The Idler, Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Electroencephalogry

IN A WORLD first, researchers have achieved brain-to-brain transmission of information between humans. They used a brain-computer interface to transmit the thoughts of an individual in India 8 000 km to a group of three in France, using the internet.

The process is known as electroencephalogry.

This is no doubt a stunning advance. Yet it still fails to explain a phenomenon that has been puzzling us down the ages.

How is it that a woman is able to know what a man is thinking? And why is the process not two-way? A man can be going about his household chores and thinking quite innocently about the upper rigging of the new barmaid down at the local – when she picks it up.

He has no idea whatever of what is brewing in her mind, when suddenly – Whammo! – she lands a right hook.

It's uncanny. It's been happening down the ages. Maybe electroencephalogry will get us closer to the answer.

 

Mean one

THE fossil of a fearsome 20-ton cross between a Tyrannosaurus-rex, a crocodile and a whale has been found in the Moroccan Sahara, scientists describing it as "like an alien from outer space".

The 16m amphibious dinosaur, Spinosaurus, had sharp, slanted teeth and a massive snout. It preyed on sharks.

Yep, the Griquas stop at nothing in who they recruit for the Currie Cup.

Horror show

IT WAS supposed to be a morning news show but it could have been a horror movie as a bat started flittering about the heads of the TV news anchors on Good Morning Tennessee during a live broadcast, interfering with hairdos.

The presenters were totally spooked until somebody caught the bat and took it outside and released it into woodland.

"This is the news, read by Count Dracula …"

Sleeping Beauty

BURGLARY can be an exhausting business. A thief came in through the kitchen window of a home in Sarasota, Florida, in the US. He grabbed a whole bagful of jewellery in a bedroom.

But then he couldn't resist taking a quick nap on the bed. He was still there when a cleaner came in. He was still snoring away when the police arrived and took photographs of him lying with the swag still beside him. Eventually they had to shake him awake.

Following this rude interruption of his beauty sleep, he was put in the clink and charged with burglary. The bunk in the cell is probably nothing like as comfortable as the bed they found him on.

 

Messages

SOME people haven't heard of e-mail. They still keep putting messages in bottles, throwing them into the sea or into rivers running to the sea, and looking for other bottles containing messages.

Cries for help, hopes and dreams and greetings from one country to another have all been cast into the water for someone else to find.

The BBC had a feature on it. A woman named Nicola White found her first message in a bottle by chance in the River Thames in 2011. She then started hunting for them and has gone on to find more than 30.

The messages have included an appeal for a job, declarations of love and gems of wisdom.

Nicola also sends her own messages in bottles. Could it have been she who sent that message found in a bottle floating in the Tugela the other day near its confluence with the Nsuze, in the Nkandla district?

"Pay back the money!" the message read. Whatever could Nicola mean?

 

Tailpiece

Old lady (on telephone): "Where's my Sunday paper?"

Circulation department clerk: "Ma'am, today is Saturday. Your Sunday paper will be delivered on SUNDAY."

Old lady (after a pause): "Well I'll be darned … that explains why there was nobody at church either."

Last word

A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.

David Coblitz