The Idler, Wednesday September 18, 2019

The richest

prizes in

science

HARVARD University has made its annual Ig Nobel Awards for weird scientific discoveries, a spoof of the real Nobel awards that has been running for 29 years. Although it's a spoof, the awards are handed out by real Nobel Prize winners.

According to Huffington Post, this year's winners include Dutch and Turkish researchers who discovered that Romania has the yuckiest and most germ-ridden banknotes; an Italian scientist who has discovered that pizza is actually good for you; and a group of researchers who have discovered that the clickers used to train dogs are also very handy in training surgeons.

Each winner is given a prize of 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars and has to make a one-minute acceptance speech, in competition with an 8-year-old girl whining" "Please stop, I'm bored!"

The awards event is produced by the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, and co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students.

It's good to know that academic standards are being maintained.

 

 

Times three

IT WAS a case of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. Christina Malone-Brown was born to her delighted parents on September 9 (9/11) in Germantown, Tennessee, in the US. It was 9.11pm. And she weighed 9 pounds 11 ounces, according to Sky News.

Christina's mother, Cametrione, said her baby girl had managed to offer a positive moment on a day overshadowed by the 2001 terror attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as in Pennsylvania.

When she was born, the doctor cried a number of times: "Oh my goodness, I've got a 9/11, 9/11, 9/11."

 

 

Another Nessie?

DOES China have its own version of the Loch Ness Monster? Footage has appeared on a blog site of a long, black creature manoeuvring in the Yangtze River, according to the BBC.

But nobody can say what it is. A scientist says it is probably just a large "water snake". Adding to the confusion, a length of black cloth has since washed up on rocks in the river. Is this what they saw, simply floating?

It seems China has indeed found its Lock Ness Monster. Nobody has actually seen Nessie – it's all strange ripples and inconclusive photographs. But he/she is most certainly a presence and a powerful boost to the Scottish tourism industry.

 

 

Scary stats

THE crime statistics released the other day are simply horrendous. Into what kind of quagmire have we sunk? It's captured in a grim little poem that comes this way, titled Bedtime Story for South Africa.

The doors are all locked, the security gates too,

Burglar-barred windows make it look like a zoo.

The alarms are all activated, the cars are pulled in,

The electric fence is buzzing, the motion beams glow dim.

The rotties are snoring in baskets in the hall

So they can't be poisoned over the wall.

The gun's out the safe and under the bed,

Our prayers (to survive the night) have been said.

So nighty-night, we hope you'll sleep tight,

We'll leave it to Eskom to switch out the light!

 

 

Tailpiece

TWO musicians are walking down the street. One says: "Who was the piccolo I saw you with last night?"

"That was no piccolo, that was my fife."

 

Last word

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. - George Bernard Shaw

The Idler, Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Brexit – enter

the cartoon

characters

THE Incredible Hulk – the Marvell Comics cartoon character – joins the Brexit negotiations. He was invoked by British prime minister Boris Johnson at the weekend.

"The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets," Johnson told the Mail on Sunday. Britain would certainly leave the EU by October 31.

The Incredible Hunk is a green giant of immense destructive strength. The cartoonists have had a field day, one showing the giant wrecking the Houses of Parliament.

Johnson certainly needs all the help he can get. Today the Supreme Court sits to consider a ruling by Scotland's highest court that his prorogation of parliament was unlawful.

Parliament has passed a law requiring that if no deal with the EU is achieved, he has to apply for an extension of the October 31 deadline.

He has lost six consecutive votes in the House of Commons.

Perhaps Bojo needs more than The Incredible Hulk. Superman, The Incredible Spider-Man, Batman and Desperate Dan are standing by.

 

Another Jock

MANY readers will remember master cartoonist Jock Leyden who entertained this province – and far further afield at times - over many decades.

He covered everything from cricket, rugby, football and tennis to motor racing to the theatre to politics to war (World War II). And much besides.

Two of his originals hang in Buckingham Palace, one in Blenheim Palace, one in the Pentagon. He received a papal medal for his work. Also Freedom of the City of Durban.

