The teacup Knews

New Investment Opportunities

2012-01-16T01:30:00.001-08:00

You, like me probably get a lot of junk mail sent to your place. There is one piece of mail coming around delivered by people in pinstriped suits that you may be interested in. It's to do with floating yourself on the stock market. Investment banks are currently bored with the existing set of assets they can invest in and want to invest in you. This means that they are interested in you paying them to make money out of you.

Sounds interesting?

Here's how it works. First, they take out options on aspects of your working day. Such as how long it takes you to get to work and how much you spend on food etc. And then they sell those options to other institutions at a marked up price and then they short those options and then hedge against your failing to keep your job and failing to get to work on time. Then they hire people to make sure there are enough hurdles in your way so that their simulations of your working day are correct (you may have noticed new hurdles and obstacles in the way of you getting anything useful done already).

Ideally you should be given the opportunity to invest in yourself (technically called self-investment or in-investment), but it's not cheap, buying shares in yourself means hiring a financial management person to tell you that shares in you will go up and down like a yo-yo for a hefty price. You will also need to pay for an financial auditor to come and check that you are not carrying out any insider trading and are completly ignorant of anything that can affect you.

New Year Resolutions

2012-01-02T16:10:00.001-08:00

We have conversed with a team of economical and political scientists in order to extract a few salient markers for the coming year. They have worked hard and ignored all the present events and weather in order to come up with these predictions. Here they are (in reverse order):

1) France realise their president is a mushroom and resign en masse. During the year an enterprising investigative journalist pieces together several facts about the incumbent president: he seems to only be seen in dark damp places. He seems to be seen mainly at night. He has a mortal fear of steak and chips. Using a complex computer program and a bag of peanuts he concludes that the president is a mushroom and publishes the findings. France, who like to see their champignon in hors d'ouvres and not addressing the nation, are disgusted and refuse to get up in the morning.

2) Berlusconi returns. The special one realises that he performed miracles during his term as first minister of Italy and is identified as the reincarnation of Buddha by a complex computer simulation program. He takes up the mantle, replaces the pope as the grand father of the world and converts Italy and the world to Roman-Buddhism. His first task is to appoint all the weather girls in Italy as Roman-Buddhist high priests. RAI TV broadcasts his mantras 24hr daily.

3) Greece makes a massive financial turnaround as they find the entire debt behind the back of a sofa in the waiting room of the presidents palace after being guided there by his holiness Berlusconi.

4) Germany convinced of world-wide depression and gloom does what all good people do in times of crisis and bakes an enormous cake covering the entire country. It provides employment for the entire country during the baking process (which goes through many iterations until head chef Merkel is happy). The cake forms a protective layer over the country insulating it from the economic gloom. The head chef is hailed as a miracle worker and sent to the most dangerous parts of the world to see if she can work a miracle there.

5) The UK government solves the financial crisis by considering every person with any debt as a foreigner. The steps solve the financial, health and housing crisis simultaneously by classifying every single citizen as foreign apart from a refugee Swiss dictator.

Places to avoid during Christmas

2011-12-19T14:57:00.001-08:00

If you are looking for a good place to go for Christmas you can start by knowing the places to avoid during the holiday season:

1) Paris - scientists have discovered that during the holiday season the whole perfume industry descends on the town along with a large number of famous people (although I am not sure who they are). If you have alergies to famous people, cliched adverts or perfumes it's a good place to avoid.

2) Victorian London - it has long been known that Christmas time is when there's heavy snow in Victorian London followed by mean-ness, poverty and tall, black hats.

These are at least two places to desperately avoid during the holidays. If you can avoid these places it may improve your chances of a decent holiday.

Remembering Things

2011-11-17T01:49:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I brought some cheese from a really expensive cheese shop in London. We are lucky in London as we have really expensive shops for many things. Even the reasonably priced shops become ridiculously priced shops when they open in London.

Anyway, that is progress and not the purpose of this note.

I put the cheese into the fridge at work and then promptly forgot to bring it home in the evening. I have now written a note to myself and put it on my computer to remind myself. However, I have written many notes in the past to myself (things like 'fix the economy' and 'print more bank notes'), but I always tend to forget what they were about after maybe 10 mins. So, I am looking for ways to remind myself such that I know what I am meant to do.

Once I figure that out I will be able to look at fixing the economy and putting the country back on an even keel.

Now, this sticky note says 'investigate deplorable jobless figures' I wonder what I was meant to do about this one...

Chat With a Giant

2011-10-31T02:21:00.001-07:00

I recently had a chat with Flatt Sales who is a giant in the media and marketing world. We were waiting for the next train and had roughly 5hours to kill. I am interested in media and marketing and how it works so I asked him a few beginners questions regarding the industry. His responses were quite insightful. Fortunately, I was able to record the entire conversation on my cell phone and am able to report the high points here after paying Flatt a small fee of three thousand pounds for the privledge of using his intellectual property.

Me: So what is marketing then?

Flatt: Well it's all about taking an organisations product that is already on the market and selling well and putting it on the market and getting it to sell well.

Me: But, if it's in the market why does it need to me marketed?

Flatt: There you show your stupidity. If you market your product you probably will do very well indeed without the services of a marketing firm. But, you will not appear in the marketing world because you will not use any of the marketing terms that are currently in vogue. So, to the marketing world you will be invisible.

Me: Does that matter? I mean I will be selling my product won't I?

Flatt: Yes, but you will be doing it without marketing. You need marketing to tell other marketeers that you are selling a product quite well. They can then take your ideas and reuse them to market their products.

Me: Ok. What about products that don't sell well. Does marketing help there?

Flatt: Of course. We can take a product that doesn't sell well and through careful planning (it's not cheap) run the product into the ground. If we're careful enough we can actually take down the whole business by marketing in the right areas.

Me: Do you market other things? Like people?

Flatt: Marketing is always expanding and consuming. Marketing people is old hat. We market many things: people, animals, the weather. We're currently looking at a new hush-hush product that's being pushed by the utility companies.

Me: Do tell. What is it?

Flatt: Well, I think it's ok to say since the devils in the details and if people know the product they won't know the correct marketing terms to use to market the product so I think I'm safe. The product is air.

Me: Air?? The utility companies want to sell air??

Flatt: Yes, well not any old air, but air that we can breathe. Air that's harmful to us is of course free, but you will have to buy from the utility companies a special filter that will magically transform the air into breathable air.

Me: Will that work? I mean air is free isn't it?

Flatt: Technically yes. But, breathable air needs to be processed which is not free. Just look at what we did with water. 30 years ago people would have thought you mad if you brought bottled water, but through careful marketing we've managed to convince people that the water they pay for from their utility company is no better than sewage and they need to buy bottled water to survive. And, they need to drink lots of it. Typically 10-20pounds worth per week.

Me: I see your point. Well, thank you. I see that our train's arriving. Ah. No. It's going backwards. Well, it's getting late now and I'd better get home. It's been very interested Flatt.

Public Transport - the way to fitness

2011-10-03T08:16:00.001-07:00

Have you been to a Gym? They are expensive aren't they? And, they tend to keep 'bank hours' where they are only open between 10am and 3pm Mon to Fri and closed at any other time. This is in order to keep the equipment in pristine condition for further promotional material to attract more people to join the gym.

Now, I have noticied that our enterprising public transport system has discovered a new way to increase revenue to pay for the desperately needed rail improvement works. By closing stations, turning off escalators and disabling lifts the system ensures a healthy workout for all privileged patrons of the system. With honest marketing a 50% increase in the cost of the fare is justified. They have installed saunas, step-aerobic systems, weight training rooms and general cross-training environments.

A New Voting System

2011-09-24T18:57:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking about the voting system. Currently, it's terrible. The poor politicians every few years go out to the country to show how popular and well known they are and how good their teeth are and every few years only 5-10 people and a few dogs vote for them. This is very distressing.

I believe that a much better and fairer voting system would entail putting the candidates in a big hall (just like the hall you sat in when you did your exams) and give them a large stack of voting paper. Then, they must fill in as many voting papers and vote for the best candidate for the position (which could be themselves). They must fill in as many votes as possible in 5hours.

The one that fills in the most votes wins.

Of course, it's important that the voting be representative which means that every hour the environment in which the candidate is sitting must change. One hour a sun-lamp is brought in and the candidate toils under the glare of the sun-lamp. The next hour a person pours buckets of water over the candidate, another would be placing the candidate in a refrigerator, a penultimate would see the candidate working under the force of a wind generator and the last would see the candidate voting in total darkness.

This system would be fair and we would know that our candidate can not only write a lot, but is hardy to all weather climates.

Phone me. Please!

2011-07-13T17:26:00.001-07:00

I fly a bit and have noticed a strange pattern. As soon as we land and have driven up to our gate and the seat-belt sign has gone off almost everyone gets their cell phone out and starts to text or call someone.

Why? Who are they calling?

In order to answer these questions I have taken lots of flights on many different airlines and have come to the following logical conclusions:

1) The airlines with the worst record for anything have the largest number of people calling. It seems that most people are notifying their next-of-kin or their lawyers that they have arrived, thanks be to God, and it looks like the right location and please can they not inform the police that they have expired.

2) The airlines with the best record for anything have the smallest number of people calling. This is usually because the people fly these fantastic airlines in order to escape. They don't want to inform people they have arrived just yet so they can have a little more time away from more pressing matters.

What is a city?

2011-06-15T06:31:00.001-07:00

I live in London which is technically not a city as they haven't finished building it yet. It's what one could term a 'c' as the rest is under construction. I do hope that they manage to finish building the 'ity' part of London soon.

Rush Hour

2011-05-04T09:38:00.001-07:00

We all know that rush hour is a phenomenon that happens because the sun rises and sets at well defined times in the day, various television programs (such as the max-factor or some other reality-soap-drama-game-show) start and end at well defined times with well defined scripts and we all panic at well defined times.

