The Idler, Friday, January 29, 2010

Three-D sport DO WE really want Bakkies Botha and company rampaging through our living rooms? Sport goes three-dimensional for the first time this weekend when Sky News  screens the  football match between Arsenal and Manchester United in 3-D in nine selected pubs on Sunday in London, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Dublin. Viewers will wear special glasses to see the game in an extra dimension. In April, Sky is to launch a dedicated 3-D channel. Will it come here as well? Enthusiasts say the new technology brings new dimensions to watching sport, you're right there, virtually participating. But it could also be fairly alarming to have the ruck played out on your Persian rug, Female wrestling could be absolutely terrifying.   I wonder if 3-D television really will catch on. When the technology came to the film industry in the 1950s it was all the rage for a while, then it fizzled.   The most extravagant special effects are no substitute for good plots and good acting. I'm sure you can say much the same about sport. Tongue-twisters WE ARE dismissed by the police of Leith, the police of Leith dismisseth us. A tabulation comes this way of things that are difficult to say after a few drinks: ·         Innovative. ·         Preliminary. ·         Proliferation. ·         Cinnamon. These are very difficult to say after a few drinks: ·         Specificity. ·         Anti-constitutionalistically. ·         Passive-aggressive disorder. ·         Transubstantiate. These are downright impossible to say after a few drinks ·         No thanks, I'm married. ·         Nope, no more booze for me! ·         Sorry, but you're not really my type. ·         No thanks, I'm not hungry. ·         Good evening, officer. Isn't it lovely out tonight? ·         Oh, I couldn't! No one wants to hear me sing karaoke. ·         Thank you, but I won't make any attempt to dance, I have no coordination. I'd hate to look like a fool! ·         I must be going home now, as I have to work in the morning.

More crocs

FRANCIS Fynn, of Vryheid, takes me to task for describing the Tugela as crocodile "infested". How can this be when the river is their natural habitat?

He has a point. Perhaps I've spent too much time in the company of foreign correspondents who were forever swimming "crocodile-infested rivers" in Africa, and occasionally venturing into "shark-infested waters", for the benefit of their readers in London and elsewhere overseas.

He says the Umgeni has probably always had crocodiles and I should not be surprised to bump into a leopard one day. Like the Umgeni crocs, they too are invisible and probably account for the number of dogs and cats that go missing.

"So be alert when entering thick 'green' spaces!"

Is he having me on?

Climate change

READER Cora Mulholland sends in a report from the US.

"The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway . Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3 100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds."

The report, by Associated Press and published in the Washington Post, is dated November 2, 1922.

Tailpiece

THREE small boys give their teacher a present each. She takes the first gift-wrapped box, shakes it and smells it.

"Candy?" she asks, knowing the boy's father is a confectioner.

"Yes."

She takes the next, shakes it and smells it.

"Flowers?" She knows the boy's father is a florist.

"Yes."

She takes the third box and notices it is leaking. She knows the boy's father owns a bottle store.

"Whisky?"

"No, it's a puppy."

Last word

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

JD Salinger

GRAHAM LINSCOTT