Expansion

I teach, and in the past, this was thirty or forty students in a room, with all of us going on a guided tour of some side street in the map of the word, mappa mundi. Of late, it has been a class of adults, or of colleagues, or a very small class of four or fewer young people.

And then came the suggestion — why not five or more, why not ten? Why not start a small school with small classes? Why not make it worth their while for students to learn something, in the odd and frankly rather peculiar ways of teaching you are renowned for?

Something in me cracked. I hope it wasn't a joke.

'Bootleg' DVDs

Once in a while, you make a mistake despite the many clues that you might be making a mistake. I thought those DVDs looked like a good deal.

Clues to note:

1. Site doesn't use https. One has come to expect https, and thus did not notice when making transaction that it was not. Sigh.

2. Price was not only cheap, but in retrospect, way too cheap.

3. Package arrived not only quickly, but way too quickly.

4. Package was shipped from Shanghai, China.

5. Package was marked 鞋子 under declaration of contents. For the non-Chinese-speaking, this is fairly close to the faecal expletive I vented when I saw it.

Then again, I was amused by the probably unintended joke contained in that declaration. Bootleg DVDs indeed. It's not as bad, however, as the joke I planted here.

Atlantean Jokes

In 2002, Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire carried out research to find the world's funniest joke. I like the runner-up joke; the eventual winner sounds too much like modern economic policy. So here is one of my favourite jokes:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip, and after finishing their dinner they retire for the night, and go to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend.

"Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

"I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes" exclaims Watson.

"And what do you deduce from that?"

Watson ponders for a minute. "Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?"

"Watson, you idiot!" he exclaims, "Somebody's stolen our tent!"

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The other night, I was watching a wonderful display, part of which was described as a narrative tapestry of the history of Atlantis. I must have dozed off, because I thought I heard voices in the darkness singing words that were never sung in that display.

There are five holes appearing
Up in our tapestry
We can only speak of them
Where nobody can see

Elitism and censorship
And meritocracy
A place not for the poor and weak
A faux democracy

There were more verses, but I dismissed all these dark voices and enjoyed the funny monster and the computer graphics before going off for a cheese sandwich.

Old Jokes in New Jokings

Wolff (no longer Sir Wolff) is having kaveh with an old acquaintance. He wonders who had come up with this abomination, neither kava nor coffee, and named after a mythical Persian. He listens to the acquaintance blather on about quality awards and other toys, and then he decides to tell a joke.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

At first, the secret police came for those who were making too much money (and not sharing it with them). And of course, we said nothing, for we too wanted more money.

His acquaintance smiles, makes a gesture that shows he thinks he already knows the joke but is willing to let Wolff continue.

Then the secret police came for those who were too clever (and tended to show the bosses in unflattering light). And of course, we said nothing, for we thought we were clever too.

Then the secret police came for those who taught well (and told them they were bad teachers). And of course, we said nothing, for we said, "Who are these people who think they are good teachers?"

Then the secret police came for those who spoke up (or who had meals with condemned men). And of course, we said nothing, since we were not inclined to speak up anyway.

And finally, the secret police came for us...

The acquaintance obviously finds this boring. He interrupts.

...and there was no one left to speak up for us, right? I've heard this before.

Wolff laughs. He knows that's not how it goes, in this case.

No, this is how it ends, my friend.

And finally, the secret police came for you, and you said...

"Comrade! Isn't it great to be a member of the secret police?"

Wolff enjoys the look of stunned surprise on his erstwhile colleague's face. He takes pleasure in throwing money on the table and walking away. And most of all, he carries a deep-rooted and ecstatic mirth in him, because he knows what always happens to members of Stalinist organisations.

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You can find other adventures of Sir Wolff like this. They're all historical fiction, except the one about the dragon, which is real.

Look Ma, No Hans!

It was my cousin (to be exact, my mother's sister's husband's brother's son) who first broached the topic of my resemblance to a certain Herr Oberst Hans Landa, a German colonel in the 2009 movie, Inglourious Basterds. I was at first not very amused.