It has set me thinking that this is probably not restricted to people, but also to animals of all types. It may even apply to ants. It's very possible that ants have a rush hour. I have spent the past week in careful study of ants nests and have not observed any rush hour. Which leads me to the logical conclusion that since there must be a rush hour they are using a mode of transport that I cannot see. The only correct inference that can be drawn is that the ants are using standard underground subway systems during their rush hour. Since I have not seen them at peak times on the subway my correct conclusion is that the ants rush hour must be on the Northern line and happens roughly between 9:23 and 10:00 in the morning and 19:45 and 20:30 in the evening. It's clear that they have very long days.

I am not sure if birds have a rush hour.

Optimum Route

2011-04-22T01:52:00.001-07:00

Are you in a rush? Do you need to get from place A to B in the most efficient and optimal manner possible? Scientists have improved the current satellite navigation systems and journey planners to optimise our route and give us more valuable time to watch reality programs.

Scientists have observed that ants tend to find the shortest distance between their nest and a bowl of sugar. They have attached the smallest GPS enabled cell phones to ants and have placed nests and bowls of suger at strategic locations (for example a nest at a train station and a bowl of sugar at a place of interest). They have then been able to map the ants optimum location thanks to the magic of GPS and have been able to update the journey planners with the best route.

It works. Although sometimes the optimum route requires passes through cracks in walls and occasionally ends up in the wrong place if there is a larger bowl of sugar available.

The new routes are becoming available on various journey planners soon.

How to Generate More Wealth

2011-03-31T01:26:00.001-07:00

We are in a bad way. The fund managers that we have given all our money to have run out of insane and incredibly risky things to invest in. This is a bad thing. Without these risky and insane things for our fund managers to invest in we are not going to be able to generate the wealth that they have become accustomed to. What we need to do is to think outside the box. We need to come up with new investment schemes.

This is what our government is doing. They are generating a critical mass of depression and misery such that it can be sold as a commodity and compared with other countries. At this point we can have trading in misery and depression between countries which will generate investment opportunities and will allow our fund managers the chance to make more insane and risky investments.

Better Train Travel

2011-02-05T04:22:00.001-08:00

I have figured out a way to make long train journeys (which constitutes all journeys - even to the next stop) more enjoyable. The carriages should be split up according to conversation type: dull and uninteresting, business and executive, spies, opionated, arguments. We can then get rid of First Class etc and just have these categories.

It could mean more revenue for the train companies (who I think are really organised crime) who would have more gradings of ticket type and they could fine people heavily for starting up the wrong type of conversation in a carriage. They could also fine people if they don't start a conversation suited for that carriage during the journey.

The approach could be extended to all modes of transport: buses, planes, boats, national health, etc.

When is the best time to make New Year resolutions?

2011-01-01T04:34:00.001-08:00

A new year is full of exciting disasters and potential calamities and is a great time to make resolutions. But, you need to be careful just as you want to avoid making promises that you cannot keep to your customers (unless you are an elected body, or a financial institution, or any type of service organisation) you want to avoid making bold resolutions that are doomed to fail.

With this piece of information in mind the best time to make a resolution is when you have all the facts in hand. Since the New Year is full of the unknown it is best to make the resolutions at the end of the year. Which of course leads to the dilemma how can you keep your resolutions if you only make them at the end of the year?

So, with this in mind it's ok to make resolutions at the beginning of the year, but since we are dealing with the unknown it's best to make them vague. Here's a list of suggestions for New Year resolutions:

I will do something this year.
I will stop doing something this year.
I will think about doing something this year.
I will stop thinking about doing something this year.

Governments over time have adopted these four cornerstones of successful resolutions (albeit with slightly more embellished words).

How to recover from lost work days

2010-12-02T15:56:00.000-08:00

There have been many reports about lost work days due to illness, goofing-off, bad weather, football, ballroom dancing, cheese tasting, etc. And, all these types of loss have one thing in common: they call cost our poor economy ONE BILLION POUNDS EACH DAY! You may wonder how all these different causes can result in the same amount of financial loss each day (there are sound technical reasons why which appear in many different places which we won't go into here).

That's a lot of money that we are losing!

But, there is a solution. A tank of economists have come up with the solution of moving the financial end of the year forwards. This means that for each day of loss due to some laziness (to use the economist term) the end of the financial year (here 31/Mar) would moved forwards by:

days to move forwards = (number of days lost) * 1000 * exp(4.9/3)**2

There are technical reasons as to why the amount of money lost in a day does not equal the amount of money earned in a day (this is explained in any standard economics book).

So, if we loose say 1 day we must move Mar/30 forwards by approx 26,000 days (give or take a few days). This should help to recover the lost revenue in a simple, easy to use manner.

Understanding the Global Economy

2010-11-23T15:44:00.001-08:00

Just how does this global economy work? It's a question that many people ask and it's one that many with a firm, wide-ranging grasp of finance and economics do their best to avoid answering. And, with good cause as it's really quite trivial. But, if you missed out on 3rd grade (what is that anyway) education then this reasoning should help:

We are in a global market. And, as everyone knows global means circular (if you're two dimensional) or spherical (if you have more dimensions) which of course means we are in a circular market. This circular market is consumer-based. This means that when I buy something in store 1 then store 2 has to buy something from store 1 and all the way down the line until store N buys what I brought from store 1. Of course, the process isn't perfect and usually I end up selling the item for roughly 0.0001% of what I brought it for.

That's of course putting it quite simplistically in reality there are about 10 stores with about 20 million people buying things in store one etc and all these items are usually different (ipops, jelly babies, gobstoppers etc).

Now with this understanding it's easy to see what has gone wrong with the current system: we have run out of paper - more specifically we have run out of blue ink. So, in order for the people in store X to buy from store Y they need to the currency of store Y and detailed analysis by economists and fund managers (technically called mis-managers) have identified that the currency of store Y is predominantly blue in colour and store X does not have any blue ink with which to make the currency to make the purchase.

Once we manage to find some blue ink - which isn't cheap and typically costs around 4 Trillion pounds or dollars we should be able to get the market circulating again according to economic forecasters it could be a Tuesday.

Ornamental Transport

2010-11-21T13:28:00.001-08:00

You can tell when you are in a highly civilised and affluent society because there are many attributes superfluous to basic living. Take for example the public transport system. As everyone knows in a highly civilised society there is no need for public transport as everyone is out of a job. The more civilised the society the more redundant the transport system.

In the society I live in we have a problem. A portion of society (the affluent and civilised part) believe we have achieved utopia whilst a smaller and, dare I say, insignificant portion believe we are as close to the stone-age as we have ever been. Fortunately, the civilised portion of society have a majority of control and are busy dismantling the trappings of baser society in order to make room for evidence of true civilisation. The current project approaching completion is the creation of an ornamental transport system - whose purpose is purely for decoration.

Unfortunately, the smaller baser portion of society insist on assuming the transport system is not ornamental and is meant for actual usage and are therefore constantly disappointed at the price and function of the system. Once this smaller useless portion of society realise the ornamental nature of the system and thus the true beauty of the fragile infrastructure they will (a) gladly pay small fortunes to support the system (d) realise the system is not for under-privileged and under-civilised drones and stop using it.

Improving Performance

2010-10-30T06:24:00.001-07:00

Our fantastic public transport system has hit upon a brilliant approach to improving performance without sacrificing staff. The key is to out-source. Well actually, more like sell-off the poor performing routes. Then you can announce 100% improvement in the performance and have saved some money for yourself as well.

This only works if you sell-off the poor performing routes.

The current plan for our fantastic public transport system is to degrade the high-performing routes so they become low-performing routes through a number of measures:

Rail improvement works - the methodology is to slowly improve the route such that it doesn't work anymore. Technically this is called degrading the route, but the clever public transport scientists have realised that by using the phrase Rail degradation works hedge fund traders would get wind of the idea and immediately amass huge numbers of options on the route that they can sell at a massive profit when the route is sold off.
Personnel improvement - by decreasing the number of personnel at a station and ensuring the automation process that replaces the personnel is faulty this ensures that the station also becomes a poor performer and can be sold off. This technique works especially well for the buses where elimination of the ticket collector increased the un-safeness factor and then reducing/eliminating the bus drivers should ensure many buses do not run increasing the poor performance factor and hence the sell-off desirability.

In this way the sold off routes do not enter into the efficiency equation and daily reports can be announced to the grateful, stranded public that the public transport system is running a fantastic service. This should also guarantee justification for increasing the fares above the rate of decency to further carry out rail improvement works to further sell off and improve the service. 100% efficiency should be attained when the public transport system runs no routes.

Coffee time

2010-08-29T07:48:00.001-07:00

I recently went into one of those chain coffee houses. I was mis-directed, I needed a new light-bulb and was helpfully directed to the nearest super-coffee-house. Indeed they do sell light bulbs (I thought only that only the burger bars sold them). It set me thinking about these coffee houses and why it is that they increase their repertoire of drinks.

Well, I believe I have discovered the reason: it is a well known fact that life is quantised and, everything has an infinity of possibilities until after the event (in which case it was obvious that it would be that and why would we think any different). Taking the quantum doctrine the coffee houses have determined that by offering a huge range of drinks (many unnatural) there is the remote possibility that one or two of them may turn out to be coffee.

Based on this finding it should be easy for you to get the best coffee by following this simple procedure:

1) Wait until the number of drinks reaches no less than 5**e.

2) Wait until the queue length approaches infinity (a good approximation is roughly 15 persons).

3) When making your order change your drink choice no less than 5 times and no more than 12 times.

4) Misspell your name by using all the characters of the previous person in the queue.

This recipe has been tested in 12 independent countries with statistically conclusive results (although your mileage may randomly vary since this is quantum).

