Education is what you have left over when you subtract what you’ve forgotten from what you learned. 

A long time ago, my father woke me up early because, as he explained, I had to “go to school”.

But he’d not prepared me sufficiently because when he woke me up the next day, I was incensed: “What, again?” 

Schooling takes time, doesn’t it? There’s the thirteen years in primary and secondary school. There’s four years of university and ten years later, a post-graduate stint in the US. 

What remains after all that is what pedagogists call “an education.” In my case, it’s lots of information about inconsequential things: not very useful stuff. In my wife’s succinct precis, I am “a sewer of useless information”.

Don’t get me wrong: it has its moments. Jeopardy and word games spring to mind. I’m also a dab hand at Trivial Pursuit.

On hindsight my degree – biochemistry – was a mistake. It steered me towards a job in healthcare. When it comes to a hospital laboratory, that can be seriously debilitating. 

Running a laboratory in a hospital is, literally, a bloody job. And four years of it can drive you to think: either Urine or you’re out!

Journalism was a relief.  It was when, like Mark Twain, I never let “my schooling interfere with my education.” It was when I finally moved from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty. 

I’ve learnt a few things. Your vocation isn’t a matter of degree because life itself is the teacher. Experiential living may be all anyone needs. 

Journalism saved me because all the lessons might have turned me into a learned idiot. According to Ben Franklin, that’s grim: “A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.” 

On an unrelated note, Ye Olde English isn’t half-bad, no? Blockhead is nicer, and more humorous, than idiot. 

I forgot to mention that enroute to Ipoh Hospital and journalism, I spent a year teaching high school chemistry, math and general science. 

Sexism, again, reared its ugly head and being male, I was assigned the “problem” classes, the ones where the Neanderthals outnumbered homo sapiens.  

You should never allow the type into any laboratory. One day, I was teaching a Chemistry class a procedure that involved Bunsen Burners.  

These were the portable types that were attached to its gas source by fasteners that looked secure enough. 

Not to the Neandertal, they’re not. One rocket scientist sitting in the back had the patience of Job and used three spatulas to prove that no fastener was secure when confronted by the Curious Cro-Magnon. 

And, yes Houston, there was Lift-off – ten minutes before the bell rang. 

Luckily his burner wasn’t lit but it missed fracturing said Cro-Magnon’s jaw by a few centimeters. The sound of its takeoff was frightening enough but the smell of gas was enough to cause cardiac arrest: there were naked flames around! 

I yelled for everyone to get out and, together with the lab assistant, shut off the burners without incident. 

Half the school was outside the lab by the time we emerged, sweating.  

Admittedly, not my finest moment. Not by a long shot. 

It could have been worse, but the headmaster didn’t seem grateful. No, icy would be the word. He wanted to know if I planned on a career in teaching. 

Bad form. Very. 

Meanwhile, Cro-Magnon Man was suspended: he was delighted, which seemed to miss the point altogether.  

Woody Allen probably had him in mind when he quipped: “Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge; others merely gargle.” 

This happened over 40 years ago, and I don’t know what happened to the Inquiring Gargler. 

But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Member of Parliament. 

ENDS

Vladimir Putin must be worried. 

When the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ – a blast from the past, the USSR – invaded Afghanistan in1979, it cost the Union perhaps 15,000 lives, 9 years and an Empire. 

The war’s cost, its pressures, brought about the disintegration of the union: it broke up in 1991. 

When Putin invaded Ukraine in early 2022, he thought it would be a cakewalk, a couple of weeks at best. It’s going to be three years next February and Russia, according to Western intelligence, may have lost as many as  200,000 men. 

All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimates at least a million people have been killed or injured on both sides. 

Military analysts estimate it costs Russia US$500 million a day or more to keep its war machine going. 

That’s a lot of terrifying and needless waste. Putin might be well advised to claim victory and retreat. 

That’s not happening either. Instead, the war seems to be ramping up and Putin is getting himself some new allies notably his new bestie, North Korea’s tubby tyrant Kim Jong-Un.

