Autosnackorientation syndrome.

I've just realised that I always eat my Tesco's chicken and mushroom slices the same way up, so that the chevrons are pointing towards me. This way I get a great feeling of each time I reach a new "v" i bite the tip off and then devour the weakened lines.

Next time you eat a cake or savoury snack with a patterned top, see if it affects you. I will endeavour to try eating the next chicken and mushroom slice in the wrong way and see if aligning the v's with the shape of my mouth is more satisfying.

The Clapper

The clapper (the device where a clapping noise can be made to switch something on or off, not to be confused with some kind of evil bad guy...hmmm maybe more later), is a classic case of an invention to help save us time to do those all important things. I had a conversation the other day regarding some less-than-useful applications of the device. A classic would be a hands free method to turn off your computer, perhaps because your hands have been used for other things and to touch the keyboard now might be slightly...disadvantageous. Especially the next time you have to use the keyboard. So of course you could use the clapper! Great. Only when you start thinking about it, the last thing that you want to be doing with your hands after that is to bang them sharply together just inches from your person. Maybe no clapper there then.

Other bad places to use them to turn things on and off are:

1- Life support machines. Except for the joy of having a doctor wield wizard like power by saying "I'm so sorry..." then clapping loudly twice, like the Gods of old and ending the veggie’s life (human vegetable, not vegetarian. I know vegetarians are weak, but I don't think their that weak).

2- The epileptics' comedy stand-up event. A fundraiser for epileptics where a room full of epileptics are treated to a spot lit comedian. Just wire up the spot light to a clapper and wait for a great joke. Not very time saving methinks.

3- The burns ward wired to the emergency nurse alarm next to patients' beds. Just smack those hands together if you're in pain!

4- The gear change in a car. Now you don't have the distraction of reaching down to the gear stick. Of course you would have to have a way of both changing up and down gears. Perhaps a click sensor to go with it. Now every journey is a musical! Just don't change gears when going around a corner, or have over excited kids in the car (a general piece of advice for everyone who doesn't have kids anyway), or be eating that space dust stuff with your mouth open, or have "hey Mickey you're so fine" playing on the car radio.

So what an evil person the Clapper is. Attaching clappers to various devices around the world. This week the Clapper attaches his deadly device to a nuclear launch button and leaves a tape of "If you're happy and you know it" on the desk....mwaaahaahaa!

Statistics and the Lambubance service

Now I like to think that just because I'm writing on the Interweb, it doesn't make me a over-opinionated, belligerent know-it-all who thinks everyone needs to hear my views over everyone else’s.

Having said that, I will now have my 2 cents worth. Its regarding the BBC's recent news story about how obesity is "Contagious". I like to make my opinion here known. No it f%%%%ng isn't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6914397.stm

Their argument is as follows: Statistics show that "Having a friend, sibling or spouse who is overweight raises a person's risk of being obese too". " the risk was increased by 57% if a friend was obese, by 40% if a sibling was and 37% if a spouse was." They are actually suggesting that because you spend a lot of time near fat people, you begin to mimic their lifestyle so you end up fat yourself. So....you look at a fatty, and think "hmmm.....they are pretty cool. I'm going to try and be like them by stopping exercise and eating fatty foods."

Brilliant. Thank you US researchers. You've clearly been brought up on the school of statistics prove whatever you set out to prove. Lets just ignore the other principles like common sense.

They must be the same people who fear travelling in ambulances because you are statistically more likely to die in one.

Perhaps, just perhaps its because fat people like to be around fat people because they feel more comfortable. Or because they can't date any thin, athletic people because the thin people might start vomiting when they look at them.

No, clearly the only answer is that obesity is a deadly disease, thus absolving all fat people from any responsibility. "I'm only fat because my friends are." So get some new friends tubby. Just not me.

Speaking of ambulances (I think I was a little time ago), I've come up with a new, cheaper option to the emergency services. Just dial 998 and you get the b rate emergency services. They may not have all the training that you might need to be a paramedic, or an IQ over 40, but what they lack in basic safety they make up for with determination, big hearts and really big hacksaws.

Just imagine, you in a big car accident but you can't get through to the 999 services because their too busy helping soggy northerners get their trackies off of their washing line made up of stolen car parts. Instead just dial 998. In a flash comes the lopice and lambubance, with fully staffed "special" crew. They'll have you out of that burning car in a jiffy, just as soon as Steve stops crying because he got too near the fire.

A sad day for average IQers

I like to think of myself as a person with good common sense, plus a firm understanding of mathematics and applied logic. This has all been proved false this week. By a tap.

It’s the tap in one of the toilets in my office complex. So that you may share in my frustration and mental misery, I will try to outline the issue:

The sink has one tap. It has one spout. At the top of the spout is a handle that sticks out 3 inches perpendicular to the vertical. When there is no running water, the handle is parallel to the back wall on the right. Diagram of top down and front view is below.

Now the problem is this. How do you get hot water from it?

A simple question. But the clues just don’t add up. The suggestion given by the weird red and blue crescent moon is that the hot water is around to the left. But alas no. Instead using the handle and turning in a clockwise motion only affects the power at which the cold water comes out.

Maybe there is a second control to this device. Again you’d be wrong! The handle only moves laterally, there are no other controls.

So here I arrived at my logical conclusion. There was no hot water, and the tap graphic was just some kind of logo. How wrong I was….

This state of happy ignorance was shattered when I wondered in to the toilet today and found the handle of the tap ON THE LEFT. And there was no water coming out. NONE!!! Every time I had tried to move the handle to the left in the past, the water just sprayed out harder and harder until I had to stop because it was soaking my trousers. Not a great look for a person coming out of a toilet. Now every time I move the tap around from its new position, I get soaked by hot water.