How to reduce spending

2010-07-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

Here where I live in the UK the Government is concerned. Apparently we have to save money. We need to save 40%. That may sound a lot, but there are ways to do it that are totally painless. Government think-tank (withoutAClue) have come up with the ingenious, thinking-outside-the-box idea of a scheme to achieve this cuts and even more. They have deduced a 40% cut in spending means spending 40% less a year. So, rather than spending for something now, if departments wait 40% longer they will have made a saving of 40%. For example, if I need to buy a pencil today what I do is to wait until tomorrow morning and then buy the pencil thus incurring a 40% saving.
If I wait little bit longer (say 70% of a day so I wait until tomorrow evening to buy my pencil) then I will save even more.

And the icing is: if the Government departments generate 40% more paperwork when purchasing something it will clearly take 40% longer to buy something. AND, we can employ 40% more people to make the saving. The logic and economics are flawless.

World cup Football

2010-06-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

I have been watching the world cup and according to my analysis the French appear to have won. Well done. I very much enjoyed it. The tactics from the coach were excellent. He was right: if you argue you go home or you don't play. My way or the highway. I think that was right. Everyone chose the highway except for little Mercure (the very fast winger from Bordeaux) who was the only player not to choose the highway because he doesn't speak French and had to play South Africa on his own. Which was ok, but he didn't understand the
directions from the coach.
He scored 389 own-goals and 3 goals. I hope they will be back again.

What a Party!

2010-05-16T02:41:00.001-07:00

Here in the UK we had an election. The system we have in the UK is called majority dictatorship and we have typically three companies that take part in this majority dictatorship. When a company wins the election there is no obligation to implement the contents of the manifesto (usually, they are written by the company lawyers with opt-outs and exceptions in case they win the election) and they have a mandate to run (or ruin) the country according to their own agenda. Their agenda usually consists of amassing as much money or power (which equates to money) as quickly as possible. That's the history and it works.

But, now something went wrong with part of the system and no company won. This could have been a problem, but the major shareholders in the UK had already foreseen such a possibility and had implemented additional systems that kick-in in this case. The new systems execute merger procedures which entail the company that won the most and the company that won the least to go into merger processes. This might seem a little strange since you may think that there are ideological differences. But, fortunately there are not. The merger processes first start with sitting around a large table with sandwiches and chanting 'what are we going to do now' 10 times. Only after that time does the merger start in earnest. The merger entails each manifesto being placed on a chairs roughly 10m apart. The party leaders run from chair to chair whilst music is playing and when the music stops they tear out a page of the manifesto and eat it. Only when one of the party leaders throws-up does the game stop. The vomiting leader is the deputy prime minister and the non-vomiting one is the leader. At this point the rest of the team take off their jackets and roll up their sleeves and each tear out pages from the manifestos and eat them until the entire manifestos are consumed.
At this point the merger is formed and the new merger company can now ignore the manifesto and get down to majority dictatorship in the interests of the country.

Famous 140 character quotes

2010-03-22T16:56:00.001-07:00

In our modern age the internet has provided great wonders. It has provided us with the Steam Engine, the Saturnian rocket, grass growing in neat straight lines and, of course the written word. On this anniversary of the internet invention of the word we have trawled the internet to look for the most famous short quotes that can fit into our attention (so here's 5):

"This case is a real hum-dinger. The accused certainly looks guilty otherwise they wouldn't be here."
(from Judge Hangem)

"Sending a short message at 120mph in a builtup area sure takes concentration."
(Detective Inspector Lockemup)

"Heavy night. Very hung-over. Really hope this operation goes well. Hands shaking a little"
(Dr. Surgicallyremove)

"It's Friday, must sell all shares in companies beginning with D."
(G. Hedgefunder)

"I'm late where's my book of lies. Anybody know what page we're on?"
(S. Politico)

Interestingly, researchers have observed a periodic error from the short message device system. The source has been tracked down to coming from 17345.26987.1431786.u which maps uniquely to a Mr

Zeekowenivoareechikatt87agubria0934=89yuvhotcsvty7395chgjattuggira90-234$adge@cghh};ghaa#?<fghvxeadry>¬ghealprugoetnbgafdfret457294512=d8&8iobjhbyhgy657643dfghhd

who has been trying to contact Earth to point out that we are not alone and the kindly, benevolent peoples of Saturn are eager to make contact via the short messaging system. Sadly, Mr Z has signed the message so Earthlings know where the message came from thus pushing the message above the strict 140 character limit causing irritation to the short messaging system. An opportunity missed.

So, where has all this obesity come from then?

2010-03-02T14:29:00.001-08:00

Have you noticed in the press that there appears to be an epidemic of obesity. People are getting larger. There's no getting away from it. But, where is all this obesity coming from? You could be mistaken for thinking that all this obese stuff is coming from the planet and the planet is getting smaller. Far from it! In fact the planet is also getting obese. I have studied this and can prove that the cost of traveling on the public transport from my home to where I work takes (a) longer, and is (b) more expensive. Since, by natural law, the price of travel can never go up and, also by natural law, the time taken to get from my house to work is a constant the only inescapable conclusion is that the distance from home to work has increased which logically means that the planet is increasing. And it's increasing, by my calculations by roughly 10% per year!

So, if all this obesity stuff isn't coming from the Earth then where is it coming from??

According to my calculations it's coming from the Universe. The Earth apparently has a great appetite for something called Dark Matter which it is consuming at rough 10% per year - which also explains why it's difficult to find this Dark Matter out there. Clearly, at some point the Earth will run out of Dark Matter and either (a) slim down, or (b) create an appetite for something else.

Do you have thoughts?

2010-02-17T15:42:00.001-08:00

Do you sometimes have crazy thoughts that you are scared to tell people about? Such crazy thoughts that you fear people may doubt your sanity? Do you wonder where those thoughts end up?

Well, wonder no more. Almost all of these thoughts are vacuumed up and safely stored in think-tanks where they are allowed to mature. Only when they reach epic craziness are they harvested by the studious custodians of the think-tank and lovingly crafted into a 500 page document that is presented to politicians to be digested and regurgitated as sound thinking that should be enacted and instituted.

So, the next time you have a random, insane thought you can rest assured that it is not lost and will probably appear within your lifetime as a law or way of life.

The Killer Financial Instrument

2010-02-16T15:17:00.001-08:00

Where I live we have a big central bank called the Bank of England. It controls much of the economy. Well, actually, it controls a small part of the economy in reality - the rest of the economy is out of control in private financial banking hands.

Anyway, our central banking shop has the killer instrument to solve all banking problems. Whenever our finances go belly-up and we have to sell our trousers our head banking person deploys the killer instrument. This killer financial instrument is a letter to the chief Government Financial guy. It's written in red crayon on ruled paper and the hand-written words slant at a 30 degree angle to the lines and are printed.

This letter has magical properties. It's capable of reducing blood-pressure, increasing GDP and stabilising the economy. The letter is used as a last resort, only when war and invasion and wholesale firings of all employees have been tried. Indeed the letter is so powerful that it has to be treated reverentially. It is too dangerous to employ as the head banking person someone that can write letters (or write at all) and so we trawl society and employ the most illiterate person we can find.

The financial sector is picking up on this and is actively employing the best illiterates it can find to fill senior financial positions with the sole responsibility of writing letters in red crayon to the chief Government Financial guy (and each other) in order to avert financial ruin.

This powerful, effective instrument will soon begin to reap benefits once the financial sector has obtained the address of the chief Government Financial guy. Only when these letters are written and delivered will we see the economy start to depart from Financial Disaster station and head towards Financial Euphoria.

Predictions for 2010

2010-02-08T14:29:00.001-08:00

Many people these days are looking at the future. It's very possible that it's because the present is not too good (or the past wasn't too good). Or, it could be because the present is fantastic and it's dangerous to have too much of a good thing.

Anyway, regardless lots of people are looking at the future. There are many approaches that help predict the future. The most common one, and indeed the most successful one, has been developed by the financial industry. Its predictive power is truly awesome, without fault and totally accurate. It's a little wonder that the financial institutions have been and continue to be fantastically successful.

The approach requires placing a small stone (technically a pebble) of reddish-grey colour and smooth (sort of almond shape) in a glass of still mineral water and then waiting. By the osmotic process future events are transferred from the pebble and amplified by the water into your brain (if you put the pebble in the water otherwise the future events will go into some other persons brain and may cause an accident if they are not expecting them).

The predictive power is so accurate that we have decided to use it here to determine the future events for the coming year so we can all plan for the big events. Here's the top ten future events:

1) Government imposes tax on ants provoking a prolonged war with the social insects.

A bill is passed unanimously through Parliament supported by all sides and the roof to impose a tax on ants after a right-thinking think-tank determines the revenue would offset the cost of the increased size of the tax collection department (approx number of employees 80million). Ants rebel and provoke war by tripping up the Royal family and the entire government. Ant leader claims no citizen will be able to walk down the street without cutting their knees. Government in crisis.

2) First sheep satellite launched.

After the discovery of the sheep's incredible aptitude for storing information and efficiently relaying it back the global telecommunications industry launches the first sheep into orbit. The added bonus being the sheep eating the atmospheric CO2. Tests indicate the sheep capable of increasing bandwidth by 800% heralding the mobile networks to display non-stop, continuous reality shows.

3) Discovery of connection between Cows and earthquakes.

After much research the connection between cows and earthquakes is firmly established. Careful placement of cows completely neutralises earthquakes. Spurs a completely new industry of Cow Feng-shui experts paid large sums of cash to determine the optimal placement of cows.

4) Herrings accurately identify successful Governments.

Intense study determines that shoals of herrings accurately determine successful government when placed within approximately 1meter of the candidate government. Necessitating the immersion of Parliament in the North Sea to determine the successful government.

5) Shellfish replace passports

Exploiting the fact that shellfish are able to store the entire biometric information of a person they have spent the evening in a bar with the Homeland security agencies abolish passports in favour of shellfish. The added calming benefit of having a shellfish on your person reduces security incidents at airports.

6) Worms replace coinage

The discovery that the number of worms in a country is in one-to-one correspondence with the number of banknotes in the country spurring the replacement of the easy-to-counterfeit banknote with the impossible to replicate worm. Exchange rates are catered for by worms dying or reproducing when traveling abroad.

