It flies through the air with the greatest of ease .....

Just how far can this kid throw the shot put?

Scene: The New Zealand Secondary School's Athletic Champs - the shot put circle.

The Protagonist: Jacko Gill

The narrative: Putting the shot ....second put 23.27m (world record under 18) ......... next put 23.57m (world record again) ............ next put 23.86m (world record again). Jaw dropping stuff.

Watch it for yourself here!

It was a superb performance at a superbly run athletics meeting.


The New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Championships is without a doubt the best show in town  when it comes to track and field in this country.

The crowd witnessed two days jammed packed with the action of some of the finest young athletic talent in Aoteoroa.

The performance by 15 year-old Gill with the 5 kg shot could quite possibly be the furthest a shot has ever been thrown in an official competition.

The men's world record (7.25 kg shot) is 23.12m by the drug discredited Randy Barnes.

The women's world record (4 kg shot) is 22.63m in 1987 (and the bad smell of drugs hangs around that one!)

Read more on Gill's throw....

Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight .....

It was with baited breath (as they say folks) that I was waiting for the momentous NASA announcement.

As the time drew near the zero hour of the of the climatic revelation about astrobiology, I was beside ma-sulf in keen antusupation!


And then it finally came. Microbes can survive in arsenic.

What a let down! I knew that already!

That's what I told Nick just the other day!

I said to young Nick that "a bacterium that can grow in arse" Nick.

and I have always suspected there are bacteria on uranus.

This has just got to be the biggest anticlimax of 2010.

 NASA has now demonstrated conclusively that there is almost no intelligent life on earth apart from thee and me (dear reader)!.