Sunday, October 2, 2016

The Idler, Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Punch and Judy

MATCHSTICKS prop open the eyes. I was one of those who got up at 3am to watch the Punch and Judy show, er the televised Trump-Clinton debate in Florida.

At one level it was a slight disappointment. The presidential candidates did not smack each other over the head with a wet fish. But at a more profound level it was revealing.

In the controlled atmosphere of a moderated debate, Trump seemed like a blimp whose gas level has dropped. He looked flabby, uncomfortable and defensive.

Hillary Clinton, by comparison, was poised and good-humoured in a very smart, red trouser suit which one of the Twitterati suggested was made from Trump's red ties. She got in some barbs – Trump's multiple bankruptcies, his failure to reveal his tax returns, his apparent practice of "stiffing" contractors, not paying them.

And when Trump interjected to say his bankruptcies were just part of business and within the law, it somehow seemed rather worse – evasion of creditors? Shyster stuff?

Clinton's most telling jibe was that a person (Trump) who can be baited by a tweet should not have his finger on the nuclear firing button. And for some of us in South Africa this was déjà vu - a chilling revisiting of the era of PW Botha.

An immediate CNN poll gave the debate to Hillary Clinton by 62% against Trump's 27%. So all is well in America with "normal" politics.

Yet those of us who think Trump would be a catastrophe are noivous. They said much the same in the UK before the Brexit poll.

 

 

 

Badger time

A RESEARCHER who lived as a badger in a Welsh hole is among the winners of the Ig Nobel prizes, awarded annually for quirky scientific achievement.

Charles Foster, of Oxford, was honoured in a zany ceremony at Harvard University, in the US, which was attended by four real Nobel laureates who also participated in a paper aeroplane throwing contest.

Winners received $10 trillion cash prizes - in worthless Zimbabwean money, according to Sky News.

This year's Ig Nobels were sponsored by the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research.

Other winners included a Swede who wrote a trilogy about collecting bugs and TWOan Egyptian doctor who put pants on rats to study their sex lives.

Foster spent months mimicking a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer and a bird in an attempt to see the world through their eyes.He then wrote a book, called Being a Beast, about his experiences.

As a badger he lived in a hole in a Welsh hillside and as a fox he rummaged through bins in London looking for meat scraps.

He was even tracked by bloodhounds through the Scottish countryside to learn what it's like to be a deer.

"I was hunted down quite quickly."

Another Briton, Thomas Thwaites, was awarded a prize for roaming the Alps to see what it was like to live like a goat. His experiment led to him living on four prosthetic legs, at a goat farm.

Fredrik Sjoberg published three volumes about collecting hoverflies on the sparsely populated Swedish island where he lives. His books have been a hit in his homeland, and the first volume's English translation, The Fly Trap, has earned rave reviews.

Egyptian Ahmed Shafik got a posthumous gong for his work dressing rats in pants. He clothed the rats in polyester, cotton, wool and polyester-cotton blends to determine the different textiles' effects on sex drive.

He found that rats in polyester or polyester blend pants displayed less sexual activity and speculated this was perhaps due to the electrostatic charges created by polyester. (Though of course, as we all know, pants are in themselves inhibitors until removed).

It's heartening to know scientific inquiry continues unabated and across such a wide spectrum. I wonder if Foster met any lady badgers?

 

Tailpiece

TWO still lifes are hanging in an art gallery. Each has a glass of wine, a basket of bread rolls and a plate of sliced ham. They are by the same artist. Yet one is priced R7 500, the other R10 000.

Puzzled, a woman approaches the gallery owner. "Why the different prices? Everything's the same."

"Ah, look closely. For R10 000 you get more ham."

Last word

The petty economies of the rich are just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor.

William Feather

 

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