And then I realised the truth; there are certain physical similarities that are quite astounding. There are also certain habits of speech and gesture which are familiar, and the bearing and demeanour are somewhat familiar as well.

But I assure you, Herr Kamerad, that I am not that man. There is nobody here except us Germans chickens.

And, oh yes, Frohe Kinderstag!

Mushroom

There was a day not so long ago when my niece turned to me and said, "Mon papa est un champignon." It amused me a lot. "Your father is a mushroom? Really?"

It set her off in peals of laughter. I wondered what had started her thinking that way. So I asked, "Why is your father a mushroom?"

She looked at me the way only the young and intelligent can and replied, "Cos he is not a toadstool! Hahaha!"

Academic Humour

Q. What do you call a student who copies another's work without citation and submits it as his own?

A. An entrepreneur.

Q. What do you call a teacher who copies another's work without citation and submits it as his own?

A. A head of department.

Q. What do you call an education officer who copies many people's work without citation and submits it as his own?

A. A principal.

Q. What do you call a student who cites somebody's work without reading it first?

A. A moron (well, that's what a certain biology teacher I know would say).

Q. What do you call a teacher who cites somebody's work without reading it first?

A. An educational researcher.

Q. What do you call an education officer who cites many people's works without reading them first?

A. Same principal, but higher on the superscale.

Breakfast (Again)

The last time I wrote about breakfast, JS reminded me that there are indeed some far-flung corners of the world where minced-pork noodles and other wonderful morning meals are not readily available. You might have to cook them yourself, and you might not be able to find the right ingredients even then. This is a tragic truth.

I suppose the discontentment of globalisation is that it requires all to have equal access, forgetting that without barriers, what remains is mush. It is so in every organic structure. Can you imagine if your whole body decided to do away with its selectively-permeable membranes and mix everything up? You'd not be a viable organism anymore. It is just as true for the world; unless you can maintain some barriers, the virtue of separate qualities is lost.

Think for example of President Obama (well, in a couple of days, that's what he'll be). Much is made of the fact that he is half-Kenyan, half-white-American. Or that he spent his childhood in exotic locales like Kansas, Indonesia and Hawaii. But if everyone was of an indeterminate race or every place had the same quota of McDonald's or Starbucks or Lucky Coffee Shop Braised Pork Noodles, all this would have NO significance at all!

It is all very well to say that one shouldn't care about gender, race, or any of the other primitively simple differentiating elements in human society. But we still choose one breakfast over another. We don't choose to mush everything up in one flat grey or brown disc of homogenised nutrients. We actually spend time preparing food, and write essays that make sense. Homogeneity is rubbish, the lack of discrimination is an enemy.

What? So illiberal and uneducated a view from this blog?

Perhaps. But I'd like to point out that I much prefer the way humour integrates us all. There are Jewish jokes, there are Polish jokes, there are jokes about Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Scotsmen, Chinese, Japanese... they are all racist jokes. But the interesting thing is that they are all the same jokes. We just re-label them to make fun of someone else. There are very few jokes that can't be transferred to someone else (maybe some Sikh jokes or jokes about unpronounceable Polish or Celtic names); a lot of these are puns that rely on proficiency with a specific language.

The point is that we eventually learn to blend without making too much of similarity or difference, but rather complementarity and a harmony of differences. That's why we eat bacon and eggs, or salted eggs and congee, or bagels with lox. We know the digestive system (from the lips and teeth, down to the other end) will mix everything up and produce a final lump of homogenised crap, but at the input end, we still like to be able to distinguish individual and mixed flavours and aromas all at once.

Batman Returns

I was brought up partly on Kipling by my father's judicious intervention, as I've mentioned before. (It brings to mind an old British cartoon which I've always found amusing, but I digress.)

It occurs to me that because of this kind of paternal education, I actually came across the word 'Batman' a long time before I came across the Caped Crusader in comics or on TV. A batman is a commissioned officer's orderly — his runner, valet, and general dogsbody all in one. There's also a Batman province in Turkey and all kinds of other Batmen (Batmans?), including one that has a mass of 16.4 metric tons.

