A word on Ducks.

If you're reading this right now, you are probably under the impression that you are about to be entertained to a few facts on ducks. This is a reasonable assumption, as the title does imply that the passage is in some way connected to ducks. Unfortunately for all you duck lovers reading this, I have a confession to make. I lied about the title. The following passage is in no way connected to ducks. In fact, it's about as far away from ducks as you can get without going into stellar mechanics. Why did I do this, you ask? Because I can.

Whenever I log on to the internet to do research, no matter which website I am on, there are always adverts on the side of the page either telling me that I am the 1 billionth user on the site and that I've just won some small island off the coast of Asia, or else urging me to click on the picture of unclothed ladies with extremely large breasts, which in turn will take me to a site with more unclothed ladies doing rather disturbing things with small animals. Now, the first type of advert is bearable, because the style is not exactly conspicuous, so all you have to do is ignore them. However, if you are caught with the latter 'pop up' on your screen, you will instantly be dubbed a 'porn addict'. This is not the only instance where one mistake or misinterpretation can have dire consequences. For example, last week, Pieter Strydom, who is a rather clever bloke and has occasionally been top of the form academically, made a pronunciation error whilst reading from Henry V, during English. I'm sure that anyone who has read any of Shakespeare's works will agree that some of the words don't exactly flow, but of course the class didn't care and immediately he was boo-ed and hissed at. This somewhat ticked me off. Here we have someone who has been in the top five since Form 1, being attacked for stumbling over a word that's seven syllables long by people who occasionally have trouble with words like 'cat' and 'tree'. Honestly, the reading ability of some people is pathetic. Maybe it's not in this school, but I have heard people my age having so much difficulty reading English (their home language), that I thought they were trying their luck with Arabic or something. It's not only with the reading though: the more people I meet, the more I realise how disturbingly thick some people are. I'm not talking about if you have a low IQ, because there's nothing you can do about that, but nobody has the right to be an idiot. There's a difference between being not clever and being an idiot. If you're not clever you don't know the orbital speed of the moon. If you're not clever then you can't do calculus. If you're not clever then you can't design stealth aircraft. But if you're an idiot, then you're the type of person who thinks Australia is in Africa. You just can't be bothered to have the most basic of general knowledge about the world you live in. A prime example of this is when I went to England last year. I was constantly pressured to tell whoever I was talking to about how I have to fight off lions on the way to school. 80% of the people I met didn't know that South Africans had cell phones -or 'mobiles'-, let alone that we developed SMSing -or 'texting'-. But we're not perfect ourselves. I don't know much about politics (and I'm fine with that), but I do know enough to know that all these internal fights for power are squandering South Africa's resources. Really, why don't the people in government sort out their petty feuds once and for all and then get on with what they get paid to do: govern? In fact, come to think of it, the entire world is made up of idiots. South African politicians, who can't sort out their silly differences let alone lead a country; the British, who think that any country outside Europe is rural; the French, who eat snails; the people in the Middle East, who charge enormous amounts of money for oil (when they're not blowing stuff up); the Chinese, who came up with the most difficult language on Earth; and the Scottish, who don't wear underpants. But the worst of them all, the tip of the iceberg, the epitome of idiocy are the Americans. It's not my opinion, either. I'm sure all of you heard about or saw that programme on TV a while ago, where that guy went around the streets of America posing difficult questions like 'where is Iraq?' and 'how many sides does a triangle have?' to random people on the streets. How can citizens of the self-proclaimed last remaining superpower on Earth think that a triangle has two sides? How can they know who Ronald MacDonald is, but not Jesus Christ? How can some of them not know where the country that has been in their headline news for a very, very long time is? And how in the name of all that's holy, can the person who has been their president for two terms have said that the French don't have a word for entrepreneur?

It's not that I don't like Americans, I just think that they're a bunch of self centred arrogant pricks who are way too full of themselves (a bit like College Prefects, really). Generally. Okay actually that's not true. I'm sure most Americans are nice people, but it's those few who get noticed, the few complete imbeciles, the few who need to take off their shoes to count past ten who bring down the name of their country. I suppose I have to get to some sort of point, so just hang on a bit longer and I'll get to the very deep and meaningful point for this week.
There are two types of idiots, the introversial and extroversial. The introversial idiots are alright because they usually keep to themselves, but it's the extroversial idiots who need to be carefully watched. Racism, sexism, and all other '-isms' (including communism) are all offspring of extroversial idiots. People who believe that you can hate someone because of the colour of their skin, or because of what's between their legs should really be taken somewhere remote and then shot. If you think about it, most, if not all of the world's problems are made by idiots. Communism, wars, poverty, global warming and meteor showers are just some of the things caused by idiots, although maybe not so much the meteor showers... 'That may be all well and good,' you say, 'but how do we solve these problems?' Easy: we must prevent idiots from breeding. At the age of 18, everyone should take a test that asks various questions along the lines of 'What is Australia?' and 'Do you think Karl Marx was a nice guy?' and if they fail then, well, I'm sorry, but snip-snip, no more kids. It does seem a bit harsh, but think about all the hardships that will instantly go away. The only problem is, if we stopped all the idiots on the planet from breeding, well, then the world would soon be a very empty place.
On a different matter, apparently the Spanish Navy have recently announced the launch of their new submarines. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so that the new Spanish Navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish Navy.


James Hosken