Struwwelpeter: ‘We had the same problems in England, you know’

LAST Saturday night, just after dark, Struwwelpeter heard loud screams and some dull thumps from his lounge. Obviously an intruder!

He grabbed a big stick and rushed to the lounge to protect his wife.

But there was no intruder. As I stormed into the lounge, I realised that it was the final few minutes of the Stormers vs the Lions game. There she was screaming with excitement.

The dull thumps were her jumping up and down in front of the TV set. Ai toggie! She still thinks of her rugby-loving daddy who took her to Newlands most Saturday afternoons.

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And now a British comment: Zuma believes the problems in South Africa started with the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652. We had the same problems in England, you know.

First we had the Picts and the Scots. And then came the Romans who stuck around for about four centuries. Then we had the Angles and the Saxons and all those other Germanic tribes.

Oh ho! Then came the Danes and their Viking mates, a nauseating bunch of horny helmeted rapists and looters they were.

Nevertheless, the Danes were eventually displaced by the Normans, who turned out to be Frenchmen in disguise – but we were a bit slow to recognise the fact until it was too late.

Anyway, they were led by the Duke of Normandy, who was a real bastard, and who gave our wimpy king a right one in the eye. The bloody French are still hanging around with their cheese and their bread and their wine and their accordion music and their fancy restaurants, seducing our people away from our culture of slap chips with custard.

And then came the Dutch when King William and Queen Mary of Orange popped over and started causing nonsense with the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne. The Irish have never completely forgiven us, so they came over and settled all our building sites.

Then the Germans came back again, surreptitiously, and occupied the top of the Mall in Buckingham Palace.

And where are we now? Now we have Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, Caribbeans, Syrians, the Oz, Italians, Americans, Canadians, Poles, Portuguese, Saudis, Kuwaitis, Moroccans, Egyptians, Iranians, Palestinians, Israeli Jews, Ethiopians, Somalis, Nigerians, Rhodesians, Scots (to run the government) and (whoa!) South Africans.

It has been going on for two thousand years. All of these people (well most!) have contributed to make England and the English a great and democratic nation. And yet, I have never felt the slightest inclination to bomb Rome, to shatter the pyramids, to close a Pakistani restaurant, to nuke the Ka’aba in Mecca, to blow up a bus in Jerusalem, to chop off the head of a Nigerian etc.

And even if I have, I have controlled myself from saying so.

I have few words for Mr Zuma and his depraved ANC: grow up or bugger off. You stand in the way of civilisation.

(Thanks Rolf & Lance)

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There is currently some talk of having universities teach technical subjects in all 11 SA languages. But this is not going to be as easy as they think. European languages (including Afrikaans) have words for complicated concepts, which SA’s other nine languages have not yet developed.

Here is a simple sentence from a first year chemistry textbook: “… if the reaction rate is proportional to the product of the concentrations of two of the reactants or the square of one of the reactants, that reaction is second order…”

Now how would you translate that into, say, Pedi?

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The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm, and an actual answer turned in by a student.

Bonus question: Is hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that many souls go to hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the volume of hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, “It will be a cold day in hell before I sleep with you,” and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

This student received an A+.

(Thanks Balt)