Unnerving development
CANADIAN scientists have discovered a way to breed fearsome "super soldier" ants - genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago. The super soldiers have huge heads and jaws and wreak havoc in combat.
The scientists have discovered that ordinary ants of the species Pheidole morrisi – found in the deserts of the United States and Mexico – have all the genetic material needed to turn them into super soldiers. When they dab the larvae with a special hormone, the super soldiers result.
According to McGill University's Dr Rajendhran Rajakumar, the super soldier they've come up with evolved 35 to 60 million years ago.
This is a fascinating development, though a little unnerving. The technology must at all costs be kept from Julius Malema and his Youth League.
McPussies
CHINESE billionaire Long Liyuan sat down with two business associates in a restaurant in Guangdong to eat a nourishing cat stew. All three became violently ill and Long Liyuan died.
Police initially detained the owner of the restaurant for serving contaminated food. But now they have arrested a local official who is suspected of having deliberately poisoned the dish.
It's something they need to sort out fast. When you can't rely on the wholesomeness of cat stew, the Chinese tourism trade could be in big trouble.
Ring of truth
RECENTLY we had the story of the Swedish farmer's wife who lost her wedding ring then found it 16 years later round a carrot growing in her vegetable garden. Reader Johan Bouwer had a similar experience.
In 1965 his Uncle Harry, living in Salisbury, Rhodesia (as it then was), bought his wife a yellow diamond ring. A few years later the ring was lost, thought to have been stolen. Uncle Harry submitted a claim to his insurers and was paid out.
"We were celebrating New Year of 1973 with them. Walking in the garden, my wife spotted this ring on the stem of a flower.
"It turned out that while my aunt was gardening she'd lost the ring. After all those years it surfaced on a germinating flower. Honest guy that Harry is, he took the ring to the insurers and explained what had happened. They told him he could keep the money and the ring."
Wow! You don't what's the more remarkable – the ring turning up that way or the generosity of the insurers.
Birthday bash
IN RECENT times I've had to write the obituary of so many of my old colleagues as they fall off the perch that it's refreshing to be able to describe the 80th birthday celebrations of another who's still going like a Boeing.
Derek Taylor is known to most of you for his witty restaurant reviews in the Sunday Tribune. Actually his career in newspapers stretches back to the Crimean War or thereabouts. Derek is astonishingly fit for his age, though he tells me he's had a couple of setbacks of late. Various bits of metal that have embedded themselves in his system over the years – copper from an air crash while doing national service with the Royal Australian Air Force in the early 50s, bits of shrapnel from Vietnam – have started wandering about his person and the doctors have to cut them out when they appear. But otherwise he's fine.
You'd expect a restaurant critic to come up with the goods for a celebration, and the Hellenic Club, in Durban North, delivered the goods in fine style. Among the guests at my table were two experts in feminist literature (a subject that has always been close to my heart) and Sam Hutton, who played front rank for Ireland in days of yore.
Sam is from County Antrim, an Ulsterman like Ireland and British Lions captain Willie-John McBride. When I asked if it were true that he used to bully Willie-John and scrum him into the ground at club practice, he laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. A very modest man is Sam.
Yes, a lot of fun. Good nosh, good wine, good chatter. I can't remember if we ended up throwing plates at the wall – but we probably did.
Tailpiece
"GET OUT, YOU filthy pervert!" shrieked the Madam as a bouncer bundled Van der Merwe out of the brothel. He'd asked if he could pay in Euros.
Last word
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
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