The Idler, Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Psychic raccoon speaks

A PSYCHIC raccoon predicts that China will top the table of Olympic medals this year. Jemma, who lives in Tula zoo, in Russia, accurately predicted that Spain would win the recent European football tournament.

She chooses from a series of buns placed before her, each bearing the flag of a different country. When she turned her attention to the Olympics, she chose the China bun and ate it. China does currently top the table.

However, Jemma's credibility could depend on second place, where she has Russia. Currently the US is there, followed by Britain.

In 2010 Paul the psychic octopus similarly successfully forecast the outcome of the Football World Cup in South Africa (Also Spain). Clearly, there's more to sport than science and training. Surely we can train up a bushbaby or an aardvark or something to get ourselves on the right track?

Up and down

 

BRITISH gold medallist Jessica Ennis spoke, after receiving the award, of her anxieties before going into the heptathlon event. "All year it's been up and down in the long jump."

 

No, my dear – that's the high jump.

 

Gongs

 

THE MEDALS being won at the Olympics this year are the biggest and heaviest yet. It's noticeable. Apparently the British team had to have their official kit altered so they would be able to slip medals into their pockets.

 

A medal is often known as a gong. These at the London Olympics are so big they recall the old J Arthur Rank movies that always started with a strongman beating a giant gong.

 

Sports success

 

PROFESSOR Gavin Maasdorp, economist and former varsity rugby administrator, has dug out the answers to last week's speculation as to how It was that South Africa's first Olympic gold medal – for the 100m – was won at the 1908 Games in London, two years before there was such a country as South Africa.

 

It seems wealthy and influential people like Abe Bailey – soon to become Sir Abe – Henry Nourse and Sir Leander Starr Jameson, Prime Minister of the Cape, saw sport as a way to healing the animosities created by the Anglo/Boer War.

 

In 1904 Bailey personally financed a cricket tour to England by a South African team. In 1906 Paul Roos captained a Springbok rugby tour of Britain – taking players from all four colonies - and the side's success created a national pride in South African sportsmen even though political Union was still four years away.

 

Through Jameson's influence, the British Olympic delegation was persuaded to move in the International Olympic Committee, meeting at The Hague, that the British colonies of the Cape, Natal, the Orange River and the Transvaal be invited to the 1908 games as "South Africa". It went through unanimously. The South African Olympic Committee was then formed and met for the first time in the boardroom of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

 

So sport was indeed a jump or two ahead of political developments. And it's interesting the way sports success engendered national pride. Could the current shower of sports achievement achieve national cohesion the way it did back then, and again at the time of the Rugby World Cup in 1995?

 

 

 

Quantum physics

 

A WORD from Rob Nicolai, Howick's pre-eminent quantum theorist/particle physicist. It seems there's no longer any need for a Cern-style Large Hadron Collider in Howick as he's built it in miniature in his kitchen out of empty coffee tins, foil tubes and drinking straws.

 

Those Mercury readers who have already contributed to the €24 billion he asked for to fund the project can get refunds from Home Affairs, the local post office or the Department of Social Works, he says.

 

He adds that he has confiscated the lab coat and gumboots of the Sharks cheerleader with whom I organised him a date, as he doesn't want her to wear them out while there's no serious research going on.

 

Now what does he mean by that?

 

 

 

Tailpiece I WAS visiting my son last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper. "This is the 21st century, Dad" he said. We don't waste money on newspapers. Here, you can borrow my iPad." That fly never knew what hit it ...

Last word

The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. -Victor Hugo