Posted inGeneral

God is at the craps table again

On Wednesay, physicists at CERN fired up the big ol’ Hadron Collider and are now waiting for the magical appearance of the haloed Higgs Boson. This theoretical elementary particle has been dubbed by some “The God particle”, a name physicists despise because it overstates the importance of the Higgs Boson. Good to know that Big […]

Posted inBusinessSport

Has the World Cup been stolen?

JOHANNESBURG — South Africans’ worst fears have been realised. The World Cup, transported to South Africa over the weekend, has been stolen. This according to a Polish syndicate calling itself Federacja Czerwonych Rysi (Federation of the Red Lynx), who claim to have broken into IFA offices on Monday and stolen the 36cm gold trophy. Photographs […]

Posted inLifestyle

The Pralka Party

“Well, I’m from Mars,” the professor says, “It’s not too far from Venus, you know”. His Gandalf-like appearance certainly endeared him to me before, but as he speaks he starts to look more Lord of Ward C than Lord of the Ring. And Mars is light years from Venus! Is he insane AND astronomically misguided? […]

Posted inSport

All white rugby

“I don’t know why it is, but it is a fact that the Afrikaner cultural group just seems to produce some freakishly built people with a freakish genetic make-up,” Nick Mallet famously said in 2007. Pierre Spies, Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger and Os du Randt have …

Posted inGeneral

Ich bin kein Berliner

Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F Kennedy, 1963 Zwei Berliner, bitte. — Tertius Kapp, 2009 21/10/09, 15:34 JFK famously called himself a doughnut (a specific German variety known as a “Berliner”) during a 1963 speech underlining the USA’s support for West Germany. Recently, party poopers have been pointing out that he was technically correct […]

Posted inGeneral

Teaching Afrikaans as a foreign language

The Dutch word for “soon” is “straks”. In Afrikaans, “straks” became “maybe”. Obviously, one can have quite a bit of fun speculating on the reasons for this linguistic divergence. “T.I.A.”, some of my friends would say (usually while relaxing with sundowners on a beach): “T.I.A. — you can’t be sure of anything.” Don’t worry, I […]