What a ding-dong!
WOW, THAT was a close thing against Samoa. But what a ding-dong of a match! The Boks knew they'd been in a game.
Not least Bryan Habana who got a painful toffee-apple in the thigh, then got crash-tackled right into the advertising boards. I hope he didn't walk into any cupboard doors or get his fingers caught in window sashes when he got back to the hotel. It looked like one of those days when hot coffee spills in your lap.
One felt sorry for the Samoans after that spirited and bone-crushingly tough display. It was almost like Police versus Railway Police in days of yore. (But no women on the touchline screaming: "Moer hom, Frikkie!) They say it's a man's game. This bore it out.
One felt sorry, but you couldn't agree with the commentator who said the Samoans were out of the competition and on their way home. Most of them actually live in New Zealand and play club and provincial rugby there. Home is a coach trip away, if not round the corner.
Red-haired beauty
A BABY monkey has been born at London Zoo with flaming red hair. Named Tango, she is a Francois Langur, one of the world's rarest monkey species, found in the wild in Vietnam and China.
Her mother, Lu Lu, and father, Neo, are both black-haired.
I say "she" even though the zoo people have not yet been able to determine her sex. But she's such a dead ringer for a spectacular redhead I encountered in a disco the other night, she just has to be female.
The zoo people expect her fur will darken with age and eventually go black like her parents'. I say what a pity. A ginger monkey has a definite charm and looks good under strobe lights.
Sighing and yawning
SPECTATORS crowded into an auditorium at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week to watch the awarding of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which have now been running for 21 years.
The prizes are awarded to scientists engaged in genuine research in areas that range from the arcane to the bizarre. The element of humour is vital to the competition. The honours are handed out by actual Nobel Prize recipients.
To win, scientists must "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to the Ig Nobel ethos.
The biology prize went to Darryl Gwynne, of Canada, and David Rentz, of Australia, for their groundbreaking paper titled: "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbis For Females."
This translates to the layman as beetles misguidedly attempting to mate with Australian beer bottles.
The medicine prize went to a Dutch/Belgian/Australian team who investigated "Inhibitory Spillover" – the effect on the quality of decision-making by the urgent need for a widdle.
In the psychology/physiology category a University of Oslo professor looked at "Why, in everyday life, people sigh?"
A paper in the same category concerned yawning in red-footed tortoises. A British/Dutch/Hungarian/Austrian team established beyond doubt that there is "no evidence of contagious yawning" in these creatures.
The chemistry prize went to a Japanese team who determined "the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of fire."
Previous Ig Nobel awards have been made for research into the collection of whale mucus as the creatures spout, using remote-controlled helicopters; the discovery that certain forms of asthma can be treated with roller-coaster rides; and firm, unshakeable proof that on icy footpaths in winter, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
The research is only unintentionally funny and the organisers see it as an opportunity for scientists to socialise and talk about their work in a theatre packed with other science lovers.
The march of science. Where would we be without research of this sort?
Tailpiece
Female client: "I hear people are suing cigarette companies because their lungs got wrecked, and others are suing McDonalds because they got fat. I want to get in on the action."
Attorney: "And which one of those categories do you fit under?"
Female client: "Neither. I want to know if I can sue Smirnoff Ice for all the repulsive men I've ended up sleeping with."
Last word
Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist.
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