7) Slugs replace credit cards

The discovery that a slugs slime-trail is (a) unique, (b) lasts forever causes banks to replace unreliable plastic credit cards with slugs. The added benefit being that a financial transaction takes approximately 15days to complete (the time a slug takes to produce a standard 1m trail) factors in a 'cooling off' period reducing the number of impulse buys.

8) Snails ensure secure internet financial transactions

The holy grail of a secure, foolproof method of internet transactions is finally found in the humble snail. The discovery that the snail can upload complex pieces of information securely in its shell and download them to a designated recipient ensures tamper-proof transport of sensitive information (e.g. money, personal information). Even the eating of the snail will not force it to give up the vital information it contains.

9) Cauliflower replaces high-definition television

Researchers successfully transmit the popular reality television show 'dancing on a balloon' to a Caulifower allowing an entire household to enjoy the high-definition-3D-surround-sound experience from their Cauliflower.

10) Flies replace the smartphone and cellphone

Researchers successfully train a herd of bluebottles to store conversations and other information and relay them to the intended recipient. Sparks the mobile providers to collect up all the blue bottles in existence and sell them at a premium to customers. Downside being the flies can only hold approximately 1 hour of inane mobile-phone conversation before committing suicide by flying at high-speed into a glass window.

Researchers determine in December 2010 that wasps are much more effective communication carriers with the added benefit of stinging the cell phone owner if the conversation is found to be pointless.

Dissolving the Financial Crisis

2010-02-03T13:23:00.001-08:00

Recently many countries have had a few problems (it could be a few countries had many problems I may have got that bit wrong). Anyway, it seems that there are a few problems around of a country-wide scale. One, or all of these problems are to do with the financial peculiarities.

Actually, most countries don't like the statement 'financial catastrophy' or 'financial disaster', or 'financial depression', and have got their best brains to hunt for a better more apt statement. They discovered the statement 'credit crunch' which avoids negative impressions and also avoids any connection with anything financial or anything disastrous. Coupled with the stroke of genius of not defining the statement removes any worry about the statement being misunderstood. In fact, most people enjoy something crunchy and credit has always a positive impression. So, the two words together make it something doubly desirable! In the not too distant future we will see many citizens handing over large quantities of cash to obtain a credit crunch.

But, that's beside the point.

So, we have this credit crunch which is causing a little concern as it appears we have borrowed rather a lot of money from somewhere to pay for something and now wherever we borrowed the money from we need to pay it back.

Now, the way it can be figured is we owe something like 1 trillion (million million) pounds. Which works out to roughly 16 thousand pounds per person in the UK. That sounds like a lot of money for each person to pay. But, if we pay the government 1000pounds per person and then we each need to find roughly 15 thousand pounds per person. From my studies it seems that if we each do a sponsored walk, or a sponsored silence, or sponsored holding-our-breath then the way I figure it at 1pound per mile, or minute we'd need to walk roughly 15thousand miles or hold our breath for roughly 250 hours (roughly 10 days) or be silent for roughly 10 days. The sponsored walk could possibly work as could the sponsored holding-our-breath, but the potential winner could be the sponsored silence for 10 days.

So, in summary we can get out of the current credit crunch by (a) each paying 1000pounds and (b) being silent for 10 days and being sponsored by some folks from the EU or elsewhere to do it. If we can do that we can clear our debt.

10 Best Places to be during Christmas

2009-12-23T16:15:00.001-08:00

I live in an extremely cosmeticopolitan place with people from many places that don't follow the Christmas fashion who ask me for the best places to go to experience genuine Christmas. Here are the top 10 best places to experience Christmas:

20) Ice Cream Parlour - in colder climates the peak of the cold season tends to appear a few blocks away from Christmas. If they are open, the ice-cream parlour is the best place to be. Experience a melon-apple-chocolate ice-cream fondu to gain the full Christmas experience.

19) Photocopier Parts Replacement Store - in any weather it's the best place to go to experience infestive cheer.

18) Soup Engineering Store - watch true Christmas genius in action at one of the many soup stores. Watch a traditional Father Soup festival only held on Christmas day - has to be seen to be believed.

12) Cheese Replacement Store - an excellent place to understand the meaning of Christmas where the various different parts of the meaning are fused together.

9) Mushroom Grooming Plant - for the more sophisticated a good place to see the evolution of the history of Christmas.

4) Fish Scale Sorting Store - great for the children, a real Christmas wonderland.

50) Escalators - an excellent place to view how Christmas moves and transports itself. Choose a moving one.

23) Iron Gates - these gates have been well known to attract Christmas pieces.

7) Sand Measuring Store - hours of true fun in theses stores where Christmas descends and is slowly extracted.

0) Carton Label Removal Store - unbeatable, sure-fire location to experience, evaluate and digest the Christmas package.

Quantum Transport

2009-12-13T15:14:00.001-08:00

Have you watched many Sci-Fi movies or series?

Have you wondered what it would be like to be transported in time or space, or both - have your essence beamed somewhere else and reassembled with various fly components?

Well now you can experience it in true, living, multi-dimensional colour!

At a justifiably incredible cost London Trans-port has deployed a number of experimental Quantum Transport devices in London. These devices take on the appearance of the humble Bus (double, or single decker or warpy-bus), but with one (or two) important, significant additions.

These buses obey the Quantum principles:

1) You cannot predict when the bus will arrive with 100% accuracy (according to the quantum principle the prediction should be around 0-0.1% accurate).

2) When the bus does arrive and you embark you cannot predict with 100% accuracy where the bus is going.

3) No two buses can go to the same destination on the same day (violation of this principle can be catastrophic and could very well signal the end of the Universe if violated).

4) You cannot predict with 100% accuracy which bus stop the bus will stop at. Indeed, it can be rather disconcerting if you are standing as the bus driver only knows which bus stop they should stop at according to a complicated algorithm (which, coincidentally does not depend on the number of people waiting at the stop - contrary to a popular myth).

Indeed, if you are fortunate enough to be waiting at a bus-stop you can get an idea as to which bus is Quantum by studying the estimated time indicator, if the bus arrival time differs by the factor (sqrt(1-gamma)exp(-2*pi/sigma)) then it's highly likely the bus is Quantum - of course if the bus doesn't stop then it's definitely Quantum.

London Transport are busy replacing conventional buses as quickly as possible and at great cost so you can experience the wonders of Quantum Transportation.

How to Reduce Plastic Waste

2009-12-13T14:27:00.001-08:00

Technologists have noticed a rather large amount of plastic bits and bobs littering all over the place and have come up with a green solution:

1) Identify persistent litter.
2) Spray the litter with a new chemical compound (KFC).
3) This chemical compound attracts green recycling units (namely rats and pigeons) to consume the litter. The chemical compound is so attractive the recycling units consume the litter exclusively until they expire (roughly 1-2 days after first encountering the litter).
4) The plastic fortified, expired recycling units can then be reused as insulated bricks (in the case of the four legged recycling units) or loft, or wall insulation (in the case of the flying recycling units).

The transformation from useless persistent litter into useful, insulated, building material is powering the property building trade and has created a whole recyclable economy ranging from the producers of the chemical compound (KFC, whose by product happens to be a rather attractive and economical after-school-before-dinner snack) through the producers of the green recycling units to the collectors/hunters of the recycling units (in some cases not every recycling unit expires on the prescribed date).

An important by product is a small, but noticable reduction in the amount of CO2 being produced. This has encouraged scientists to research the possibility of encouraging Cows to eat KFC infected litter to further reduce the CO2 production and produce building material for large skyscrapers.

Do We Need our Head?

2009-12-08T15:24:00.001-08:00

We all know that science has determined that we are composed of rather a large quantity of water. In fact, over 50% of our weight is water. If we couple that with the additional fact that we only use approximately a small quantity of our brain (roughly 4% or so) we make the astounding discovery: we don't need our heads!

In fact science has determined that since we are predominantly water we can replace our head with a glass of water (spring water is ok, tap water is almost ok if you still have some tap water - Thames Water are busy replacing tap water with rusty brown plastic water or nothing, carbonated water is ok if you're looking for hyperactivity).

Scientists have determined in some cases that replacing whole people with glasses of water has had no noticeable effect. Indeed, the head of a number of Hedge Funds, London Transport and a number of politicians have been replaced by glasses of water without disturbing the efficient workings of those organisations.

Do we need a head?

2009-12-05T13:35:00.001-08:00

For many years sociologists have studied the workplace. They have studied every aspect of the workplace; from the placement of wastebins to the quantity of coffee drunk as a function of the paper cups. They have studied all the people that litter the workplace from the humble sales-clincher-person to the mighty tea-person to the exalted biscuit-person. Every aspect has been studied in vomiting detail and published in a large number of obscure journals.

Research has discovered a purpose for all components that go to make-up the workplace. That is all except one. Research has failed to define a purpose for the executive.

Study has discovered an inverse relationship between the health of a company and the number of executives it contains. They have found that executives tend to cluster into a group of about 10-12 forming a 'board-of-directors' and once a company is infested with a board-of-directors there is a rapid decline in motivation, direction, output, standards and general quality of the tea.

Researchers have found close analogy with a parasite which tends to feed off its victims extracting a small slice of the best bits allowing the host to produce more best bits. Although, in the case of the executive a large slice of the best bits are extracted resulting in a barely living host incapable of producing any best bits (scientists have termed this type of parasite as a 'stupid-parasite').

Work is currently underway to understand how a company becomes infested with a board-of-directors or a cluster of executives. Once this is understood it will be possible to create ointments and balms and creams capable of combating an executive infestation. For those infested with executives there is hope...

A New computing paradigM

2009-11-18T15:11:00.001-08:00

Do you own a computer? If so then the chances are quite high that you have written in the last few days a Graphical user interface toolkit in C++ (a bit like the C programming language, but with a ++ here and there). The chances are high that as you coded those thousands of lines you thought, "Gee Stan I wish that there were some kinda computing paradigm that would ease the development of this high quality toolkit that I'm developing".

