| Another Gini co-efficient THE QUEST for human happiness is unending, and we get a jolt every now and then. Who would have thought that men have a definite edge over the fairer sex in happiness ? Most of us would have thought it to be exactly the opposite, yet research in America suggests that the hairy sex have a definite edge over the fairer sex. Reasons extrapolated by computer from exhaustive surveys: · Your last name stays put. · The garage is all yours. · Wedding plans take care of themselves. · Chocolate is just another snack. · You can be President. · You can never be pregnant. · You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. · You can wear no shirt to a water park. · Car mechanics tell you the truth. · The world is your urinal. · Same work, more pay. · Wrinkles add character. · Wedding outfit $3 500 (R28 000). Tux rental-$75. · One mood all the time. · Phone conversations over in 30 seconds flat. · A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. · You can open all your own jars. · Your underwear is $6.95 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. · The same hairstyle lasts years, maybe decades. · One wallet, one pair of shoes -- one colour for all seasons. We need to address this hitherto unsuspected inequality, develop something like a Gini co-efficient of human happiness. Would topless barmaids help? It deserves our attention. Spider-Man PHYSICS students at the University of Leicester, in England, have calculated it's perfectly plausible that cartoon crime-fighter The Amazing Spider-Man could have stopped a runaway train with his web – as portrayed in a recent film. (Spider-Man, as we all know, derived his powers from being bitten by a radio-active spider). The students calculated the momentum of a four-carriage train at full speed and then that the stiffness of the web would have to be what they call 3.12 gigapascals to restrain the speeding train. That would be well within the range of a spider's silk – taking the example of Darwin's bark spider, from Madagascar – if it were scaled up to Spider-Man's human size – and "if he were real." Er, yes. Quite. Puzzle READER Esmond Naidoo sends in a puzzle. What do these seven words have in common? BANANA, DRESSER, GRAMMAR, POTATO, REVIVE, UNEVEN, ASSESS. No, it's not that they all have at least two repeated letters. In each word if you take the first letter and place it on the end, it spells the same word again backwards. Hey, pretty neat! | ||
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Statistic
A SCIENTIFIC fact (expressed in the old imperial measures): The average human being walks 900 miles in a year and drinks 22 gallons of beer, which means the average human being gets 41 miles to the gallon. Not bad!"
ID theft
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-40s: "Somebody stole my identity. I feel so sorry for the poor sucker."
Hooligans
SUSAN Mistini was fast asleep at home in Houston, Texas, when suddenly the burglar alarm went off. She was in a panic when the telephone rang.
It was a neighbour in forming her that a car was on her roof. A speeding car had failed to take a bend in the road then somersaulted on to her house, activating the alarm system.
Nobody was seriously injured. The police are looking into the alcohol factor.
If you thin k motorised hooliganism is bad in Durban, try Houston, Texas.
Gundog bulldog
HERE'S grist to the mill of those campaigning in the US for the country's lax to non-existent gun control laws to be tightened up. A Florida man has been shot by his own bulldog.
Gregory Lanier was driving down the motorway when his bulldog, that was jumping around in the front of his pickup, kicked what was supposed to be an unloaded handgun on the floor.
Bang! Lanier had a 9mm Beretta slug in his left calf. He had to drive on to hospital.
A bulldog is a mean enough critter. Give him a Beretta and he's lethal.
Tailpiece
A MARRIED man should forget his mistakes. No point in memory space being taken up in two people.
Last word
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
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