest maritime products at the time, the F77 large shipborne antenna. The company was still smarting from the abject failure of their Maritime-B development where we had completely underestimated the vibration levels experienced by antennas even in huge ships. The follow-up F77 was bullet proof, mechanically at least. I had made sure of that. I had located every single vibration test spectrum available from institutions like the US Department of Defence through to private company specs from the likes of Germanischer-Lloyds and had tested it against them. If it passed, I would incrementally raise the levels while keeping the frequency content of the spectrum the same until some failure occurred. That aspect would then be strengthened. Rinse and repeat until I obviously reached ridiculous levels.
Typical fatigue failure of radome stabilising tab after serious vibration. This was replaced with a stainless steel version which does not fatigue.
We were therefore non-plussed when we were informed that an antenna refused to work correctly in San Diego. At least the problem was not mechanical and the mechanical design team could breathe a communal sigh of relief. We were not the whipping boys this time. Numerous telephone calls and emails later, no reason could be found. The installation and commissioning were all perfect. Johan Gericke, an excellent electronics engineer and good allrounder, was sent to investigate. The ship was located near the naval docks. This was Simonstown x100 with every manner of naval vessel spewing out gobs of radiation in the normal wasteful American way. Johan first had to eliminate electromagnetic interference as a cause which must have been a mission itself.
F77 mounted on a vibrator about to have the bejesus shaken out of it.
Eventually the culprit was located. It was in the software, the stuff that makes the modern world go round. To be precise, it was a rookie mistake in one line of code, in fact, one function. But why had we never experienced the fault before given that we had already supplied many of these antennas?
The reason was prosaic. Up to that date, our main clients were European and their clients plied their trade between Europe and Asia. This should give the game away to the scientifically astute. Our antennas had only ever operated between the longitudes of 90°E (+90°) and 90°W (-90°). In other words, trigonometrically, the F77 had only ever operated in the 1st and 4th quadrants, but the longitude of San Diego at 117°W (-117° or +243°) is in the 3rd quadrant.
In calculating various angles, the programmer used the inverse tangent function, ATAN(X) which does not distinguish between the 1st and 3rd quadrants (or, in fact, the 2nd and 4th quadrants). However, he should have used the function ATAN2(Y,X) which does. A similar situation exists for the inverse sines and cosines, except in different quadrants.
Eg: ATAN(1) = 45° which is the same as ATAN2(1,1) = 45°
While ATAN2(-1,-1) = 225°
Given the known position of the satellite and the GPS position of the antenna, the software has to perform a series of trigonometric calculations to instruct the antenna where to point which it obviously got hopelessly wrong on the other side of the world.
This was a cautionary tale. The embarrassed software designer was a friend who I knew as an extremely competent and solid engineer yet he fell into the trap. I too had fallen into the trap early in my career when I was involved in designing seeker heads for missiles and had to simulate their performance. Luckily, the mistake was at computer simulation level and was soon uncovered by myself without having to make any embarrassing admissions.
During my youth, there was a zoo / animal sanctuary at Rocklands known as Wide Horizon on the road to Uitenhage. The owner / zookeeper was an iconoclast, with the pertinent sobriquet of Cowboy Mills. Being very young at the time, I recall very little of the place other that the entrance with a billboard advertising the delights inside. Whether we actually went inside, I cannot recall.
This is a blog written by my brother about an event that occurred almost 60 years ago. Despite living in the same house and in fact sharing the same bedroom, I was only informed of this event recently.
Main picture: Mills No. 36 hand grenade with its internal bits minus the detonator
Trump’s disagreeable character traits run the full gamut and most pertain to his narcissism. At the Pope’s funeral, attendees were requested to wear a black suit and tie. Trump did not. This is crass Trump behaviour all over again as he always tries to make the situation about himself, even during the most sensitive and solemn of times.
