Linscott At Large: The Idler, Wednesday, October 20, 2010

But where are the Nats now?

WE OF THE SCRIBBLING craft have been marking the 33^rd anniversary of the Nat government's closure of the World newspaper and some other publications. The anxiety is that our present rulers intend bestowing on themselves powers to muzzle information that even the Nats did not have.

The concern is in order. But we need also reflect that the newspapers are still with us. Where are the Nats?

Also, in today's digital age of e-mail, cell-phones and all the gadgetry of the internet, information control is simply impossible.

Press control belonged with the mindset and technology of the Cold War. It's astonishing that so many of our politicos don't realise that.

Wizardry

WE LIVE in an age of electronic wizardry. You need money to pay the parking garage? You go to the ATM. You want to pay the parking garage? You slip your ticket into the slot. A message comes up telling you what you owe. You slip a banknote into the machine.

It spits it back. It doesn't accept anything higher than a R20 note. But the ATM doesn't give you anything smaller than a R50 note. The ATM is round the corner from the parking garage.

So you go to the shop and buy a stick of peppermints, the way you did in grandma's day, just to get some change.

Plummers blossoms

READER Valerie Johnson and her husband Ron have discovered why the bees swarmed last Saturday, delaying the start of the Currie Cup semi-final.

"It's springtime and they knew Plumtree was about to blossom."

State of suspense

ANYONE feeling noivous? Several mass killers are apparently on a list of prisoners being considered for presidential pardon. Meanwhile, enough weapons have been stolen from police stations in recent years to arm the defence forces of a couple of our neighbouring states.

A former naval armourer tells me there's no excuse for the theft of weapons. Rifles should be stored with a chain through the trigger guards and with the bolts removed and stored in a safe in a different locality, he says. A rifle without its bolt is no use to anyone.

"This is sheer negligence on the part of the police. In the army, navy or air force they would be court martialled."

Yet the thefts continue. Just the other day a police station near Pretoria got hit. Where else do you find such contempt for the police?

Grand Candy

IT'S THE SWEET life in Armenia. The central Caucasus country has just produced the world's largest ever chocolate bar.

Called the Grand Candy, it measured more than 5 m in length and took three days to make. It weighed more than four tons.

The bar gave Armenia its first Guinness world record and led to a huge celebration. It was cut up and distributed .

Statisticians say the average Armenian eats 40kg of chocolate a year and it would take therefore take him 107 years for him to get through eating the giant bar.

Will this be another attempt at a Guinness record?

Useless invention

NEWS from Texas. Dr Calvin Rickson, a scientist from Texas A&M University has invented a bra that keeps women's breasts from jiggling and bouncing up and down. It also prevents the nipples pushing through the fabric when cold weather sets in.

At a news conference, after announcing the invention, a large group of men took Dr Rickson outside and beat the daylights out of him.

Lotto stunner

SHAKE the bag! Israeli lotto punters were stunned when six numbers - 36, 33, 32, 26, 14, 13 - were rolled out live on television, in the exact reverse order of less than a month earlier. The odds against that happening are something like four trillion to one.

As the odds against winning any sort of lotto are rather longer than your being struck by lightning, these must be long indeed.

But the Israeli lotteries number cruncher, Dr Chaim Melamed, insists there is nothing untoward.

"We are in the business of luck, and when it comes to chances and probabilities anything is possible, even the rare and infrequent."