Dunce cap

Flat Earther
Believe it or not, there is a bunch of people who still believe the earth is flat. Yup! You heard that right. They even have a ‘Flat Earth Society” (FES) that informs us, for instance, that the moon landing was a hoax, What else can it be when the moon’s only a thirty-two foot disc, not much bigger than Leguan. Antarctica is a 150 foot wall around our flat Earth which prevents the oceans from falling off. “Glenn” Mook Lall, owner of the Muckraker KN, is the current president of the FES.
Now you don’t become president of the FES just like that. You have to demonstrate by some public action that you support the beliefs of the society. Why else you think the Mook recently forced his workers to join him in that demonstration? You think all those people are as wacko as the Mook? Those people know that the Earth is a sphere – so its surface is curved.
That’s why you can’t see forever and there’s a horizon. We see in a straight line (because light travels in a straight line) and the ‘horizon’ is where the earth curves below the straight line from our eyes. Now the Mook, as a Flat Earther, doesn’t believe in this horizon stuff and that’s why he can’t understand why more than one frequency is needed to broadcast radio or TV beyond the horizon.
Now the president, who’s obviously a very patient man, tried to explain all of this to the Mook the other day. But how do you explain “colour” to a colour-blind man? Or calculus to a cow? But you got to hand it to the president – he really tried. He told the Mook that with a normal person (not the Mook who’s quite short on many things) the horizon is about three miles. If you have a tower three hundred feet, the horizon (and broadcasting reach) extends to about thirty miles in all directions.
If you try to repeat the signal at the same frequency, it’ll interfere with the original signal – so you need a new frequency. Beyond the new horizon, you can repeat the old frequency. Alternatively, the president said you can use a very high tower to increase your horizon or broadcasting reach. To reach Crabwood Creek from Georgetown on a single frequency you’d need a towering tower more than one mile high!
Maybe the Mook can build one! He can even bring in Chinese labour! But since the earth is flat, the Mook doesn’t need to, right?
Irony
They say we’re now in a post-modern world where irony is the only option to express what’s going on. Well, it might very well be so, going by what’s going on in our schools. In that institution of ‘learning’ where we send our little darlings to imbibe the skills that would take them through life, the UN’s been waging a determined – but largely unsuccessful – battle to abolish corporal punishment.
But teachers and parents would have none of it. “What would the world come to?!” they scream, “If we stop beating the little ones like snakes? This is the only way to instill ‘discipline’ in children, who, we all know are born as wild animals. It’s for their own good and we must beat them because we love them.”
So children grow up firmly convinced that beating and violence are part and parcel of human interaction: we “beat” when we think the other person is doing something ‘wrong’. The irony enters the picture when the children, who’ve learnt the lesson well, turn the tables and start beating teachers. As happened at Linden.
We’re not saying that’s the whole story but let’s start by eliminating corporal punishment.