Well, worry no longer.

Scientists have managed to develop and then discover a new computing paradigm that addresses these kinds of thoughts and more. The paradigm goes under the name of the CLOWN paradigm (or CLOWN computing for short) and tests show that it's revolutionising the software industry.

The paradigm is based on a large number of basic points:

1) Code and coder should be able to withstand a sustained 15min Custard Pie unit test (the maxim is "custard pie now, custard pie often").

2) The clown car IDE must be used to ensure code portability (the roof should blow off, windows fall out, and wheels fall off at regular intervals - in keeping with current standard software practices).

3) Evaluate the coder and you have evaluated the code:
3a) How much water can the coders trousers hold?
3b) How far does the coder travel when shot from a cannon?
3c) How many balloons can fit into the coders shirt?

4) Software analysis and design:
4a) How many times is the architect caught out by the pull-the-chair-before-they-sit-down trick?
4b) Does the architect make liberal use of the exploding marker pen?
4c) Does the architect use the electrocuting projector?
4d) Does the architect make exclusive use of mime in the analysis stage?
4e) Does the architect make flowers and snow out of the use case and requirements documents?

5) Project management must ensure that all staff are equipped with exploding laptops or desktops.

6) Project management must ensure red noses, orange, yellow or green hair and extremely large shoes are worn during all stages of the project.

7) Project management must sit in a cold custard bath during project meetings.

Scientists have determined that following these simple guidelines ensures projects are delivered on time and to spec and, as a by product, generate improved respect and admiration from customers.

Who's in charge?

2009-11-15T15:48:00.001-08:00

Have you noticed in your dealings with large service industries (such as your utility companies, transport companies, etc) that it's very difficult to determine who's in charge especially when something appears to go wrong?

Well, extensive, laborious research has determined exactly who is in charge of these important service providers. Technically, it's nobody. Well, actually, it's not a person, but a largish white document contained in a buff folder marked 'Important stuff' (usually with a date and an illegible signature). The document itself is roughly, exactly 25 pages long and describes the organizational chart of the company, with a coffee mug stain obscuring the central and higher management. The remaining pages contain information on the processes in the company, well actually it's just the curious phrases TBD and references to other documents that have TBD next to them.

This large document is kept in a grey filing cabinet in the store-room and is referred to in every persons contract under the name 'as-stipulated-in-the-company-policy-handbook-document-TBD-001' (this is in fact the official title of the document, 'Important Stuff' is a higher management term). All matters of importance are referred to the document and it is this document, and this document alone that provides wisdom to the staff to enable them to combat these matters of importance.

That is why when you contact your large service provider of some service you are often told about company policy in vague terms since the staff themselves are not allowed to directly quote from the unseen document as this would almost certainly destroy the wisdom of the document. Indeed, if you lodge a query you may notice that your query is ignored. This is not negligence, this is the document working its wisdom. Study of the document 'as-stipulated-in-the-company-policy-handbook-document-TBD-001' has revealed that queries should be allowed to cluster and mature so that they may find their own wisdom and thus the solution to their own problem (a far more enlightening and rewarding effort).

Am I repeating myself?

2009-11-10T16:29:00.001-08:00

You may have noticed that your television broadcasting corporations (technically called circuses or circuii if you want to be strictly correct) appear to repeat a program at a well defined interval. You may be wondering why. Some more cynical people may think that the television broadcasting executives and controllers and directors and organizers (collectively, technically called clowns) are simply trying to save money by 'filling' empty airspace with, well in some cases empty air space, but in others with well meaning docu-type-info-entertainment.

Well, this is totally incorrect!

Scientists have recently conducted research and study into the frequency of repeated programs and have determined that the greater the number of repeats the more advanced the society is. This is because the citizens everyday life is so rich and so full their brains have to reject some information and by constantly repeating programs they can determine just how civilized the society is. By slowly increasing the repeat frequency until they achieve critical complaint mass they can (through complex non-deterministic methods) determine the civilization status. For example, in the US programs are repeated more than daily, they are quite advanced. In the UK we are approaching daily repeat status (in some cases we are at the sub-daily status).

Only when we reach sub-minute program repeat status where the repeat starts before the original has finished will we have achieved true civilization status. Indeed, by sub-minute repeat status of reality shows will determine we have achieved the new nouveau-classical period.

Canal Origins

2009-11-08T15:58:00.001-08:00

It is well known that the first canals appeared in the UK long before any other country. But, only recently has science uncovered exactly why these canals were created. There was conjecture that they were originally built to carry goods. This clearly doesn't hold water as people have been using trucks, shopping trolleys and white vans since prehistory.

The real reason for the invention of the canal was in order to alleviate the massive infestation of bicycles that plagued the UK in the early history. In bygone days artists created bicycles that were built to last. This was a good thing. People used their cycles until they expired (the people that is) and then they were handed down to their offsprings. But, this was at odds with the consumer-based economy that had been introduced in neolithic times. Such an economy relied on constant consumption without reason and the presence of long-lasting indestructible bicycles didn't fit the bill.

There was a need for a mechanism to encourage the destruction of bicycles allowing consumers the ability to buy new bicycles perpetuating the economy.

The governments of the day came up with the fence-less canal. The invention, by the Steam brothers, itself was not enough to improve the economy. Only with the introduction of irresponsible alcohol consumption and poorly lit roads did the scheme finally begin to reap benefits. Since approximately 800AD (late afternoon) the number of irretrievably sunk and broken and rusted bicycles in canals shot up far outstripping production of bicycles necessitating a massive increase in production and also a massive increase in bicycle insurance.
These two single measures have formed the basic cornerstones of modern consumer society and it is for this reason that you can go to any canal and find a myriad of consumer articles within their depths (buildings, financial institutions, hedge funds).

Reality or not?

2009-10-31T13:51:00.001-07:00

It takes a great deal of knowledge to craft a reality or talent show. A great deal of time goes into creating the correct program, the duration of the events and the precise choreography of the words used by the audience and the eventers. Indeed, nothing is left to chance, even the audience is selected with great care: any person with the large sum of cash needed to procure a seat in the arena is accepted.

It's little wonder that this height of modern engineering has attracted the attention of eminent scientists who have dissected these programulations in order to understand better their purpose.

Their deliberations have unearthed some surprising results: participation (active or passive) in a reality or talent show appears to not activate one cerebral neuron. Not one.
Scientists performed a number of studies in which they replaced living audience members (the passive component) by (a) recently deceased people, (b) insects, (c) vegetables. In all cases no difference in the passive component was detected (the brain patterns were exactly the same for all audience members).

They then replaced the active component (the contestants) by (a) frozen peas, (b) a box of dust, (c) drawing pins. Again, in all cases no difference was detected - although a slight (possibly statistically significant) response to the box of dust was observed, but it's unclear if the response was from the dust itself or the audience (researchers are still studying a much higher statistics sample of dust taking part in a 2 year marathon X factor talent show).

An important result of these recent findings is that frozen peas have now been granted sentient being status which has spurred further research into the social behaviour of frozen peas.

space collapse

2009-10-23T16:12:00.001-07:00

If you have wondered what on earth is happening in London I can enlighten you.
You may have noticed that a large number of trenches have reappeared in strategic places. These places are strategic because of the large density of people appearing in those places.

The number of strategic places in London is rather large and can indeed be seen from outer space - as far outer as Jupiter (on a sunny day when the fog has burnt off and there are no smaller planets crashing into it). It is interesting that the trenches resemble an upside down smiley from Jupiter which explains why, when you observe Jupiter, you can see the appearance of smileys and other graffiti on the surface - Saturn has joined in and Neptune appears to be advertising that "Saturn sucks big time" (there is research to understand exactly why).

The reason for the appearance of these trenches is purely down to the density of the people between the hours of 7am-9am being so great that they form a black hole. The trenches are an attempt by the London Councils and Transport for London to introduce distortion effects to minimise the density of the black hole by encouraging people to fall into the hole to reduce the critical mass.

LHC for dummees

2009-10-13T16:02:00.001-07:00

I'm a bit of a scientisticcolo and will give a two sentence description of the LHC big guy machine in the International Institute for collisions in Geneva, near France, Europe.

The LHC aims to collide a bunch of left hand and right hand particles together at high speed. What are these particles?

Well, if you take your left shoe (which should be about size 6 red and green patent leather with a rubber sole) then all these particles from the left hand side are equivalent to your left hand shoe.

Now what about these right hand particles?? Well, they are your right shoe (which should be about size 8 exactly orange and blue with yellow all leather upper and downer) that's what these right handed particles are: your right clown shoe.

So, in a nutshell, we're colliding your left hand size 6 clown shoe with your right hand size 8 clown shoe. The result should be equivalent to the birth of the universe or a shoe shop and should explain why there are only left-hand shoes on sale in most shoe shops.

Living Water!

2009-07-17T15:57:00.001-07:00

Have you considered just how many sentient species there are in the world? There are people, ants, crispy fried duck, bacteria, plants. Millions of thinking, living, feeling things.

Well scientists have discovered another one to add to the list: water.
By studying spa/spring/mineral water scientists have discovered that mineral water is a social, living being. They have discovered that water enjoys the company of other water and forms a very strong bond between water from the same source.

This astounding conclusion was reached after carefully studying the rate at which water was produced by a well-known spring and the rate at which it was bottled and sold to vegetarians. They deduced that if water was not sentient and always made its way back to its origins in order to be reunited with the other bits of water it had left behind it would have meant that the well-known spring would have dried up 30 years ago.

Thus the water that you consume carefully makes its way back, against great odds, to its source to be reunited and rebottled and reconsumed by another vegetarian.

Tube Design

2009-07-06T15:17:00.001-07:00

I don't know if you have noticed. But, during rush hour you will see a few smartly dressed people all congregating in clumps and generally causing increased stress and confusion. Have you seen these people? They're the ones that cut in-front of you and push you into much smaller spaces.

