Impossible final exams

Quit complaining about how difficult your exams were. Compare to these subjects and consider yourself lucky. Subjects: A-G

Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions.
Time limit: 2 hours. Begin immediately.

Art: Given one eight-count box of crayons and three sheets of notebook paper, recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Skin tones should be true to life.

Biology: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System circa 1750. Prove your thesis.

Chemistry: You must identify a poison sample which you will find at your lab table. All necessary equipment has been provided. There are two beakers at your desk, one of which holds the antidote. If the wrong substance is used, it causes instant death. You may begin as soon as the professor injects you with a sample of the poison. (We feel this will give you an incentive to find the correct answer.)

Civil Engineering: This is a practical test of your design and building skills. With the boxes of toothpicks and glue present, build a platform that will wupport your weight when you and your platform are suspended over a vat of nitric acid.

Computer Science: Write a fifth-generation computer language. Using this language, write a computer program to finish the rest of this exam for you.

Economics: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist Controversy and the Wave Theory of Light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

Electrical Engineering: You will be placed in a nuclear reactor and given a partial copy of the electrical layout. The electrical system has been tampered with. You have seventeen minutes to find the problem and correct it before the reactor melts down.

Engineering: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In 10 minutes, a hungry bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel necessary. Be prepared to justify your decision.

Epistemology: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your stand.
General Knowledge: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

Histories Mysteries:
The Flying Dutchman

Flying Dutchman is a haunted figure of a nautical legend concerning a ghost ship that can never go home, and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The phantom ship is usually spotted from afar, sometimes seen to be glowing with ghostly light. It is said that if she is hailed by another ship, her crew will often try to send messages to land or to people long since dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is reckoned by seafarers to be a omen of doom.

Versions of the story are numerous and are related to earlier medieval legends such as that of Captain Falkenburg who was cursed to ply the North Sea until Judgment Day, playing at dice with the Devil for his own soul. Some say that the 17th century Dutch captain Bernard Fokke is the model for the captain of the ghost ship. Fokke was renowned for the uncanny speed of his trips from Holland to Java and was suspected of being in league with the devil to achieve this speed. According to most versions, the captain of the Flying Dutchman swore that he would not retreat in the face of a storm, but would continue his attempt to round the Cape of Good Hope even if it took until Judgment Day. According to other versions, some horrible crime took place on board, or the crew was infected with the plague and not allowed to sail into any port for this reason. Since then, the ship and its crew were doomed to sail forever, never putting in to shore. In Fitzball's play, the Captain is allowed to go to shore once every hundred years, in order to seek a woman to share his fate. In Wagner's opera, it is once every seven years, and in the film series 'Pirates of the Carribean', it is once every ten years.

There have been many reported sightings of the Flying Dutchman on the high seas in the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the most famous was by Prince George of Wales along with his elder brother Prince Albert Victor of Wales in 1880. The story of the Flying Dutchamn has been adapted into many books, movies anmd plays. So the next time you are on a sea voyage look out for a ghostly ship partly shrouded by mist. It may be the Flying Dutchman!

By N.A

Weak weekly weird news

After a long hiatus from producing this feature, people would have been thinking that the world just isn't weird anymore. Well guess what people? You are wrong! The world is weirder and much more so than ever ever before…isn't that something not weird? Moving on to the news which makes the world so darn strange.

1. That'll Be $100 Billion, Please- Zimbabwe's troubled and strange central bank have just released $100 billion dollar banknotes for its people to use, in a bid to ease the cash crisis in the country. I wonder what people will purchase with this amount. Maybe a football club? But looks can be very deceiving, as Zimbabwe has yet to have a formal currency, with a prevalence of bearer cheques and of course if you thought our inflation rate was high, don't go to Zimbabwe, where the rate is 2.2million percent. No wonder they have already released banknotes worth 1 million, 25 billion and 50 billion. The new notes come out on July 21st, so if you want to become richer than Bill Gates, note wise, its off to Zimbabwe. Then you can truthfully boast, that you are indeed a BILLIONAIRE.

