The owners of Lonmin, a big platinum company, heaved heavy sighs of relief on September 18th, as workers at its mine at Marikana in South Africa signed a deal that ended a six-week wildcat strike that has left 46 people dead.
"Clearly the definitive abandonment of dependence on trees... has to count as one of the most radical shifts in adaptive zone ever made by any vertebrate since the very first tetrapod heaved itself out of water and on to terra firma, " he said.