Well, these people have been scientifically designed and placed there by the various transport companies in order to improve your public-transport experience. In addition, the public transport nerve-centre can fine-tune the number of lost, broken, depressed public transport machines to enhance the experience.

What are they?

2009-06-30T15:29:00.001-07:00

So, it seems that an fund manager is a person that manages funds. We, well not me because I don't have any (I'm a hedge fund trader - a hedge for short), give these guys our hard earned money and they spend all their time looking in minute detail at the bazillion of stocks (chicken, beef, fish), shares, exotic cocktails, and shoes on offer and invest wisely. They spend their working day working for us and their sleeping nights sleeping for us. They are so smart and they do a good job. The investments, on the whole, tend to have lots of ups and downs. Which is a bit like life - although the investments tend to have catastrophic downs which makes us feel a lot better since our lives aren't that catastrophic.

They tend to approach investment with an avant-guard philosophy. They are daring. Investments in schemes that perhaps yesterday were shunned are now seen as highly lucrative. It's clear to me that Ponzi schemes are now considered highly profitable 'exotics'. Guaranteeing stable returns even in the case of horrible times. Clearly this is the reason why many invested in Mr Madoff's scheme.

MP Hour

2009-05-25T15:26:00.001-07:00

Where I come from we're heavily into metrics. This is a good thing. We design metrics for everything: metrics for the number of shoes you're allowed to buy, the number of times you're allowed to oversleep the alarm, the number of left and right shoes you're allowed to buy.

Recently, we have discovered that our Politicians aren't metric. This is bad. We cannot appreciate the work they do if we don't know how well they are doing.

So, our Politicians have hired an external metric consultancy to metricify them. The main problem the consultants faced was exactly what metric to use. Since, nobody, not even the Politicians really knew what they did.

After much study they determined that speaking constituted 98% of the job. They determined that Politics appeared to be a game involving people capable of selecting items of no particular interest and then arguing viciously for many months about them.

Once this discovery was made it was simple to design metrics consisting of the number of words spoken, how long a Politician has been standing on their feet for, the number of uninteresting statements made. Extra points are gained if a Politician makes a definitive conclusion (regardless of the manner or truth).

With this system we have metrics that show us the fantastic amount of work being performed by our Politicians. Other countries would do well to follow our approach. We even have done away with the 1 party system and have gone to leagues. We are very proud that our local Politican's play in the Premier League (missing out on top-spot on goal difference).

Consumerism: how to get out of the current crisis

2009-03-26T14:39:00.001-07:00

In a consumer society there is a real danger that once everyone has brought everything they need the eekonomy will freeze and fail.

This is the problem we have at the moment. Everyone has brought everything and there is nothing left to buy.

The only way out of this current consumer crunch is to institute legislation to do the following:

a) Create 2 new teen music-bands with stupid names and songs and generate hysteria about them encouraging an upturn in the number of CDs sold.

b) Institute legislation to change the style of women's clothes every month such that no woman would be seen dead in last months clothes.

b1) Institute legislation forbidding any two women from wearing the same style of clothes within a 50 mile radius.

c) Change the side of the road that people drive on in a country forcing people to buy new cars with the steering wheel on the other side and necessitating workmen to replace road signs.

d) Change the power ratings for all electrical applicances forcing consumers to buy new electronic goods with the correct ratings.

e) Change the national language forcing new books to be printed in the new language, new web-sites to be created etc.

This package should stimulate the economy and encourage consumerism at an increased rate.

Age-old philosophical puzzle solved!

2009-03-03T12:01:00.001-08:00

Whilst trawling through innumerable philosophical-science papers I found a paper detailing an
ingenious and logically valid solution to an age-old philosophical problem that I strongly believe should be a good candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Problem: Which came first the chicken or the egg?

The solution relies on recognising that a few years ago, during prehistoric times, ancient-man had an incredibly strong affinity to eggs. They collected eggs of all shapes and sizes. They ate then, used the shells as a form of currency.

Slowly, they realised something was missing. Eggs were ok, but around the middle of the day they wanted something more substantial. So, they invented the chicken. This gave them many more culinary combinations. They could have chicken roast, fried, flayed, egg-stuffed chicken, chicken wrapped in omelette.

The combinations were endless and it took more than 1000 years before they exhausted the combinations and invented the sheep and cow.

The logic of the paper is faultless and clear. I have recommended the paper for publication and would wholeheartedly recommend the paper for the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Finance 101

2009-03-02T12:50:00.001-08:00

Do you understand finance?
Do you understand exotic options, hedging and futures?

Me neither. Technically, we call such newbies that don't have an inkling of such matters and have a naive, irresponsible attitude to money, Bankers or Traders or Financial analysts.

Anyway, it's come to my attention that there's a serious lack of understanding of basic finance terminology So, we explain it here (again):

Basic financial planning and investment and trading is EXACTLY like growing mushrooms.There is no analogy. Of course, you're not using mushrooms, that's plain silly, instead you're using coinage of the realm.

Now, for options investment you need to pick 5 locations. Shady ones are good under an Ash or Oak tree cluster and plant brown chestnut mushrooms and all your money in late autumn, just after the third rainfall that's light-to-medium-heavy. They're the best and the ones nearest to oak trees are superb. After about 3 months you should get a nice yield. Due to the monetary-philic processes that are unique to the mushroom species.

For exotic options simply replace the type of mushroom with shitake mushrooms and plant under willow or hazel trees.

Hedging is a lot simpler. Being the most basic and fundamental form of finance there is you need an abundant form of mushroom. Toadstools although technically poisonous are the best mechanism for hedge funds. Take the red spotty ones and plant them along with all your money in roughly 20,000 locations under lime trees. Within roughly 6 months you should have a huge number of red spotty toadstools and a whole load of dead flora and fawna.

For those of a literary nature the exact relationship between the killing you will make and the initial investment is given by:

killing = sqrt(w*d**(1/3))*exp(mp/my)*atan(nf/tf)

where:
w = weight of earth above the mushrooms.
d = distance of mushrooms from base of tree.
mp = number of planted mushrooms.
my = number of yielded mushrooms.
nf = number of flies above the mushrooms.
tf = total number of flies of that type in existence.

Getting Lost

2009-02-07T15:01:00.001-08:00

I tend to stay in a lot of hotels as part of my work. My experiences may help you to significantly improve your experiences.

I'm a delayed airline passenger. That's my job. My job requires me to devise formulae to determine the flight with the highest probability of being delayed. I use a dart-board. After I find a candidate flight I get myself a ticket and take the flight.

More often than not the flight takes off and lands in the wrong place, usually due to chronic shortage of:

(i) direction, usually due to the passengers taking part in the online poll-vote on the best route not
                   being conversant in Geography or the native language.

(ii) ambition, usually due to the poll-vote held being held by passengers being not feeling they were
                    worthy of landing at their destination and opting for a less conspicuous destination usually
                    5 miles from take-off.

As you may know most airlines have been quick to follow up on the success of phone-in reality shows and empowered the passengers, or audience, to take part selecting a variety of things for their journey. They can vote on the flight path, the destination, food, in-flight entertainment and the amount of turbulence they should experience on the flight among other things.

Passengers are expected to phone in on monitored premium-rate, poor-quality lines and vote on a 34 page list of topic. Those passengers that fail to vote are usually forcibly requested to serve as flight attendants.

Once I have arrived where I have not expected to arrive my task is to find myself a hotel and a ticket for the next flight to approximately my destination with maximum helpful destructive interference from the helpful airline ground staff (the level of helplessness that the ground staff exhibit is determined by the on-line airline poll).

The ticket is the easiest part of the operation as the ground-staff simply run the random ticket generator that will generate a ticket to a location weighted by the destinations you have been to.

The hotel is more tricky since the selection algorithm used by the ground staff is based on the GDP of the city you are in as well as the density of hotels and the size of the airport. Contrary to popular belief, the time of your flight does not play a role in the selection of the hotel.

My last expedition resulted my being hoteled in a hotel that was over 300miles from the airport where my next random flight was taking off. But, as luck would have it, 5 minutes from where I actually wanted to go. Rules being rules, I still had to take a taxi, at my own expense, to travel the 300 miles from the hotel to the airport to take my random flight that eventually got me to my destination three days later. But, that's another story. It's worth remembering this point as you could forefit your entitlement to travel by that airline for 5 years if you circumvent the rules.

I arrived at the hotel just after 2am. Just after the hotel night-staff and switched to unhelpful mode. The night-hotelier requested the usual information and after the customary hour-long interrogation gave me the key to my room. The best time to get to a hotel is around 11pm when the night-staff have just started and are releshing the nights entertainment.

The hotelier tested my skill and ingenuity by not telling me the room that my electronic card key fit. He thought a check of the 800 rooms would keep me occuppied until the morning shift started. Being an old hand at the game I knew that my hotel would be in the basement close to the dry-cleaners and the lift.

I then had the standard 30minute exchange with the night-desk to get them to activate my electronc card key and finally entered the room at 4am.

The room smelt of old socks and indeed the floor was littered with them. I found out later that the hotel night-desk had a side-business in selling socks and stole guests socks selling the unwashed items back to different guests at a premium. Since all the guests in this hotel were in-transit it was a good business.

The aroma made me drowsy and I fell asleep after 10 minutes after asking for the wake-up call approximately 30minutes later which guaranteed that the vindictive night-staff would add at least 2 hours to the time ensuring that I would be able to get a taxi to catch my 8pm flight.

I thwarted the hotel night-staff by not wearing socks and not carrying anything of cleaning value (i.e. toothpaste, shoe-polish, detergent, bleach - standard items carried by all passengers). It's a good idea to bear this in mind when traveling. I had also had the good sense to unhook the lobby curtains for use as a blanket in the spartan room (another trick worth remembering).