A clubhouse at Kingsmead – the Mynahs – is named after his cricketing Indian mynah characters. At King's Park, the KZN Rugby Union HQ is plastered with Jock's cartoons.

Jock was ambidextrous. He could draw with both hands simultaneously. His little signature box beneath his cartoons was always drawn with his left hand from right to left.

When he died, some years ago now, Jock left a void. But suddenly Durban has a new Jock Leyden.

Jock's son Murray tells me his (Murray's) grandson was born three weeks ago and is to be named Jock, after his great-granddad.

Jock Leyden II. This baby needs to be watched carefully for ambidextrous talents. He must be allowed to scribble on any wall he chooses. He must be nurtured, encouraged. Durban could do with another genius cartoonist.

 

 

Harbinger?

INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener speculates in his latest grumpy newsletter whether a slight strengthening of the currency, as well as share and bond prices, could be a harbinger of the Boks bringing home the World Cup?

"Business confidence has gone the other way but maybe that's because companies suspect that productivity is going to plunge with kick-off times in working hours.

"As others have remarked, it is astonishing just how unaffected the markets are by what those of us who follow 'social media' feel is a huge wave of lawlessness swamping the country. The racist violent attacks on foreigners who have swarmed into our country to fill niches and make a living where locals can't be bothered, is terrible.

"It would be useful for all South Africans if our borders were not so porous, while simultaneously the formal immigration process was not so tardy and asinine."

 

 

Tailpiece

 

NERO was talking to his financial advisers in a Roman amphitheatre.

"Why aren't we making more money from this building?"

"Because the lions are eating up all the prophets."

 

Last word

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. - David Letterman

 

The Idler, Monmday, September 16, 2019

Time for a

response to

the haka

FIVE days to go before the resurgent Boks meet the All Blacks (with whom they tied in their last encounter) in the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Will this match turn out to be a preliminary to the final? Can the Boks wrest the crown from the current holders? The stakes could hardly be higher.

There's a parallel with the line-up in 1937, brilliantly captured by raconteur Michael Charton in a talk in Kloof last week titled "The First World Champions – the untold story of the 1937 Springboks in New Zealand". He was speaking to several hundred people at a function in aid of the Youth Education and Support Trust.

New Zealand and South Africa had emerged as the two powerhouses of world rugby. Yet when they met in 1921 and 1926, they tied the series. This was the Big 'Un in 1937. The world was watching.

Charton has delved into the dry records and newspaper reports, consulted elsewhere and produced a vibrant account of that tour, the agonies and indecisions, the characters involved.

There was skipper Philip Nel, the Greytown farmer who first played for Natal while still a schoolboy at Maritzburg College. There was Danie Craven, who played scrumhalf, flyhalf and eighth man on that tour; and later became a rugby administrator known world-wide as "Mr Rugby". There was the great Boy Louw, who mauled the English language as badly as he mauled the opposition. There was Ebbo Bastard, the wild man of East Griqualand … and plenty more of them.

There's great humour. The New Zealand ref who skipped for joy in a Test match when a Kiwi try was converted. The matches played on fields where islands of mud poked above the lakelike surface.

Then the final Test at Eden Park, Auckland, the decider. But star centre Louis Babrow was an orthodox Jew who said he couldn't play because it was Yom Kippur. But the team managed to persuade him that, as a South African Jew, he was entitled to observe Yom Kippur on the day it was celebrated in South Africa, the other side of the International Date Line.

Babrow played. The Higher Powers must have approved. He scored two tries and clinched the series.

Charton's account is threaded from the start by the Maori question and the colour bar in South Africa. I recall hearing Philip Nel describe how the Springboks would counter the All Blacks haka with a Zulu dance. I often wondered why this had ended.

Charton tells us. When the 1949 All Blacks toured South Africa, the Nats had just come to power with their apartheid policy. The Maoris were barred. So the All Blacks refused to perform the Maori haka. And there was no need for the Springboks to counter with a Zulu dance. What a fizzle.