So my loyal readers, I have to admit my stupidity here. If you can think of a solution then please write in. Because I’m starting to feel like I never passed any of my exams and they were all just given to me because everyone else felt a bit sorry for me.

New Games

Back when I had a lot of free time, I used to write online games. In an attempt to inspire myself to write a new one, I've written a little program that comes up with a randomly generated game title.
Here are a few of the highlights:

• cuckoo bucket Tycoon
• spatula trebuche world
• surgeon bucket online
• orange space mmorpg
• plimsol stalker killer
• cooker star rpg
• stalker space
• pimp war
• pigs stalker
  

Bernard’s watch

An interesting kid's programme that had little Bernard have an old watch with a little button on the top that allowed him to start and stop time as he pleased. What a brilliant idea. I certainly thought that I could have had a lot of fun with something like that. Bernard unfortunately for the viewer, was one of the most well-behaved, morally upstanding individuals that the world has ever known.

A watch that stopped time, and allowed you to move through it all as if everyone in the world was doing their utmost to look like a statue would seem like a goldmine for miss-behaviour. Stealing sweets in shops, taking a wander through military structures, putting buckets of water over peoples' heads. Not to mention that you could carry out the world's biggest bank job over the course of about a day, and it would look like everything just disappears.

But it is around here that I think the problems start. Poor old Bernard, using his watch for maybe 6 hours a day (6 hours for him at least), would have lived 6 hours longer than anyone else did that day. That's 25%. So when his friends of the same birth year are all celebrating their 12th birthday, poor old Bernard will look suspiciously like he's 15. And when he should be 50, he'll be looking more like 62. Poor kid.

But with this particular logical can-of-worms comes a much larger and immediate danger for Bernard other than just his rapid aging. I don't like to use detailed logic to belittle what is essentially a program to make kids imagine possibilities and then have them undermined by the authors strict opinions on morals. In this case though I feel that they have brought this upon themselves.

In one episode, Bernard gets asked a tricky maths question. Bernard clicks his trusty watch and wanders over to a fortunately placed calculator. But oh-no! He can't use it when he's frozen time because it takes time for electrons to move! ELECTRONS?! I think they maybe have selectively ignored a rather large chunk of science. Is the author suggesting that everything stops down to a sub-atomic level? Surely he realises that this would mean that molecules would stop moving and therefore instantly reach absolute zero? Poor old Bernard takes one click of his watch and instantly dies of the environment freezing around him.

But from this gargantuan breach of the first law of thermodynamics, or perhaps a creation of a new type of "potential energy" that the watch stores, making it the single greatest battery in existence, capable of storing the entire universe's energy and transferring it out instantaneously without transmitting it through anything else, there comes another problem.

If all molecules stop moving, then pressure would instantly drop to zero atmospheres of pressure. There would be no energy in particles, so all bonds break, all solids become gasses instantly and who knows how this would affect gravity?

So in summary, Bernard gets told about this watch, gets very excited about all the things he can nick, or just the skirts that he can look up and clicks the watch. All surroundings suddenly stop moving. "Wow" Bernard thinks "its work..." at this point he stops as his entire body has all of its heat sucked out through whatever he is in contact with. This is luckily short lived, as he is then subjected to complete loss of pressure and his entire body is blown apart into a gaseous substance. We can only assume that the watch somehow survives by its design, and so the entire universe stops and all energy is held in a tiny pocket watch, surrounded by a shroud of gas in a completely dark universe.

Not so funny now is it Bernard?

Geography degree past paper

Geography Exam

SUMMER 2004

4 hours

REQUIRED – 256 pencils, ruler, answer sheet, chocolate

OPTIONAL - Calculators, text books, mobile phones and parents may all be used.

SECTION A

Answer any questions you feel like. Questions left blank will be given the benefit of the doubt and given full marks.

QUESTION 1

What is wrong with this image?

a) It has Cornwall drawn on it, which is not allowed by British law, as it scares the Cornish inhabitants, and many of them will try to climb into the map.

b) There is no water between Wales and Ireland.

c) The colours are incorrect.

d) This area has been selected for the establishment of a maximum security prison for 1000 inmates. This will require an approximate area of one square kilometre (100 hectares) and the employment of 250 staff and service personnel living in nearby settlements. Three locations have been identified as possible sites for development. Refer to these as Site 1 [GR270513], Site 2 [GR305485] and Site 3 [GR335516].

e) Nothing, I think that the notion of right and wrong is never objective and given such proves that the assumptions that you have on this subject are purely subjective. We must remember that all perceptions are merely actors on a stage and that only the stage itself is persistent. The basis of all reasoning is the mind’s awareness of itself.

QUESTION 2

What colour is missing from the official ASIRL (UK) guide primary mark II alpha pencil set shown below (Assuming that European Geographical statute c1995 par. 5 was still in effect)?

(pencils not actual scale)

QUESTION 3

The below image is not an actual photo. Given that you know the location, what do you think has been added? Those who have not been to London should be given the following extra information (if you have been to London please ignore, as the answer is contained within).

-There is no volcanic activity around London.

Those who are aware of London may begin reading again now.

a) London has no busses

b) The time is not 3:40pm

c) It wasn’t cloudy when the photo was taken.

d) Big Ben is on a 1 in 3 incline, and is therefore impossible for it to exist in real life

e) Onion peel weathering

f) There is no volcanic activity around London (Its this one).