ABOUT THIS FREAK
“Andre Botha is a South African bodyboarder and the youngest bodyboarding world champion to date. Born in Durban in 1981, he left school at the age of 15 to become a professional bodyboarder and won his first world title at the age of 17 and his second at 18, winning both the World GOB Tour Series and the Pipeline World Championships.
Andre was also the first South African to ever win the Morey Banzai Pipe Championships and the last champion of this 17 year old event. He is the first South African bodyboarder to win the GOB (Global Organization of Bodyboarding) world title. The second person ever to win both the Pipe and GOB titles in one year. The following year he proved this was no fluke by winning the first ever Mike Stewart Pipeline Pro.
He is known for his amazing and relaxed surfing style, and his ability to ride dangerous waves such as Waimea shorebreak and Keiki. These infamous Hawaiian spots, located on the North Shore of Oahu, receive large swells and waves break in very shallow water. Andre displays great tranquility even in the face of very dangerous wave conditions, and has developed his unique, clean style of bodyboarding.
He is also the survivor of one of the most spectacular wipeouts ever witnessed by the surfing community at the infamous Teahupoo (one of the heaviest and most feared waves in the world) in the Tahiti Skins 2000 event. Botha free-fell after paddling too late into the wave, all the way down the bottom, only to fall hard, then getting sucked over and not hitting the coral reef at all.
Andre keeps competing in the World Tour and seeking big waves all around the globe.” - Wikipedia
Bodyboarding Career:
Years Professional Bodyboarding:
12 years
Current Sponsors:
TURBO Bodyboards, 662mob.com, Ally Bodyboard Accessories, OC Surf & Sport, Plastic People Clothing
Past Sponsors:
Billabong Clothing, Wave Rebel Bodyboards, Unison Bodyboards, Vortex bodyboards, Science Bodyboards, Morey Bodyboards, Churchill fins, Bluetorch, Island Style Accories
Best Achivements:
2 x World Champion
World Tour Contests:
First Placings - 3
Second Placings - 4
Third placings - 2
Forth Placings - 1
Media:
Magazine Covers - 20 - 25+
Whole Video Sections - 7 - 10+
Other Careers:
Professional Water Photographer/Video
Media:
Covers taken - 10-15+
Video sections - 1
Other Careers:
Manager - Sunset Beach Guest House, Cape Town South Africa ****
Time period:
1 Year
Loves and Hobbies:
Art -
Years Drawing and Painting - 8 Years
Total Canvas Done: 50+
Total Complete Sketch Pads: 30+
Fashion -
Vintage Clothing, Plastic people, The Cast, Cowboy Boots, Hats, High Top Chuck Taylors, Vans, Cowboy Shirts, Leather Jackets, Tight Jeans
Music -
Black Sabbath, Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd, Guns N’ Roses, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Niel Young, The Doors, Rolling Stones, Beatles, The Clash
Cinema -
Unforgiven, Dead Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Good The Bad And The Ugly, The Proposition, Secretary, Closer, Man Who Wasnt There, Bad Santa, There Will Be Blood, The Wall, Horton Hears a Who, The Walker
“Noise, deaf, no ears, wet, dry, DRE, what ever the fuck I’m called, snakes, hair, inner demons, please come out! faces, scary, hunger, eat me alive, pumpkins for the John Travolters, burn me with cigarettes where it hurts, up, down, in, out, all around, good, bad, you’ll suck a dick for daddy and like it! toffee’s for you 10111, why 99, wrong, right, Jachy oh oh oh please don’t die, me, you, us, never, always, sometimes i wonder, oh please not another one, O.C.BUZZ ON, straight edge, no thanks, not for me, hurt, hate, anger, you knew you shouldn’t have, BUT YOU DID! help, or is it just me, please come out, leave me alone, stop, peace, quiet, is anyone out there, roller coaster rides, lonely, me, I, why all the noise, what did i do to deserve this, are you prepared, JESUS, are you ready, coming soon, sad times, this world is a fuck up, Paris Hilton and Hayden Thiel one night stand, yes please, so high right now, why i like to fly, bring it on, more beer, oh yes, good times, voices, I HEAR THEM, i see them, im not alone.“ Hayden Thiel
Diet:
Vegetarian + Fish and diary
Vices:
Alcohol - as little as possible
Cigarettes - 5-7 a day
Coffee - 2-3 cups a day
Exercise:
Bodyboarding
Road Running - 4 times a week
Light weightlifting - 2 times a week
Religion:
Secular humanism
Secular humanism is a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics and justice, and specifically rejects the supernatural and the spiritual as the basis of moral reflection and decision-making. Like other types of humanism, secular humanism is a life stance that focuses on the way human beings can lead good, happy and functional lives.