Charton also describes how the 1937 Springboks were soon serving in World War II (and we hope this isn't part of the parallel). Many served with distinction, many did not return. There were unofficial Tests between the Springboks and the All Blacks in North Africa and even in POW camps.

Hey, apartheid is no more. Nelson Mandela wore Francois Pienaar's Springbok jersey. Why not a Zulu dance this World Cup in response to the haka?

 

Tailpiece

What's the difference between an onion and an accordion?

Nobody cries when you chop up an accordion.

Last word

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

The Idler, Monday, Septemner 16, 2019

Time for a

response to

the haka

FIVE days to go before the resurgent Boks meet the All Blacks (with whom they tied in their last encounter) in the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Will this match turn out to be a preliminary to the final? Can the Boks wrest the crown from the current holders? The stakes could hardly be higher.

There's a parallel with the line-up in 1937, brilliantly captured by raconteur Michael Charton in a talk in Kloof last week titled "The First World Champions – the untold story of the 1937 Springboks in New Zealand". He was speaking to several hundred people at a function in aid of the Youth Education and Support Trust.

New Zealand and South Africa had emerged as the two powerhouses of world rugby. Yet when they met in 1921 and 1926, they tied the series. This was the Big 'Un in 1937. The world was watching.

Charton has delved into the dry records and newspaper reports, consulted elsewhere and produced a vibrant account of that tour, the agonies and indecisions, the characters involved.

There was skipper Philip Nel, the Greytown farmer who first played for Natal while still a schoolboy at Maritzburg College. There was Danie Craven, who played scrumhalf, flyhalf and eighth man on that tour; and later became a rugby administrator known world-wide as "Mr Rugby". There was the great Boy Louw, who mauled the English language as badly as he mauled the opposition. There was Ebbo Bastard, the wild man of East Griqualand … and plenty more of them.

There's great humour. The New Zealand ref who skipped for joy in a Test match when a Kiwi try was converted. The matches played on fields where islands of mud poked above the lakelike surface.

Then the final Test at Eden Park, Auckland, the decider. But star centre Louis Babrow was an orthodox Jew who said he couldn't play because it was Yom Kippur. But the team managed to persuade him that, as a South African Jew, he was entitled to observe Yom Kippur on the day it was celebrated in South Africa, the other side of the International Date Line.

Babrow played. The Higher Powers must have approved. He scored two tries and clinched the series.

Charton's account is threaded from the start by the Maori question and the colour bar in South Africa. I recall hearing Philip Nel describe how the Springboks would counter the All Blacks haka with a Zulu dance. I often wondered why this had ended.

Charton tells us. When the 1949 All Blacks toured South Africa, the Nats had just come to power with their apartheid policy. The Maoris were barred. So the All Blacks refused to perform the Maori haka. And there was no need for the Springboks to counter with a Zulu dance. What a fizzle.

Charton also describes how the 1937 Springboks were soon serving in World War II (and we hope this isn't part of the parallel). Many served with distinction, many did not return. There were unofficial Tests between the Springboks and the All Blacks in North Africa and even in POW camps.

Hey, apartheid is no more. Nelson Mandela wore Francois Pienaar's Springbok jersey. Why not a Zulu dance this World Cup in response to the haka?

 

Tailpiece

What's the difference between an onion and an accordion?

Nobody cries when you chop up an accordion.

Last word

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

The Idler, Friday, September 13, 2019

Bigfoot,

the giant

man-ape

 

THE legend still swirls of Bigfoot, the giant man-ape – or maybe giant grizzly bear – that inhabits the forests of North America. He's a bit like the Yeti – or Abominable Snowman – of Nepal, sometimes glimpsed in the distance, sometimes leaving tracks in the snow but seemingly never directly encountered.

Confusing though, I have met Bigfoot. In fact I worked with him in days of yore in various parts of Africa. But this was the nickname of Peter Younghusband, hulking – and highly entertaining - doyen of the foreign press corps in those days. He has since retired to a wine farm in the Western Cape.

Back to the mysterious Bigfoot. A fellow in North Carolina, in the US, says he's captured footage of Bigfoot and two of his fellow Bigfeet in the woods of Catawba Valley.