The multi-chinned Kim  was so grateful that he’d found a new friend that he  thought it perfectly reasonable to offer 10,000 able-bodied North Korean troops to Vlad’s meat grinder, to fight a war they’d no business doing.  

Even so, the dumpy despot thought it best to offer his departing troops these words of advice: “Do not  needlessly endanger yourselves until I say so.” 

It was no wonder he was hailed publicly as Glorious Leader. Privately, however, he was called Shithead. 

There was no disPutin the Russian leader knew how to push Kim’s buttons. Earlier this year, he presented the ample autocrat with 24 pure-bred horses, reportedly as thanks for artillery shells provided by North Korea.

To underline Russia’s gratitude for the North Korean troops, Moscow recently gifted  Pyongyang’s Zoo with 70 animals including a lion, a couple of brown bears, two yaks, five cockatoos and dozens of pheasants of different species.

The menagerie also included a couple of antelopes, the oldest of which was immediately dubbed Vlad the Impala.

That he would consider trading people for animals only served to underscore Kim’s love for endangered fauna and highlighted why his countrymen think he’s The  Wrong ‘Un.  

Meanwhile, an unperturbed Glorious Leader was kept busy with work, usually reported as Very Important Duties: if he wasn’t threatening South Korea, the US or Japan with nuclear annihilation every four days, he was exhorting the faithful to float balloons filled with garbage over to Seoul. 

He was the quintessential big-picture leader, never sweating the small stuff like the occasional famine or sky-high food prices. 

Instead, he concentrated on the really important stuff like his nuclear arsenal or sending assassination squads to Kuala Lumpur to eliminate potential enemies. 

Here was certitude for you: Vladimir Putin knew he had to win. Only the victors decide who the war criminals will be. 

In the end, God supports the bigger army, the larger country. That is why the big loser in the conflict’s epilogue will be Ukraine, dismembered and in dire need of economic aid.  

It would have a memory too, an anthem both haunting and desolate.

Crimea River always sounds that way. 

END

The Driver Involved in This Incident Asked That Her Gender Not Be Revealed – Careless headline 

In the newspaper business, sub-editors rank right up there: they clean the writer’s copy – correct the typos, the grammatical howlers, etc. – and assign titles, headlines if you like, to the story. 

It is at this stage when the gifted sub comes into his/her own. It might be a mundane story, but a clever or witty heading almost always lifts the page and gets attention. 

That’s the newspaper’s business: the ads are attracted by a paper’s readers, the number of “eyeballs” it attracts. 

The eyes, as they say, always have it. 

So when Sara Marie Frankenstein, a desirable damsel from the Dakotas, took part in a beauty contest, she, inevitably, won and the newspapers the next day carried pretty much the same headline.

“Frankenstein Crowned Miss South Dakota.” (People always forget that Frankenstein wasn’t the creature – he was its creator)

On another note, the generally staid Wall Street Journal isn’t renowned for side-splitting headings, but its subs are no slouches. I once remember reading a story about the American postal service because I admired its headline: “U.S. Post Licks Stamp Problem.”

After Chinese statesman and diplomat Chou En-Lai passed away in 1976, the Communist Party decided the nuts and bolts of his funeral. One Japanese paper ran this headline the next day: “Chou Remains Cremated”. 

It isn’t clear if the sub in charge had his tongue firmly in cheek or he wasn’t aware of the double entendre or if it was a simple case of being lost in translation. 

Even so, one suspects that Chou, reputed for his sense of humour, would have enjoyed the joke. 

This headline is witty – “Midget Sues Grocer, Cites Belittling Remarks.” 

The following one is equally pointed but it does not bear explaining; “Shanghai Adult Toy Fair Hits The Spot.” 

Occasionally, however, a sub slips up and miracles are revealed. Surely this was one – “Priest In Fatal Crash Improves.” Or they come up with non-sequiturs – “Homicide Victims Rarely Talk To Police.” 

You think? 

