I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
“YOU cannot be serious,” tennis ace John McEnroe famously shouted when the umpire ruled one of his shots as “out”. Reader John Mulligan suspects that the patent officer felt the same way about Timothy Wace Roberts’s patent application for a “Business method protecting jokes”.
The abstract of his US patent office application 200602593306 opens: “The specification describes a method of protecting jokes by filing patent applications therefor, and gives examples of novel jokes to be thus protected. Specific jokes to be protected by the process of the invention include stories about animals playing ball games, in which alliteration is used in the punchline; a scheme for raising money for charity by providing dogs for carriage by Underground passengers; and the joke that consists in filing a patent application to protect jokes.”
We don’t know what the first jokes referred to are, but suspect the second relates to notices beside London Underground escalators saying “Dogs must be carried”. As for the third – does this mean Wace Roberts’ patent application is evidence of “prior art”, making itself invalid – or is it valid and in breach of itself?
I’m currently struggling through a nasty gastric flu bug, which meant yesterday I had time to lie in bed and watch the Six Nations Rugby Union Internationals on TV. And I realised a strange thing about modern rugby: it’s the only game I know where the referee spends the whole match telling the players how to play the game while play is in progress. In all other sports I can think of the players are assumed to know how to play the game and the referee penalises them when they transgress. In rugby the referee tells the players what to do then penalises them if they ignore him. Listening to the referee’s radio mic there is a continual chat of things like: “[ref waving arm] Offside line. Eight white your feet are behind it … [blast on whistle] … Penalty blue. Eight white, offside.” The forwards even have to be told every time how to scrummage: “Crouch … Touch … Hold … Engage”, or form a line-out: “Lads I want one metre between the lines. Three blue, that’s one meter not half a meter.”
Its a good thing rugby is a relatively slow and even-paced game of set-piece plays, little heaps of big men fighting for the ball, someone kicking the ball and occasionally a bit of open running. Can you imaging how interesting it would be for cricket umpires to run their game the same way as a rugby referee? Or the confusion that would ensue if the zebras tried telling American Football players how to play while play was in progress?
A battleworn and scarred Harry the Cat guards my laptop mouse. As is not unusual he was lying on my desk, recharging under my desklamp.
And before you say anything, yes the picture is fuzzy. I’ve been experimenting and this was taken with a pinhole on my Olympus E500 from about 9″. A cunning combination of very old and new technology.
No Friday Five this week, so we’ll have a Sunday Seven instead. My Sunday Seven is easier as it is seven answers to one question rather than having to wrote something about five questions.
I just love weird instructions for appliances so here’s another piece from Feedback in this week’s New Scientist, which I have slightly shortened:
… [X] does not tell us how he came to be in possession of a Fibre Optic Musical Animated Fairy “of unknown provenance”, but he does tell us that, despite being a retired professor of modern languages, he is baffled by the instructions that came with it for changing its bulb. …
“Operating Synopsis. If the bulb not brightness, make use of the reserve bulb elucidate as follows: 1. Turn off electrical source. 2. Fetch out the lampholder. 3. Troll the broken bulb, fetch out of it. 4. Setting in reserve bulb, troll the bulb without a reel or stagger. 5. Revert the lampholder.”
This week New Scientist printed some of the runner-up entries in their New Year Competition. The challenge was to compose a text message of no more than 160 characters, sent home by an alien who has just arrived on our planet. Of this batch I especially liked:
Too late. Another one overrun by Starbucks.
Humans are not conscious beings but remote-controlled by little boxes pressed to the head or wires plugged into their ears.
This planet, mostly harmless, is chiefly remarkable for providing the best evidence so far that the limit of 160 characters on SMS messages is a universal const
2. How old will you be? I was 56. Probably a good average. Body feels more like 76 and brain about like 26.
3. Do you prefer to throw a party or attend a party? I’m a grumpy old git so I don’t often do parties. Guess it’s partly because I didn’t get into the habit as a kid. Giving parties is stressful. And as I don’t give parties no-one invites me to theirs. Easy really!
4. Presents: take’em or leave’em? As my birthday doesn’t worry me particularly (see a couple of posts below), neither do presents. It’s nice to get them, but it isn’t essential. I’m just as happy for someone to say “happy birthday” and buy me a beer.
5. Best birthday so far? Not a clue. I’ve had a lot and not many have been sparkling — just the way my birthdays are. Had a couple of good ones as a post-grad student with friends lining up more gin & tonics on the bar than I could (un)reasonably drink!
BBC News reports that according to a recent survey almost a half of UK senior bosses would like to sack 5% of their employees to improve competitiveness and efficiency. The report makes this sound like the old Roman Legion’s trick of decimation: eliminate one in ten to encourage the others. However 75% of bosses said they wouldn’t bring in such a policy because they are afraid of creating a “climate of fear”.
Well I hate to tell them something … there already is a climate of fear, because this is exactly what many employees think their employers do actually do.
Indeed I have heard HR people openly and seriously saying that they give managers an annual target of having 5-10% of employees in the lowest “unsatisfactory” level of annual appraisal. Such a rating leads to a programme of “corrective action” which if performance doesn’t improve results in dismissal. If these people are not replaced (which generally they aren’t: “they weren’t doing anything useful so we can live without them”) then this automatically raises the performance bar for everyone next year when the manager has to find another 5-10% of unsatisfactory employees.
Hands up all those who think their employer doesn’t do this? …
Yes, I thought so. Now, senior managers, why is morale amongst your staff so low?
Yes, today is my birthday. No it isn’t a special one; just an ordinary run-of-the-mill “I’m getting older” birthday. I’m not one to make a fuss about my birthday, well not since I was a kid anyway. I remember eagerly anticipating my birthday as a child and then finding it was an anti-climax — in part because it was always a handful of days into the school term after Christmas. Boo! Hiss! So now it’s just another day, tho’ in recent years I’ve tried to take the day off work; sadly not this year, but I’m having a day off next week.
Do other people find that, as they have lots more birthdays, they get less interesting and fun? Or am I just a grumpy old git after racking up 56 of them?
Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker
