Jozi's turn to quiz

Jozi’s best and brightest braved the cold to gather at Pirates sports club last week Thursday for the 2^nd Team Pedal Pushers fundraiser. 

A fairly unwilling Mr Langley took on the role of quiz master and did a fantastic job of controlling the enthusiastic (read unruly) crowd – even as we were plunged into darkness by a momentary power outage. Well done to each of the eleven teams who fought to the (almost) death for eternal glory and the top spot. In total we raised R2900 for Project Rhino and the Put Foot Foundation which brings our fundraising total to R5800!!

A very big thank-you to everyone who came to support, to Pirates who hosted us free of charge and to Larry ‘The Quizwizz’  (undoubtedly the best quizmaster in Jozi) who advertised for us. 

Do I make you horny baby?!

Finally a rhino story to smile about!

There are only seven (!!!) known Northern white rhinos remaining in the world, and in 2009 four of these were moved from the Czech Republic to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Their return to Africa was considered the last chance at preserving the genetic material of their sub-species - which has been poached to extinction in the wild. Experts believed that a return to their natural environment might induce hormonal changes to make the females (Najin and Fatu) receptive to breeding.

After a whole load of match-making by conservationists and a little bit of foreplay:

Fun Fact Friday: Rhino Horn

Given that rhinos are the animals we're raising charity funds for I decided I should learn more about them and discovered that:

"Rhino horn is not a true horn, it is made of thickly matted hair that grows from the skull without skeletal support" (see link below).

Am I the only person that didn't know that? And how interesting (and awesome is that).

I also read that the only predator of rhinos are humans. Isn't that depressing.

Sorry it's not a more cheerful Fun Fact Friday.

More on rhinos here.

Mammal Monday - it's a thing

I went to an exhibition at the Tate Modern this weekend and one room was devoted to the work of Vito Acconci and his performance pieces. The one that really struck me was entitled Sedbeed and given the nature of this blog it's probably improper for me to detail what the performance contained but in summary I'll tell you it was about an empty room, an artist under floor boards and the creation of human seed - for full details let the great-wise-wiki tell you more.

Now this exhibition happened back in 1972 and it got me thinking about how on earth anyone knew about anything before the advent of the internet. Nowadays you can't move for blogs about this, tweets about that and facebook event invitations, but before all of this how did people really get the word out about anything? And beyond this how did you know what anyone (except the critics and journalists who got to write about it) thought about exhibitions or shows or anything really. It's another question altogether whether we really care about what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks about a thing but the scope of access we now have is pretty darn incredible. Only problem is, and you knew I couldn't be rejoicing in the interwebs without a little niggle, how on earth can one ever do anything original. Google even the whisper of an idea and you'll find someone's already done it, and probably better than you'd even begun to think of.

With this in mind we introduce (to the greater body of work already in existance) our contribution to #Mammal Monday and given that the Put Foot Rally is this year raising funds for a Rhino initiative we thought we'd start our with these little guys. How can you not support a charity for them!