Checkout in the brutal morning usually required a complex negotiation of proving that I had not made any use of any of the services offered by the hotel at ridiculous prices. You have to keep your wits about you as these negotiations require knowledge of complex legal presedences dating back 10 years (best to brush up on international hotel-law before you travel). Remember not to take the breakfast or dinner as that's a standard trap where they can sting you for a 2 week all-exclusive holiday package to experience all the delights the hotel has to offer.

The Origins of Cheese

2009-02-03T04:00:00.001-08:00

I think that it's worth recapping on the origins of cheese to understand some of the modern cheese making processes.

[Apparently, prehistoric person was not a complete vegetarian. That took many years of badly prepared meat dishes and the discovery that raw vegetables that did not need to be massacred in boiling water before vegetarianism evolved as a palatable option (along with the abolition of boiled meat).]

Prehistoric person tried to make the maximum use of the animal they killed. In those days, the cow was a staple of their diet and they ate the meat. Used the skin for clothing and used the cows udders as a fashionable hat to protect them from prehistoric rain.

They soon discovered that the cow produced milk and that this was almost edible. To carry the milk as they moved around (for prehistorians were nomadic and moved from country to country in order to avoid prohibitive prehistoric land taxes) they invented the cows stomach which was a naturally non-porous and, provided they tied one end up, was a very useful bag.

As they moved around the milk became agitated in the cows stomach and turned into what we now call cheese. They instantly realised the stomach was instrumental in the production of this new delicacy and set about finding more efficient means of making cheese.

As we now know, they discovered that force-feeding a donkey cows milk and then getting the most worthless member of the clan to tether the donkey with a string and then stampede it all over the place holding tightly to the donkey to make sure the precious cheese was not lost. They discovered that about one week of continuous stampeding was needed for a semi-hard cheese and two weeks for a hard cheese. They also found that if they used old donkeys then more mature cheese was made and young donkeys produced much younger cheese. Once the cheese was made they simply cut the donkey's stomach open and removed the cheese.

This explains why in many organic cheese making houses you can see a large number of people tied to donkeys being dragged all over the place as the stampeding donkeys are making cheese. Clearly, in more modern plants cars are filled with milk and stampeded all over the place to produce much larger volumes of cheese.

Mobile Language

2009-01-29T13:59:00.001-08:00

Have you ever been abroad?

Me too. But, usually I find that my language doesn't travel well and I cannot understand anything that anybody is saying.

Well scientists have now discovered the reason as to why your language does not travel well when you go abroad.

Years ago, large numbers of them, when there were as many people as live in Iron Age Road, well perhaps not that may, as many as lived in Paleolithic Gardens there were a small number of tribes that moved from Africa all over the place (not too sure why, many conjecture to look for options and hedges).

Each tribe had a big guy in charge who had the sense not to allow them to eat each other, but to eat other things and try not to die too quickly by eating the wrong things (which is another article that scientists have worked on). The big guy was admired by all as is amply shown by the amount of rubbish the followers poured on top of the grave of deceased big guys.

For all their intelligence each big guy had a speech impediment (either from a deformity or from allergies). Since the big guy was a sensitive soul he tended to massacre those that made fun of his ailment. Very quickly, the rest of the tribe figured out it wasn't too wise to poke fun at the leader. So, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they started to speak like him. They too artificially developed a speech impediment and in turn became sensitive to their failing.

Gradually, over time as the tribes prospered countries were formed with people with similar speech impediments.

Scientists have discerned clearly that French originated from a tribal leader with a bunged-up nose and a bit of a lisp. Dutch and Welsh originated from a leader with persistent catarrh. English and German developed from a leader with a pretty nasty sore throat. Italian developed from a leader of a tribe heavily into Karaoke.

The Fastest Train in the World

2009-01-28T15:14:00.001-08:00

Today I sat on what I believe was the fastest train in the world. Ever.

I got to the station the customary 4 hours before the train was meant to depart. I know most train companies in the UK request their passengers to get to the station at least 6 hours before their train departs in order to get into the swing of things. But, I was in a rush.

For new-comers, UK trains travel with such energy that they operate beyond the Planck-scale which means quantum fluctuations come into effect. Which means, that you need to wait for the departures board to settle (after 30 minutes) and then take the average of all the platforms indicated for your train and go to the average platform number. This is important. I have lost count of the number of people that have complained to the platform staff that the train has not left from the indicated platform. It's clearly stated in the Train manual people, get with the program!

Anyway, I got onto my train on the average platform. The train was much shorter than usual. In fact, there was 1 carriage. I sat on the train and went to sleep, as I usually do. After one hour I woke up and the train was back in the platform that I had departed from!
Since I was going to Glasgow this meant that the train had traveled at more than 1000Km/hr! in order to get me from London to Glasgow and back again! It is clear that I had been to Glasgow since I was sitting on a copy of the Glasgow Herald.

Clearly this train was experimental as there was only one carriage. It was such a smooth journey. The next time I had better sleep for less time as I don't want to miss getting off at Glasgow again.

Nano Tube

2009-01-27T15:14:00.001-08:00

We have another laaarrrge program going on that's not getting any attention ANYWHERE. It's our deployment of little blue plastic tubes under the roads. The company responsible for digging up the roads with minimal coordination and maximal disruption, which necessarily is needed to enable the whole system to be placed in equilibrium and harmony, is called Thames Water. Which, if you follow the links provided, is actually a revolutionary (in a circular manner) enterprise innovating the use of smaller underground trains!

The first phase is to deploy the tunnels underneath the roads in a harmonic manner. Then the next phase is to install small trains in these small blue tunnels underneath the road. But, how can we fit into the trains in these small blue tubes? Well if you follow the links you will find that the really revolutionary idea from Thames Water is to change change the diet of everyone such that they shrink and can fit into the small trains! Genius! It will sort out the overcrowded trains and also allow the whole system to extend indefinitely.

Ok, at the moment there are a few teething problems: we have an obesity epidemic at the moment, but all that takes is a slight alteration of the formulae and then we will all become nano commuters able to fit into these nano tubes.

We will also reduce our Carbon smudge on the environment.

Aisle

2009-01-26T15:21:00.001-08:00

I have forgotten one of the most basic supermarket theorems:

This week Marmite is on Aisle 3, but next week Marmite will be on Aisle number
maxAisle - (exp(Aisle)-log(staff))/log(week). Other foodstuffs are moved as a attenuated function of the marmite function weighted by the weeks takings (after tax and benefits).

It's worth remembering. Each week I go to the supermarket and each week everything is somewhere else. Sometimes, staple foodstuffs are discontinued in favour of more exotic foods. For example:

Excuse me, where's the bread and milk this week?

They're discontinued this week. We are pushing nightingale's tongue puree and Kangaroo offal bread. Both are superfoods high in important profits for us.

It is worth stocking up on items you desire to hedge against they're becoming extinct at your supermarket. Then you can, as I have seen others often do, setup a little table outside the supermarket and allow fellow shoppers to buy the extinct items from you at index-linked prices.

Or, as a majority of people do, bring your refridgerator and stand outside the supermarket with the door open all day allowing people to buy fresh, frozen items from your refridgerator.

Where do the tubes go?

2009-01-25T03:58:00.001-08:00

It has come to my attention that a good chunk of the London Underground network does not exist on the weekends. This has been happening for the past 10 years at least. I am slow to recognise things.

So, the question is where do they go? On these weekends when the London Underground is not in London where does it go?

I have done some research and it appears that the London Underground is distributed over Europe. It appears that the Northern Line is deployed to Oslo where more trains run on the weekend and new stations appear. This could explain the abundance of Norwegians at Leicester Square and London Bridge. The Piccadilly Line appears to spend the weekends in Paris which explains the large number of French Players playing for Arsenal and the Circle Line seems to have occurred in Rome because the Italians like to visit many interesting places again and again. The District Line appears in Berlin for obvious reasons. The Central Line in Zurich for obvious reasons too. Other lines appear to oscillate between different countries.

This could explain why the London Underground invariably does not work well on Monday morning as it takes quite a long time to move the underground back again. It could also explain why it costs rather a lot. It's not easy making a mobile undergound system.

Market Style

2009-01-23T15:23:00.001-08:00

A puzzle for you. Why do supermarkets EVERYWHERE put the fruit and vegetables (ie soft foodstuffs) as you walk in and the tin cans and bottles of water at the furthest end of the supermarket?

When you come to buy your food you first load up with fruit and vegetables and then put more heavier stuff (like side of cow, 6 2x4 planks of wood, wardrobe) after you have put in the fruit and vegetables.

And, by the time you get to the checkout counter you are trailing a puree of your selection of fruit and vegetables.

This is clearly a clever ploy by the supermarkets to make sure that you go around and buy even more fruit and vegetables to replace the ones you have just pureed.

And, you have to first checkout because the supermarket one-way system will not allow you to go back and replace your puree. You have to first checkout. Which in itself is an interesting process. The checkout person is usually autistic and doesn't like any form of social interaction. Then you stand at the end of the conveyor belt with bags ready to catch the items as they are slung as rapidly as possible down the conveyor belt. Hopefully, you will be able to stuff everything into your bags as they arrive otherwise you risk the wrath of the autistic checkout person who will glare at you as you incompetently pack your food as quickly as possible.

I must get my supermarket to repeal the one way system and the overtaking on both sides (which is extremely dangerous).

Market Value

2009-01-23T14:47:00.001-08:00

I, like you, shop for my food. I go to these biiig supermarkets where you can buy all the food that you want and more, much more! They sell everything knives, bandages, TVs.

I think, but am not certain, that you can buy shopping trolleys. Well, you put a pound or Euro into this little lock thing which, I believe, means you've brought the trolly. And, if you don't like it you can put it back where you got it from and get your pound or euro back. Heck you can even buy the checkout machine! I saw one at the Tate recently.

I believe that their ethos is that anything in the store is for sale. So, it should be possible to go in and buy one of those machines that they use to cut cured meat and take it home and use it to cut thin slices of wood for making veneers.