This kind of education has an odd effect on the young. It makes them grow up with a terrible urge to make funny associations that nobody else will get, laugh like a maniac at a particularly pleasing but abstruse joke, and ask riddles with answers that will either elicit groans or require explanations (this latter then makes the riddle lose its humour and die).

All this came to mind when my 7-year-old niece started asking me riddles from one of those '1001 Riddles' jokebooks (like 'jukebox' but with different vowel sounds in it). We had a lot of fun inventing better answers than those provided. My niece approves of that kind of thing. She has said to me before, "Uncle, you're a tricky man!"

She means it in a good sense, I think. At least, she laughs a lot when saying it.

Radio Gaga

Sometimes terrible jokes come out of meetings between friends when some sort of critical mass is achieved. Wyverns from the old nest tend to do this; one or two wyverns will make a bad joke, but several will generate a spontaneous barrage.

It all started with an old joke from years ago. Nuclear medicine, the practice of injecting small doses of radioactive isotopes into humans for diagnostic and interventional purposes, became known as 'unclear medicine' because of the fuzzy returns generated.

Then the Abyss came up with "all lines look unclear" over a chess game. And I replied, "Yes... we shall exercise our unclear options!" At which point he said, "Unclear options. Like those unreliable Pak or N Korean nukes. Haha!"

Which made me think... We call nuclear weapons 'nukes', so does that make unclear weapons 'uncles'? It all reminds me of that old 1960s TV comedy thriller series starring Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Ilya Kuryakin.

Daily Punishment

A really bad joke with classical antecedents appeared fully-armed from my head tonight.

αυτολϋκος - flow reversed
12:04
like Helen of Troy
12:05
her face launched a thousand ships; it was a fleeting beauty.

Oh dear. And it happens at least once a day, this kind of joke.

Joke of the Day

I was having dinner with the family last night. Somehow, this came out of my mouth and the family was stunned. Poor family.

There's a new role for the US Secret Service. It will appear in their Christmas cards later this year.

The Secret Service: shepherds a Biden in the field.

Heh.

No Joking Matter

I've had been present at many occasions that felt that they were the set-up for some sort of joke: you know, the kind that begins with, "An Englishman, a Welshman and an Irishman walk into a canteen..." or perhaps "A teacher, a judge and a politician walk into a bar..." or something like that.

It strikes me that in real life, the matters discussed at such meetings tend to be more serious than that. Whenever two or three (or four, or five) people gather together in the name of gold, guns, graft, gin, government, or God; that name is like a guiding spirit hovering over the discussion. Most times it is barely more serious that what it looks like; sometimes, it is deadly serious. The conversation tends to move with a kind of adept facility into channels which are more portentous.

I remember a few counting rhymes which seem to conceal that kind of sinister dexterity. These include the relatively simple, "One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go!" Of course, the one which is a classic to me is the one I quoted just a month ago, "One for the morning glory..."

But one looks for signs and portents, and finds them. In the Bible there are some famous examples: "But when you shall see the abomination of desolation... standing where it ought not, then let them that be in Judaea flee to the high mountains..." is a clear one related to graven images and symbols of pagan power; likewise, the preoccupations of Nebuchadnezzar and the dreams which resulted (it is always fascinating to read the first few chapters of the book of the prophet Daniel if you have the time).

And at first, those too look like jokes: "Two Roman eagles meet in the courtyard of the temple..." or "A statue with a head of gold and feet of clay..." and so on. But of course, there are always lessons to be learnt, and prices to be paid.

The Alice Riddle

The riddle to which I allude is of course the one taken from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It's the one which goes, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" As the author himself pointed out, it was a riddle designed not to have an answer. But such riddles frustrate readers, who often read too much into any given text. I suppose the best answer is that both are covered with inky quills.

A lot of false etymology and grammar goes this way. Is it 'an uncle' or 'a nuncle'? Is it 'an (h)istorian' or 'a historian'? Does 'grammar' itself come from 'grandma' and what she taught the grandkids? Whatever it is, a raven does not rave; neither does the craven crave. The depraved has nothing to do with abstinence from pravda. And so on.