One suspects that the sub who drafted the next heading wasn’t all there. Either that or his spelling’s terrible. 

“Situations Vacant: Cleaner Required, Must Be Contentious.” 

In Malaysia, we’d say the sub’s ‘England not so good’ – he probably meant conscientious.

Sometimes, you have to just know. Now “Elf To Sell Major North Sea Assets” sounds like something out of Harry Potter but Elf-Aquitaine is a French oil company. 

Similarly, “Lazy, Fat Dragons Forced To Diet At NY Zoo” is missing the word Komodo but the sub got our attention. 

Then there are the “yeah, right” headlines. Like “The Sun Is Leading Cause of Sunburns” or “Bugs Flying Around With Wings Are Flying Bugs.” 

Some are simply stupid. It’s either that or the sub wanted to demonstrate that said legislator in question was palpably stupid: “Legislator Wants Tougher Death Penalty.”

Now here’s an outraged headline that tells the whole story. “Risqué Business:  Misguided Skating Officials are Cracking Down on Pelvis Pumping and Lap Dancing – As Though People Actually Want To Watch Olympians Skate.”  

And, finally, the hands-down winner for double talk and the splitting of hairs: “MSI Owner Denies Lying, Admits Not Telling Truth.” 

ENDS 

Everyone knows that Shih Huang Ti  was the great Emperor who first unified China.

By all accounts, he was a busy fellow. If he wasn’t involved in standardising the country’s system of weights and measures, he was busy exhorting his countrymen to build a Great Wall to keep China’s  borders safe. 

Donald Trump wants to do the same with his Mexican border: going forward, it could make him renowned as America’s Shih. 

The mighty Emperor was also obsessed with immortality which might help explain the 8,000 odd collection of life sized terra cotta soldiers that present day tourists to China come to gawk at. 

In his relentless pursuit of immortality, the busy wall-builder was often prone to travelling across his vast empire often seeking new spices, herbs, poultices, foods, anything that might prolong life. 

It was a chilly fall evening when the empire builder stumbled into a seaside village in the east-central region of the country. The terra-cotta admirer was hungry, thirsty and disgruntled: so far his pursuit of immortality had been fruitless. 

As he was the Biggest Boss  of the Land, he was quickly directed to the home of the hamlet’s best cook, Lee Shang Hai.

As luck would have it, Master Lee was in the throes of making a new soup.

Master Lee was also a regular Da Vinci as he’d recently invented something that he called tofu. He was now working with it to ward off the cold and he thought he’d finally succeeded.  

“Eureka,” he yelled in triumphant Mandarin. The Emperor heard the exultant shout at the same time he smelt the soup. It made him vault the low wall that surrounded Master Lee’s house. 

A veritable ambrosia was simmering on Lee’s stove. There was ginger,  mushrooms, fungi coupled with beef strips and his remarkable tofu, all simmering in beef stock. As the Emperor burst in, the culinary craftsman slowly added eggs and, in an ingenious twist, threw in a generous amount of white pepper dissolved in vinegar. 

Unable to contain himself, the creator of one of the World’s Wonders – the Wall not the Soup – helped himself.  

Technically speaking, the dish should have been named  Emperor Jumped Over the Wall because that was what actually happened and that would have certainly elevated Master Lee’s status. But it was called Hot and Sour Soup for a reason that’s since been lost in the mists of antiquity. 

Even so, a grateful Shih lavished much honour on Master Lee, even naming the  humble village after the artist. Now you know why the city’s called Shanghai.

The Emperor also insisted that Master Lee become his personal chef and follow him back to Beijing.

Even so, the story didn’t end well. Convinced that Lee’s soup was the elixir of life, the Emperor consumed it so often and so frequently, that he developed gastric ulcers. He was also taking mercury on the side which Anthony Fauci will tell you is never a good idea. It was a short reign as reigns go and as reigns go, he went. 

Bereft of his patron, the great cook took to alcohol. From then on, he only cooked with wine and sometimes he added wine to his cooking. 

ENDS