Brexit – it's
a generational
thing
BREXIT news. British prime minister Boris Johnson is alive and well and living at No 10 Downing Street. Reports that he was found dead in a ditch are greatly exaggerated – to use the phrase of Mark Twain – even though he would have preferred the ditch scenario to failing to secure a Halloween Brexit this Thursday.
Now he's agitating for a Christmas election, anticipating a landslide of voter support for the convoluted Brexit deal he's negotiated.
A Banx cartoon in London's Financial Times could well capture the public mood. Two middle-aged fellows are walking down a London street. One says: "My father was a Brexit negotiator, and his father before him …"
Careful what you wish for, Boris.
Breakthrough
RESEARCHERS at Richmond University, Virginia, in the US, have made a breakthrough. They've taught rats to drive tiny little cars, according to Sky News. This surely is what the world has been waiting for.
The study used a tiny car with three copper bars that allowed the rats to steer by gripping the bars with their paws, completing an electrical circuit.
These rats were responding to being rewarded with treats of sweet cereal, helping the scientists to understand how learning skills affects the mind – human minds also – and stress levels. These rats also have a privileged background, being placed in an "enriched environnent" containing ladders and toys. They are intellectually way ahead of your run-of-the-mill rats.
According to Professor Kelly Lambert, the study bears a lot of relevance for the way that the human mind works too.
It advances her theory regarding "the well-grounded brain, the brain which is engaged in authentic interactions with the real world and the social world."
This is fascinating stuff. It was the topic of discussion at an intellectual study group at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties the other evening, sitting outside in pleasant summery weather. What the world needs is rats driving tiny cars, not scuttling up and down drainpipes and things. That was the consenus.
But then the calm was abruptly and rudely shattered by traffic noise as human rats behind the wheel of souped up cars dropped the clutch as the traffic lights changed nearby, making the evening hideous with a squealing of tyres and the smell of burning rubber. Then a cannonade of backfiring. It happened again and again.
Privileged rats from an enriched environment. That's them, just like in Richmond Virginia. Professor Lambert would do well to come out here to Durban and study the effect of human rats behind the wheel in creating deviations from the "well-grounded brain."
Marijuana call-out
WHAT are the cops for if not to solve crime? A dude in Dade City, Florida, in the US, found that somebody had pinched his stash of marijuana from his room. He called the emergency number 911 to report the theft and ask for assistance.
He got no satisfactory response, according to Huffington Post. He kept on calling. Eventually a deputy from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office had to contact him via Twitter to tell him to zip it.
Recreational marijuana use remains illegal in Florida. Perhaps that explains the lack of enthusiasm. But at least no charges were filed against the caller.
Tailpiece
THIS fellow has been diagnosed as psychoceramic - he's a real crackpot.
Last word
If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail. - Fran Lebowitz
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