The footage wasn't clear (it never is). But it showed something moving on the other side of a set of trees, according to Huffington Post.

But Doug Teague, who shot the video, says he spotted three ape-like cryptids. He says he often goes into the woods looking for Bigfoot and his pals. He leaves snacks to lure them.

"They like granola bars, apples, mushrooms, turnips, Moon Pies," he says. "They like sweets."

Wow! Granola bars, apples, mushrooms – that's exactly what the Bigfoot I used to know found irresistible (besides beer). I really must check whether Younghusband has been on holiday in the Catawba Valley, North Carolina.

 

 

Ramblng

 

OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "I wanted to join the local rambling club but the fellow I got on the phone went on and on and on."

 

 

Shocked

 

AN AMERICAN perspective on the British parliament's taking control of the Brexit process. It appears in the New Yorker.

"Americans were shocked on Tuesday by the spectacle of a legislative body appearing to take action.

"Across the US, television viewers watched with mouths agape at startling images of legislators seemingly intent on performing their constitutional duties.

"Adding to Americans' sense of astonishment, the legislators showed evidence of putting their country before party in an effort to rein in the actions of a reckless leader who had not garnered the majority of his nation's votes.

"Even more baffling to US viewers, the legislators were furious that the leader had reduced the number of days that they had to show up to do their jobs.

"Harland Dorrinson, who watched the bizarre proceedings on television at a bar in Pittsburgh, was 'totally perplexed' by what he saw.

"'From what I could tell, the legislators were providing oversight over the executive branch in order to protect their country from disaster,'" he said. 'It was so weird.'"

As a satirist, Andy Borowitz was of course really writing about his own country.

 

 

Still trying

 

A PICTURE comes this way of a spaceship flying through the cosmos. Caption: "The year is 2259. Earth is a member of the United Federation of Planets. Minus the United Kingdom which is still trying to leave the EU."

 

 

Tailpiece

 

HOSPITAL doctors went on strike. They were picketing. The hospital management send a pharmacist to read the demands on their placards.

 

Last word

 

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticise it. - Pierre Gallois

 

 

The Idler, Thursday, September 12m 2019

The sheriff

rides off into

the sunset

 

THE revolving door at the White House continues to whirl. Who can count the number of cabinet high-fliers who have come out? The latest to emerge is the Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, John Bolton, who has had to hand in his tin star.

Why this Wild West apellation for the erstwhile National Security Adviser? It seems apt. His white moustache, gimlet eye and gung-ho attitude make him the embodiment of the old-style sheriff.

It seems his disagreement with President Trump is over the appropriate approach to the world's dictators. While Bolton divides the world into goodies and baddies – clear-cut, no wriggle-room – and for the baddies it's a policy of "Slap leather!", Trump would rather sit down and make a deal with them, whether the North Koreans, the Iranians or the Taliban.

Slap leather or wheeler-deal, a kind of game of poker. The Trump administration has at least made foreign policy a lot less complex than before.

 

 

Disapprovals

 

 

MEANWHILE, a fellow in Sweden has been denied permission to use to use the letters TRUMP on his car's personalised licence plate.

The applicant says he was a bit sloshed when he made the application online, according to Huffington Post, but he thought it a good idea because he drives an American car.

However, the Swedish Transport Agency said it does not approve of letter combinations that have political connotations.

Recently a woman in America was refused the licence plate PB4WEGO because the authorities disapprove of lavatorial connotations.

 

 

Ptroved right

 

A MOUNT Everest climbing pioneer is proved right, 66 years on. George Lowe was not hallucinating due to altitude when he saw geese flying over the world's highest mountain.

Lowe, a New Zealander, was in the climbing party that assisted Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norbay in their first-ever ascent to the summit of Everest in 1953.

He afterwards reported seeing flocks of wild geese, which scientists poo-poohed saying that would be impossible at an altitude of almost 9 000m. He must have been imagining it.

But other climbers have since claimed similar sightings of geese. Now, according to Sky News, researchers have found that geese – in particular a species known as the bar-headed goose  - can alter their metabolism to adapt to low-oxygen atmosphere at high altitudes.

