Wildcat columnists sound off on the zaniest stories from this week’s news headlines.
Man heroic for traveling to Antarctica for whiskey
The Associated Press reported that a team plans to drill through Antarctica’s ice for some vintage Scotch whiskey, which has been on the rocks since a century ago.
Going to Total Wine or BevMo to get your choice whiskey is one thing. Going to Antarctica for it is quite another. The Whyte and Mackay company’s request for an expedition from New Zealand to drill under an abandoned century-old hut of the Shackleton Expedition — all for access to stored scotch crates — is surely a bold move. Furthermore, their master blender’s endeavor to obtain a sample of the scotch so as to replicate the whiskey is nothing short of heroic. In fact, it may be even more heroic than the expedition itself.
Shocking, however, is the desire of the scotch-rescue expedition’s leader, Al Fastier, to refrain from drinking any of the scotch. “”It’s better to imagine it than to taste it,”” mused Fastier. “”That way it keeps its mystery.”” The Antarctic-chilled scotch could very well be the holy grail of Fastier’s icy journey, yet he won’t even take a sip? If the Kiwi wants a mystery, he should date someone who’s abstaining until marriage. Whiskey is for drinking.
— Daniel Greenberg is a Near Eastern studies senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu
It’s not exactly “”Ratatouille,”” but…
For 99 Euros a night, you can live like a hamster. The Daily Telegraph confirmed that a French hotel is offering customers the chance to experience the rodent lifestyle. The Nantes, France hotel will feed guests hamster grain and provide a giant wheel for exercise and a hay stack for sleeping.
This story reminds me of playground games, and those were definitely fun for me. I’m not sure I’d spend over a hundred U.S. dollars to eat rodent food, but I can understand the hotel’s allure. There will always be adults who want to turn their brains off and revert to childhood behavior. It would be nice to have one of these hotels in the United States, but I doubt the demand would be high. Now I have all the more reason to return to France, and maybe a handful of wild Americans will do the same just to have the experience of running on a hamster wheel.
— Laura Donovan is the opinions editor. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.
And you thought parallel parking was hard
A South Korean woman has spent over four years and $4200 on nearly 950 attempts to pass the written portion of a test to receive her driver’s license. If you thought the three retakes your ditzy 15-year-old sister had to take was bad, watch out for Cha Sa-soon, 68.
Sa-soon tries nearly every day to get the 60 needed points out of a possible 100 in order to pass the test. She has taken the exam nearly 1,000 times before finally passing. Authorities had no word on how a literate person could get the answer to each question wrong at least nine times, or why Sa-soon didn’t just study for the exam in the first (or second or nine hundredth) place. They are also mum on whether a woman so clearly ignorant of basic stopping and passing laws should be allowed on the road.
Sa-soon still has to take the practical portion of the exam, testing authorities say. Local authorities plan to re-visit the issue in 2015, the expected date of Sa-soon’s first passing grade on that test. The orange traffic cones will be missed.
— Anna Swenson is an sophomore majoring in English. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.