In the past week again we saw his crassness writ large. With the whole Catholic world in mourning and about to enter the solemn phase of electing a new Pope, someone posted an AI image of Trump as a Pope on his Truth Social account. This was then reposted by the White House across social media. When asked about it, instead of distancing himself, he embraced it by saying, “I had nothing to do with it. It was just, somebody did it in fun. It’s fine. Have to have a little fun don’t you?” Inwardly he was rather chuffed. After all, he had himself reimagined as various Marvel comic book heroes, but like them, the comparison was illusionary. He is not religious, does not lead a pious life and is not selfless unless that act, and an act it is, actually advantages himself.
They say that dogs resemble their owners. This is true for Trump’s cabinet where his undercooked stooges share many of his characteristics. Even Melania once famously wore a jacket with the words “I don’t care” written across the back. Talking of Melania, she has only spent 14 of Trump’s first 108 days at the White House. Given Trump’s penchant for insulting people like when he accused some Republicans as being RINOs – Republicans In Name Only – Melania should be addressed as a WINO – Wife In Name Only. Given the icy Slavic stares she gives Trump most of the time, he must be effectively celibate which I suppose is one requirement for being a Pope.
At the time of writing this, the new Pope was elected. Having teased the dumb MAGA crowd with his Pope image earlier, their jubilation on hearing that the new Pope is American turned sour when it turned out not to be Trump. What are they going to do – claim the election was rigged and storm the Vatican?
No sooner had His Excellency, The Most Righteous Donald Trump jnr been inaugurated into the No. 1 Office of the Presidency of the United States of MAGAland than he sicced his dutiful and obsequious minions on the US Federal and Justice systems and the world trading system.
According to Ussher, God created Adam on the 28th October 4004 BC just after lunch time. He then created Eve and after a stern admonishment about extra-curricular activities, he left them to their own devices, not that they had any back then, while he went off to bed. After an extremely busy previous 6 days, he had a well-deserved lie-in on the 7th day.
Fast forward 6019 years and one man had an inspiration in between inhaling Big Macs and draining diet Cokes. That man was Donald Trump once referred to by a Republican lawmaker as the orange Jesus. On the 14th July 2015*, he created MAGA, a peculiar pigment of his imagination. MAGA is a new world order populated by a throwback sub-species of man known as Homo Republicus Americanus. Since America is a nation of immigrants, legal and illegal over the years, this species comprises many sub-sub-species, of which Homo Mid-Westernus Americanus is the most prominent. They are mainly Caucasian and share many obnoxious characteristics. They are predominantly red-blooded males who have a love/hate relationship with society:
Love gladiatorial contests like cage fighting, WWE Raw and football.
Love guns – the more the better – and sayings like “Love is a Warm Gun”.
Love bad-ass pickup trucks – the bigger the better.
Love conspiracy theories and watch Faux News.
Love patriotic bumper stickers and flying the American and/or Confederate flags.
Love all forms of Christianity even the fraudulent and flaky versions.
Love the Bible but selective about living by its code.
Love tough guy movies with big explosions, epic car chases/crashes and titanic fistfights.
Hate LGBTQ+ people.
Hate immigrants, particularly Mexicans and South Americans.
Hate abortions but struggle to define when life begins.
Hate all other religions (but cut the Jews a lot of slack).
Hate ‘sensitive’ movies.
Generally they have stunted critical thinking processes and consider America to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (which they invented). They think they were created to rule over earth particularly its shit hole countries and backward people. Their wives range from being just as bigoted and hateful as their husbands to those who are totally subservient to them.
And so a pall has been cast over America.
* Actually, that other American deity, Ronald Reagan, had first used a similar version during his 1980 Presidential campaign, “Let’s Make America Great Again”, but he didn’t trademark it as Trump did on this date.
Trump was riding high, surfing his personal tsunami after announcing huge reciprocal tariffs on every country in the world. He then smugly boasted that 50 countries were now “kissing my ass.” Given Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, it might not have been 50 countries but five piss ant countries. Perhaps it even included a delegation of tuxedo attired penguins from the McDonald Islands who arrived to give him the bird and flip him off. But it still played out well with his non-discerning Magalanders especially when Trump threatened to double down if anyone retaliated. This was a tough guy script straight out of a Hollywood Chuck Norris screenplay.