I am vastly amused by the contortions we inflict on ourselves when we try to attribute meaning where there is none, or to make a false meaning fit the facts. It is human nature, made so by the fact that neurobiology is like that and our brains are deceptive. The human heart is desperately wicked – but so is a candle when you urgently need it to catch fire. It is all a matter of being careful with your speech.

So, why is a raven like a writing desk? Follow the link I supplied above, and if you don't like those answers, come up with your own.

Hunting Elephants

I don't know why I feel so uncharacteristically flippant these days. I think it's because I have given up on what people think is serious and portentous and have decided to concentrate on education instead. The joke series that follows was first introduced to me by my brother, a talented historian and expert on terrorism and arms trading. He loves elephants, and it has caused him no end of grief. Heh. I have added my own sub-jokes too.

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HUNTING ELEPHANTS – A Multidisciplinary Approach

This is a simple aide-memoire to help you remember how various specialists would handle the hunt for an African elephant. Enjoy!

Group 1 & 2 Hunters

LINGUISTS hunt elephants by going to Africa and asking for things which have grey, wrinkly, large properties. They then flap their ears a lot, make trumpeting sounds, and catch whatever comes along in response.

LITERATI are more artistic in this respect. Some attempt to set the mood with Indian decor for the sake of parallelism. The poetic type look for stressed feet which alternate a-b-a-b. The rest accept anything African as a prize-winning elephant.

CLASSICISTS locate tapirs, describe all possible manifestations of them, and proclaim that the true elephant does not have the modern trunk, tusks or stature.

Group 3 Hunters

ANTHROPOLOGISTS hunt elephant hunters.

SOCIOLOGISTS don't hunt elephants. They hang out at bars and trade elephant-hunting stories.

ECONOMISTS don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough, they will hunt themselves.

GEOGRAPHERS look for elephant footprints, elephant watering holes, and elephant graveyards. Having located all these and drawn appropriate maps, they model an elephant.

HISTORIANS ask everyone where the elephants were seen and what they did, then write elephantine books.

MANAGEMENT STUDENTS study elephant hunters and write case studies about the successful and unsuccessful ones, not bothering to hunt elephants themselves.

POLITICIANS don't hunt elephants either, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them.

LAWYERS don't hunt elephants at all, but they do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings.

BUSINESS CONSULTANTS don't hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.

OPERATIONS RESEARCH CONSULTANTS can also measure the correlation of what size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant-hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants.

PSYCHOLOGISTS hunt imaginary elephants.

PSYCHIATRISTS are hunted by imaginary elephants, and prescribe drugs to escape them.

Group 4 Hunters

ASTRONOMERS have never seen an elephant but meet several times a year to debate their existence anyway.

BIOLOGISTS do surveys of the landscape and find two-footed elephants with wings, skinny elephants with stripes, low-slung elephants with one horn, high-strung elephants with two horns...

PRE-MEDS don't hunt elephants, but would learn to do so if it would help them on their MCATs.

CHEMISTS estimate their population in terms of 6 x 10E23 and call them moles.

ENGINEERS hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant.

PARTICLE PHYSICISTS spend their lives smashing rhinoceri into each other and hoping to observe resultant elephant tracks.

PROFESSORS OF PHYSICS hunt large grey animals which they hypothesise might be elephants. They then sit around and wait for a few years for someone to challenge them. If no one does, they publish the results.

NOBEL PRIZE WINNING PROFESSORS OF PHYSICS hunt large grey animals, publish their results, and everyone agrees that they are elephants.

Group 5 Hunters

MATHEMATICIANS hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left.

EXPERIENCED MATHEMATICIANS will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise.

PROFESSORS OF MATHEMATICS will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.

TOPOLOGISTS catch elephants by drawing a circle, confirming that there are no elephants inside the circle, and inverting the circle – the circle will now contain all the elephants.

STATISTICIANS hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an elephant.

COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
  a. Catch each animal seen.
  b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
  c. Stop when a match is detected.

EXPERIENCED COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate.

ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMERS prefer to execute Algorithm A on their hands and knees.

Group 6 Hunters (and others)

ARTISTS hunt elephants with a telephoto lens; when they're done, you will wonder where the elephant is.

DANCERS hunt elephants by instinct, but it doesn't matter if they never see one – it's all in the feet.

MUSICIANS hunt elephants by sound; actually, they believe that all animals have an elephant hidden inside awaiting the right conductor.

FRESHMEN hunt elephants. But first they stalk out the libraries and read every available piece of literature on elephants.

UPPERCLASSMEN hunt elephants, but remember to do so only on the last day of the season.

Many, Many Cows

It's one of those evenings on which you realise that, sometimes, the old jokes really are the best jokes. For many years, I collected versions of the infamous 'Two Cows' political jokes. Today, for the first time in years, I am putting a short selection online. Enjoy them, especially you out there who have just finished the HL History paper. Bear in mind that tomorrow is the Fourth of July. And laugh a lot. Have yourself a cow. Or two.

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Two Cows (And Friends)

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You then have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes the brown one away and you never see it again. The white one milks you.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

MILITARISTIC DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you, saying, "Every citizen must do his or her duty."

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your male, rich, slave-owning, cultured and intelligent neighbours decide that they should have your milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.

KOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and your neighbours clash with riot police outside your home for three weeks because they might be *foreign* cows.

INDONESIAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows, and someone bribes you to put a yellow t-shirt on one of them, and a group of thugs intimidate you into putting a green t-shirt on the other.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. Then they realise they can make you ballot for the right to pay for a certificate allowing you to own cows of different capacities. This is where the fun starts...

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

HONGKONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the feng shui is bad.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM: You have two bovines of politically indeterminate genitive status seeking special concessions for the nature of their chromosomal arrangements.

CRYPTO-FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTERCULTURE: Wow, dude, there's like... these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.

SURREALISM: You really have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

ANARCHY: Keep the cows. Steal another one. Shoot the government.

CONSERVATISM: Freeze the milk. Embalm the cows.

LIBERALISM: Give away one cow. Get the government to give you a new cow. Now give them both away.

Mind Over Matter

1989 was a very productive year for me. I was well on my way to an undistinguished first year in university, reading Chemistry, Computer Science and Mathematics. It was all very relaxing. And on 3 Aug 1989 I finally took up the challenge of a friend of mine: "Write a poem entitled Mind over Matter."

We were all bored then. These were the days of green-phosphor visual display units, and of playing all-text games, or games in which the sprites were animated keyboard characters. Our other form of entertainment was exploring the nascent internet and playing pranks - including the sending of funny poems to (and sometimes, the receiving of not-so-funny penalties from) the programmers and administrators at the Computer Centre.

Here was my effort (I have even included the header, should anyone want verification). Yes, it is a very bad pun. I'm still not sorry. And Sally, wherever you are, this one's for you!

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RSCSV22 SCE20010 XX/XX/XX 9:41:29 SST WAS THE ORIGIN
DEST:P08 FILE:5593 NAME:BBOARD LOG DIST:SCIENCE
RECS:1308 A0 VM/SP RELEASE 5.0 CMS PUT 8804+

There was a man who wove carpets:
Carpets of every shade and hue,
With a weave that was fine,
Showing shading and line,
And artwork too good to be true.

There was a carpet weaving man:
Carpets soft to the yearning touch,
Woven great in degree,
Woven when he was free -
They didn't cost really that much.

Carpets wove a man who was there.
Carpets were his life and his time;
You could look at your fate
If you dared contemplate
The silk as he wove it sublime.

Wove carpets a man who was there?
Carpets wove his life at the end:
Hand and eye did not fail,
But I tell a true tale -
And they drove him right round the bend.

A man who was carpets there wove -
Carpets himself three times or more
Each day. The buyers stare
As he dyes himself there
And wish he'd get up from the floor.