2. The Mascot- Guess who is singing the McDonald's Jingles on TV; Its Tamien Bay, a Miami man who was arrested in 1994 for trying to rob one of McDonald's store in 1994. He served 12 years in prison, where he became interested in music. So interested that he joined the search for McDonald's jingle singer, becoming one of the 5 finalists. Well now Big Mac has something to chew at for the first time..Jailhouse rock anyone?

3. Super Traffic Cop- Who says shouting at speeding buses wont help you choose a career? Landon Wilburn, 11, used to do that and now he has a future as a traffic cop. Armed with reflective jacket, a helmet and an orange Hot Wheels radar gun, this kid now keeps a check on speeding trucks, which used to frequent his path, thus the shouts. Residents claim it's a treat to see the bus slowing down as they sight the little kid all armed and ready to bust their behinds.

4. No snake in the grass? Check your washer!- So Mara Ranger of Maine, was deciding on doing her laundry, cleaning the clothes and working up a sweat. But then she suddenly started screaming! Wonder why? Because she saw your face…no, in all honesty all she found was a reticulated python in her washer, which measured only just 8-feet long. She screamed and screamed, till her throat burned, I assume, but yeah she screamed a lot. Animal Control rushed over and have guessed that the snake, snaked in through the snaky water pipes. I, for one, am never doing my dirty laundry in Maine.

5. Fired For Free Foffee- Actually a 15-year veteran of Dayton Beach, Fla; was fired for demanding Coffee from a ONE of the nearby Starbucks. He threatened that not consenting to his free coffee wishes would result in slow emergency response from the cop team. Meaning if they ran out of coffee beans, don't call the cops if you are in hurry. As the story goes, a complaint was filed and the matter investigated and thus the cop was instantly fired. I wrote Foffee because so many F's made the headline look cool. It's a weird world people and we have to do our own weird things to fit in.

That's your weekly dose of the weird. Till next time, keep it strange, stranger!

By Osama Rahman

Laff lines

A loving wife
Bernie was unfortunate enough to be hit by a truck and ended up in the hospital. His best friend Morris came to visit him.
Bernie struggles to tell Morris, "My wife Sadie visits me three times a day. She's so good to me. Every day, she reads to me at the bedside.”

Matters of me heart
"What does she read?" asks Morris.
"My life insurance policy."
I went to a medical clinic for an electrocardiogram. While the technician was lining up her machine, I told her I have dextrocardia.
"What's that?" she asked.

"It means my heart is on the right side of my chest rather than on the left," I answered. "You should set up your machine to accommodate that."
As she attached the wires, she asked casually, "Tell me, have you had that for long?"

Happy farewell
Walter arrived at his office late one morning and was greeted with giggles from the pretty young receptionist.
"What are you laughing at?" asked Walter.
"There's a big black smudge on your face," said the girl.

"Oh, that!" said Walter. "That's easy to explain. I saw my wife off on a month's vacation this morning; I took her to the station and kissed her good-bye."
"But what about the smudge?"
"As soon as she got on board, I ran up and kissed the engine."

Hearty and male
I recently picked a new doctor. After a couple visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age.

A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, "Do you think I'll live to be 80?”
He asked, "Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer or wine?”
"Oh, no," I replied. "I'm not doing drugs, either!”

Then he asked, "Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?"
I said, "No, my last doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!"
"Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?”
"No, I don't," I said.

He asked, "Do you gamble, drive fast cars or have hectic relationships?”
"No," I said.
He looked at me and said, "Then why do you even care?"

Never ever take the chance to say if
Because in the future it'll make you sniff
For this you will forever regret
And the pain of this is unable to forget.

Don't think I will do it or not
Or you may loose all you've got
So dont worry and take your chance
Or else it'll create a big distance.

A simple if can make you lame
Which you can make you loose the game
So go ahead without any fear
Destiny is waiting for you very near.

By Karina Kazi
Standard- IX