TALES FROM THE CRYPT

Later this weekend we may be invited to tune in for the next episode of “Presidential Prattle from his iPad”. That’s if he doesn’t once again lose the magic slate with his notes. There is a distinct skill required for using a so called “tablet” as a prompting device, the first being not to lose it. One does also need a tame IT boffin on standby to locate the file again if you inadvertently flick a sandwich crumb or pesky fly from the screen and your sacred text turns in to your screen saver, and the whole world can see your pet fluffy animal picture collection. Once again, the play of the day is guessing what our wise leaders have come up with to control the spread of the rather nasty respiratory infection. Judging from the frantic queues forming at the local bottle store last night, Cyril is expected to tamper with our booze supplies. Undeniably we South Africans, when liquored up, are utterly lethal road users who place huge demands for casualty treatment from hospitals already busy with Covid patients. How, one wonders will the authorities deal with drunk driving when Covid no longer provides the excuse to control booze sales? The real panic patter has it that tobacco sales will also be reimposed. After all, the argument goes, we know that the ruling has run out of money and is battling to pay its own employees, and we also suspect that the same party has lucrative links to black markets in both these commodities. Nah! Can’t be a grain of truth. Pure scuttlebutt. The headline that “Two South African brothers, Raees and Ameer Cajee, recently vanished along with an estimated R51 billion in Bitcoin from their cryptocurrency investment platform Africrypt.”, is so rich in various ironies that one doesn’t know where to start. Straight off it seems unlikely that the Cajee boys knew the usual use of the word crypt when selecting a name for their business scam. But that is exactly where the investors’ money has gone. To a crypt. Never to be seen again. From the scant data available it is obvious that the lads were running a standard ponzi scheme, this time dressing it up in the mystique of “crypto currencies”. An allegedly attractive aspect of these poorly understood virtual assets, is the fact that they are unregulated and in fact may be unregulatable. Sadly many folk have obviously already lost a great deal of money in the last few days and are scratching around for official help but it is very unlikely to be forthcoming. Since none of the transactions seem to have passed through any gateway where a regulatory fee might have been paid, that suggests that Mr Plod wont be very keen to come and take a look since he already knows what he will find. Nothing! In an interview in December 2020, the brothers spoke about “hard work, ethics, morals, and responsibilities” to make their new business work. So now that it’s failed, what was missing? Amongst all the bickering about who has the “best science” in the Corona virus squabbles comes some proper physics. Astronomers have pinpointed more than 2,000 stars from where, in the not-too-distant past or future, Earth could be detected transiting across the face of the Sun. In essence this is the answer to the neatly posed questions “Who has the cosmic front seat to see us?” and “For whom would we be the aliens?” Far more interesting than the arguments about which vaccine is better. The solstice has passed and the northern hemisphere sporting season is hotting up. The surprisingly rapid reintroduction of fans to stadia is very welcome and as their numbers grow, their age-old habit and right of expressing their opinion about what is happening before them is becoming more audible. This is causing apoplexy amongst regulators who have spent the past year forgetting entirely the wonderful adage that “sticks and stone may hurt my bones, but words can never harm me.” James Greener Friday 25th June 2021 (6 months to Christmas)