The term “Secular Humanism” was coined in the 20th century to make a clear distinction from “religious humanism”. A related concept is “scientific humanism”, which biologist Edward O. Wilson claimed to be “the only worldview compatible with science’s growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature”.
Tenets
Secular humanism describes a world view with the following elements and principles:[2]
* Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
* Reason, evidence, scientific method – A commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
* Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
* Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
* This life – A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
* Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
* Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.
A Secular Humanist Declaration was issued in 1980 by The Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH), now the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). It lays out ten ideals: Free inquiry as opposed to censorship and imposition of belief; Separation of church and state; the ideal of freedom from religious control and from jingoistic government control; ethics based on critical intelligence rather than that deduced from religious belief; moral education; religious skepticism; reason; a belief in science and technology as the best way of understanding the world; evolution; and education as the essential method of building humane, free, and democratic societies.
Comparison to Religious Humanism
There are a number of ways in which secular and religious humanism can differ:
* Religious humanists may value rituals and ceremonies as means of affirming their life stance. Secular humanists are typically not interested in using rituals and ceremonies.
* Some religious humanists may seek profound “religious” experiences, such as those that others would associate with the presence of God, despite interpreting these experiences differently. Secular humanists would generally not pursue such experiences solely for their own sake.
* Some varieties of nontheistic religious humanism may conceive of the word divine as more than metaphoric even in the absence of a belief in a traditional God; they may believe in ideals that transcend physical reality; or they may conceive of some experiences as numinous or uniquely religious. Secular humanism regards all such terms as, at best, metaphors for truths rooted in the material world.
* Some varieties of religious humanism, such as Christian humanism include belief in God, traditionally defined. Secular humanists reject as irrational the idea of God and the supernatural and believe that these are not useful concepts for addressing human problems.
Modern secular humanism
While secular humanist organizations are found in all parts of the world, one of the largest humanist organizations in the world (relative to population) is Norway’s Human-Etisk Forbund, which had over 69,000 members out of a population of around 4.6 million in 2004.
In certain areas of the world, secular humanism finds itself in conflict with religious fundamentalism, especially over the issue of the separation of church and state. Secular humanists may judge religions as superstitious, regressive, and/or closed-minded, while religious fundamentalists see secular humanism as a threat to the values they say are set out in religious texts, such as the Bible and the Qur’an.
Those with a religious belief may criticize the philosophy of secular humanism because it excludes ideas related to eternal, objective truths. It does not refer to a relationship with the divine, or a belief in eternal life, reward, or punishment.Critics allege that a philosophy bereft of these beliefs leaves humanity adrift in a foggy sea of postmodern cynicism and anomie. Some argue that this philosophy has always been antireligious and is an atheistic philosophy.Some see their antireligiousness as a sort of an imposed religion itself - see below. Within humanism, there can also be found critics, for the exclusion of other types of humanism that are similar in the most important values - see religious humanism.
Humanists respond that such criticisms reflect a failure to look at the actual content of humanist philosophy, which far from being cynical and postmodern, is rooted in optimistic, idealisticattitudes about the future of human society that trace back to the Enlightenment,or further, back to Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers and Chinese Confucianism.
Objectivists also criticize secular humanism along with any other philosophies with a goal of “building a better world,” which conflicts with the Objectivist maxim that one’s life should be lived for oneself rather than for such a collective cause.
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