Petrology - πέτρα

Wrote the appended post at the end of 2013 - since then we have experienced load shedding, Nkandla, Zuma reading numerical figures in excess of three digits, Zuma explaining to us that Africa is the biggest continent on the planet and that all the other continents will fit into Africa - no problem, Zuma getting married to wifey no 21, Zuma wanting to purchase a four billion dollar plane. What immediately comes to mind is the dubious ability of this person to govern as President with obvious defective schooling, at least as far as Geography and numerical literacy are concerned. What does emerge is that he may be innocent of the R 250 000 000.00 spent on Nkandla (he was most probably unable to comprehend the figures that were presented to him for his approval and signature. More incomprehensible may be the astronomical number of zeroes after the four required for the jetliner. Zeroes after all means zip, nothing, nada, no value - regardless of the number that precedes the string of...

During April 2015 I received my Electricity account and it showed that the account was in credit to the amount of R 380. 00. This amount was deducted from the consumption for March and the amount payable was R 860.00. Everything was normal and reflected the true state of affairs. THEN - AT THE END OF MAY 2015 AN ACCOUNT ARRIVED FOR R 73000.00 (Seventy Three Thousand Rand) I immediately questioned this and noticed that the meter number was not the same as my meter number. I made copies of the accounts received during Jan, Feb, march and April and sent it off to Customer care at Tshwane Municipality. I received an acknowledgement of receipt and thought that the matter would be resolved, ha-ha, big mistake. At the end of April I arrived home to find a Notice of Intent to disrupt the power supply to our smallholding stuck through the gate and to my surprise, when I entered the house, that the power was already disconnected. This resulted in  the death of some of my...

After today and the incessant HEAT WAVES over the last two months I believe that the Environmental fraternity is about to prove their point. Al Gore and his cronies were right, I was right, The tree - huggers were right, The bunny - huggers were right, The Indian Tribal Chiefs at the turn of the previous century were right. How and when it will end still remains to be seen. The "Day after Tomorrow" scenario begins to elicit some credibility, even though the instant ice - age does not seem at all probable at this stage- too hot. We are having the MONSTER hailstones in the meantime - thousands of automobiles with non repairable hail damage attests to this fact. Two years in a row now - hailstones as big as tennis balls - some as big as cricket balls. The Coal and Oil burning fraternity will tell us that this sort of thing happens every century or so, they will keep on propagating this story until all the coal and oil have been extracted and sold. Oil refineries and pipe...