Clairvoyance in sport
IT'S GOOD to see the no-nonsense scientific approach being adopted by the organisers of the European Football Cup, jointly hosted this year by the Ukraine and Poland.
The Ukraine has appointed two soothsayers to predict the outcome of matches; Poland has appointed one.
The Ukrainians first appointed a psychic pig named Khryak. The Poles appointed a psychic elephant named Citta. Now the Ukrainians have followed up by appointing an additional soothsayer, a psychic ferret named Fred.
You can't have too much of this sort of thing. It follows the uncanny success of Paul the psychic octopus, who successfully predicted the outcome of every game played by Germany in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Why should the benefits of this clairvoyance be limited to football? It's surely time they got in a few hadedahs and koggelmannetjie lizards to help them sort out the Eurozone crisis.
That's me
IT SEEMS I am a flaneur. Reader Hannah Lurie sends in a dictionary definition of the word: "An idler or loafer; a man about town."
Yes, quite right. I am indeed a man about town; sometimes also known as a boulevardier.
Paradigm shift
A CHINESE farmer has built an electric car with a turbine built into the nose, which kicks in once he's doing about 60km/h. This then starts charging the battery, meaning it has to be recharged from the mains only once every three days instead of daily.
Imagine if the world's car fleet could be converted in this way. Think of the savings in fuel, the ending of contamination of our cities.
Tang Zehnpin built his single-seater Blue Hornet in a small tractor workshop in the village of Banjiehe, an hour's drive from Beijing. It cost him the equivalent of about R14 000, using parts from a motorcycle, an electric scooter and a small hatchback car. The project took three months.
If that's what a humble small farmer can do to shift the paradigm, what are General Motors and the rest of them up to?
Towards the turn of the 19th century, people were fretting about London and Paris being six feet deep in horse manure. Then the paradigm shifted and along came the internal combustion engine.
Now the internal combustion engine is polluting the air, creating global tensions over oil and almost certainly contributing to global warming as well. Our civilisation needs another paradigm shift.
If Tang Zehnpin can do it, why can't the auto giants show more enthusiasm?
Response
MUNICIPAL notice: "BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED". Graffiti below: "Bill Posters is an innocent man!"
Murphy's subset
WE'VE all heard of Murphy's Law. Here are Murphy's 14 other laws:
· Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
· A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
· He who laughs last thinks slowest.
· A day without sunshine is like, well, night.
· Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
· Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
· Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
· The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90 percent probability you'll get it wrong.
· It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone from Donegal would be stupid enough to try to pass them.
· If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.
· The things that come to those who wait may be the things left by those, who got there first.
· Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
· The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in the dark.
· When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people, who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
Tailpiece
WHAT do you call a woman with a bottle-opener in one hand, a knife in the other, a pair of scissors between her toes on her left foot, and a corkscrew between her toes on her right foot?
A Swiss Army wife.
Last word
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
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