They emulated conditions at Everest altitude by kitting out geese with censor-laden backpacks and breathing masks that mimic oxygen levels at 9 000m before analysing their flight in a wind tunnel.

Conclusion: Geese may well have the ability to fly over Mount Everest.

The geese are no doubt are happy enough to be kitted with backpacks and breathing masks, then fly in a wind tunnel – all in the interests of science and building the reputation of their species.

 

 

 

Words, words

 

LIMERICK time:

There was young curate of Salisbury,

Whose conduct was halisbury-scalisbury.

He wandered round Hampshire  

Without any pampshire,

'Til the vicar compelled him to walisbury.

 

Huh? Well it works if you recall that the old Latin name for Salisbury is Sarum and the postal code for Hampshire is Hants.

 

 

 

Tailpiece

PICASSO surprised a burglar in his studio in France. The intruder got away but Picasso gave the gendarmes a rough sketch of the man.

They arrested a mother superior, the minister of finance, a washing machine and the Eiffel Tower.

Last word

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. - Max Beerbohm

The Idler, Wednesday, Septemberb 11, 2019

Burlesque

worthy of

Lewis Carroll

 

THE Brexit burlesque gets just crazier and crazier. Prime Minister Boris Johnson declares that Bexit will happen on October 31, with or without a deal, do or die.

Parliament – and that means the House of Commons, the House of Lords and Queen Elizabeth – has passed a law that no such thing will happen. If no deal is produced like a rabbit out of the hat before then, Johnson is obliged to ask the EU for an extension of the deadline.

But Johnson has said he will not do it. He would rather be dead in a ditch.

Is he somehow above the law? MPs are talking about prosecution, impeachment. Hey, real drama!

Meanwhile, Bojo has lost his sixth vote in parliament – unprecedented, Theresa May resigned after losing three – and this was to hold a snap election in October, no doubt to whip up a frenzy of "people versus parliament" sentiment in tandem with Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.

But hold on. A senior Tory adviser (who has now lost his job since his minister resigned from the cabinet in protest at the purging of 21 senior MPs) says research, seen by the inner circle, suggests that the Tories would not get a majority in an election anyway. Is Bojo running out of road?

Who could have scripted all this? Lewis Carroll?

Meanwhile, the BBC reports from America that weather forecasters were threatened with losing their jobs unless they supported Donald Trump's statement on TV that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian.

The Russians protest that Google and Facebook interfered with their recent provincial and local elections. (Hollow laughter from the security agencies who say the Russians did precisely that with the British referendum and the US elections).

Zany, to be sure. But the Brits are still way ahead in the Silly Season Stakes.

 

 

Boks and All Blacks

 

THE clock ticks toward the Big 'Un in just 10 days' time in Japan. And this World Cup pool match between current holders, the All Blacks, and the resurgent Springboks could well turn out to be just a foretaste of the final.

The rugby rivalry between South Africa and New Zealand goes back a long way. The Test series of 1921 and 1926 were drawn. Nobody was top dog.

Then in 1937 the Boks won on New Zealand soil, and since then it's been a seesaw.

Tomorrow night that '37 tour will be revisited in a talk in Kloof by raconteur Michael Charlton, who has made a study of it and the vivid characters involved.

Titled "The First World Champions: The Untold Story of the Legendary 1937 Springboks in New Zealand", it is organised in aid of the Youth Education and Support Trust.

Danie Craven, later to become an organisational mainstay of our rugby, was on that tour as scrumhalf. Skipper was Phillip Nel, a Greytown farmer who used to come to Maritzburg College (of which he was an old boy) at the start of every rugby season to give the fellows a pep talk. A lovely, sunny character Nel was. His son and a nephew were at the school.

I look forward to this talk. It will be in the St Agnes Church Auditorium, Abelia Road, Kloof, and tickets (R150) are available at www.webtickets.co.za

 

 

 

Tailpiece

THIS contortionist went bankrupt. He couldn't make ends meet,

 

Last word

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

August Strindberg