Anyway, these supermarkets are biiig business. They are constantly going out on our behalf to make sure that we are getting the best possible deals ever. They do these complex calculations and predictions and compare with other supermarkets. They are justly proud of their work and the fact that they are giving us value for money. I for one am very proud of my local supermarket.

But, I am puzzled. They do all these complex calculations. But, everytime I go into my local supermarket I don't see any charts or documentation on the studies. I have not seen any lectures on the studies. But, maybe I'm not looking hard enough or maybe they are only on Thursdays when it's late night shopping. Maybe they have lectures or talks on the analysis at your local supermarket.

public phones

2009-01-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of these small tiny little phones?
They are small enough to fit into the palm of your hand.
They can fit inside your pocket, or handbag.
They are innocuous and discrete.

Except when you use them. Then they turn you into the most obvious person in your surroundings. Especially when you talk with a loud voice and exclaim and ask questions ensuring that all around you hear only half of the conversation.

Well, here's a suggestion. Try the following dialogue. It will not fail to impress your surrounders and elevate your status with all those in ear-shot:

Marmalade?

What's the status?

That much down?

Ok. Don't worry. Here's what we do. Buy half an M of Jelly Beans and three quarters of an M of Jelly Babies. Sharpish!

Put 100 of each in you mouth and chomp like crazy. Are the numbers on the ticker going up?

Ok. Now select out all the green ones and throw them away. They're only for a bull market.

Chomp another 100 mixed.

Are the numbers going up now?

Ok. Excellent! Sell on 80.

No problem. Citibank don't need to thank me just doing my job.

You'll instill confidence in the market and single-handedly inspire others to go out and buy like crazy. Happy days will be here again!

You've got to laugh

2009-01-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

Markus did not believe in anything. He did not believe in God, in evolution or even in himself.

Markus was a trader in Explosive a company based in the City of London the financial centre of the known world (apart, of course from all those other financial centres outside of the City of London).

Markus was a very good trader he had managed to convince people he could make them money at short notice and had indeed done so. At the same time he had managed to ruin a respectable number of businesses in the process by dumping shares in their company and buying them back at a lower rate.

Markus was now having a little bit of a problem. He had brought an enormous number of shares in Explosive, in fact he had brought all the shares, apart from those that he held, and had short sold them making a handsome profit for himself and his backers. Unfortunately, he had managed to lower the price of shares to the point where the entire company was just about worth the price of a large plaice and chips from Hans Fish Bar.

Nobody at Explosive liked to be compared to plaice and chips and potential investors were also not keen on plaice and chips (or rather would wish to actually get plaice and chips for the price of plaice and chips) and future sources of revenue began to dry up making the company even less attractive as NOBODY, but NOBODY wants to invest in dried up plaice and chips.

In order to hide his mistake Markus used his profits to buy shares in the Office of Fair Trading a company that speculated on whether companies were behaving themselves or not. An excellent company where you could buy options on whether your company was behaving itself or not. Markus managed to buy enough shares to then dump them via his amazing short-selling technique and make an even more incredible profit which he used to buy more shares in Explosive at a more inflated price making it more attractive than plaice and chips.

Unfortunately, the Office of Fair Trading became worth less than a regular portion of chips and a pickled egg. Lucretius a high-flying trader at the Office of Fair Trading did not like chips and pickled eggs and decided to do something about it. Namely, by buying shares in another large company and short-selling to gain enough profits to buy shares in the Office of Fair Trading at inflated prices.

It was due to the selfless efforts of Markus and Lucretius and others and their dislike of certain combinations of fish and chips that the great depression of 2000s happened. It was only during 2011 due to the superhuman efforts of a handful of fish bars and their incredible batter that confidence in all combinations of fish and chips was restored and the economy picked up and the wheels of high finance began to grind smoothly as before.

Getting to the Meet of it.

2006-11-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

At the airport arrivals have you noticed that some people arrive with no one to greet them? Have you noticed that sometimes even taxi-drivers, on their day off, go to the airport and hold up a sign just so some poor displaced person can feel at home?

Well, now you too can join in the fun! Here's what you need to do:

1) Buy some crayons and some card (white card although if you have white crayons maybe you need black card).

2) Print on the card a suitably obscure greeting. Something like: 'enjoy our weather', 'welcome to our smog', 'avoid our cheese' and other friendly greetings.

3) Greet all arrivers with drums, flash photography and wild screams.

If you have some friends who are arriving from another country, make a card for them!
Impress them with your grasp of languages: write your greeting in a language that you don't know. Better still, write a greeting in a language neither you nor your friends know!

Identify your friends by some article of clothing: 'hello dirty purple shoes', 'welcome back wrinkled green trousers'.

If you are a traveller and arriving in a foreign place, you are an ambassador of your country. Greet all the people that you see as you arrive. If you can, tell them where you're from and how many people live there, what your GDP is and how your currency compares to theirs.

Saving your sole

2006-09-17T15:08:00.001-07:00

Without a doubt the most difficult thing to do is buy shoes. I have tried it and have been thrown out of quite a few shoe shops. The dialogue usually follows as:

Shoer: Hello Madam can I help you.
Me: Yes. I'd like a pair of shoes.
Shoer: Any particular type.
Me: Well a pair of clowns shoes would be good.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we don't sell clowns shoes.
Me (looking around): But, I see some shoes here that look like clowns shoes.
Shoer: No I'm sorry they're designer shoes and are quite expensive.
Me: Well how about all these people they're dressed like clowns surely they're here to buy some clown shoes too?
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we do not sell clown shoes and I will have to ask you to leave.

At this point I'm usually asked to leave the store.
Clown shoes are indeed difficult to buy.

I have also had no luck when buying train passenger shoes (technically known as trainers). I usually use the following technique:

Me: I'd like a pair of trainers please.
Shoer: Yes madam we have a fine selection of trainers any particular make?
Me: Yes, I'd like British Rail trainers please.
Shoer: Ok, well most people tend to wear these green ones. Perhaps you'd like to try a pair of those?
Me: Yes indeed do you have them in my size?
Shoer: What size is that?
Me: I'm not sure.
Shoer: What size shoes are you wearing?
Me: I'm afraid I don't know. They're not my shoes they belong to a friend.
Shoer: Well do you know the size shoe your friend wears?
Me: Certainly not! I don't ask personal questions like that.
Shoer: Perhaps we can measure your feet then.
Me: I'm afraid that's difficult to do as I'm not allowed to take my shoes off in public.
Shoer: Right well if you could lift up your foot perhaps we could get a pair roughly the same size?
Me: That's a good idea. But, could you get them a bit bigger?
Shoer: Why?
Me: Well, these ones are a bit small for me.
Shoer: Any idea how small?
Me: They seem to be uncomfortably small for me. Can you find a pair that's comfortably larger.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we're all out of comfortably larger shoes perhaps you could try Bond Street they sell comfortably larger shoes there.

Indeed, I have had great difficulty in finding shoes in my size, colour and for all my needs. I have had to resort to creating my own shoes.

I have found that by creating a paper-mache of paper, glue and water in a bucket. And then putting my feet into the bucket I am able to make a resonably decent pair of shoes. By then sticking half-metre square pieces of carpet to the underside I have a comfortable surface on which to walk on. I usually wrap the shoes in tape to make them waterproof.

I have found that these shoes tend to wear better than those elsewhere and may be worthwhile trying out yourself.

Hope this helps

Trash conservation...

2006-09-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

Some countries are getting rather worried about the amount of trash (or rubbish to the non-technical) we refuseniks are generating. Well, I've been searching around and have found the following article.

Scientists have recently performed a large and detailed simulation on the effect of increased trash production and burial in land-fill sites. The results show that the land-mass increases roughly as the square root of the number of people occupying the land. Which means, in small countries like the USA and Russia that we generate enough material to increase the land mass to accomodate the influx of people into that country alleviating the space crisis and pressure on house prices.

Their simulations also reveal that the new land mass would be lighter than the existing land mass (by virtue of the high non-degradable plastic content) allowing the new land mass to rise with rising ocean levels. This technique is currently being used in Venice (or Venus to the non-technical) where huge amounts of non-degradable trash from China are being dumped. We are already seeing the benefits: Venice has risen by approximately the length of Berlusconi's nose in one year.

In a related piece of research archeologists have unrefutable evidence that Siberia and the mid-west of the USA are the direct result of bronze-age and iron-age landfill sites.

We have to be thankful that large supermarkets (shoporamas to the non-technical) are increasing the amount of packaging (by packaging the packaging) and we have to be thankful that the governments will be asking us to pay more to dispose of the packaging's packaging as we are really securing our country for our future consumers.

With my rubbish I for one am building a new extension to lower Russia. What are you doing to help?

Getting in tune...

2006-08-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

Do you find it difficult to get up in the morning?

Do you find your alarm clock lying in the street every morning whilst rushing to get a double espresso (without cream, but with hazlenut syrup followed by an omelette on fried bread with smoked kippers and mushrooms)?

Do you always wake up too early and then sit in the garden wondering what to do?

Well, scientists have discovered the reason. It seems that each one of us inherits our body clock from our parents. Further, whilst in the womb our body clock is heavily influenced by the foods our parents eat. So, if our parents eat more food from, say, India then our body clock will be more aligned to the time-zones of India! It seems that this is because our little bodies are highly sensitive to maturity of the foodstuffs our parents eat. So, it's hereditary!

Scientists have suggest that if we move to the country that dominates our body clock we will get up at the right time. All we need to do is to scan the globe for timezones that match our body clock and then simply move there.

I've tried this and it seems to work. In the US I get up at a sensible time which suggests that my parents must have worked in a hamburger joint.

Moving around

2006-08-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Public transport is a great way to get out and meet people (especially if you're claustrophobic). It is great that so many of us get together during a brief moment in the morning and stuff as many of ourselves as possible into as few compartments as possible maximizing the chance of a brief encounter. We have to thank the transport system for decreasing the vehicles at these times too!

In many civilized countries when one boards public transport one announces oneself to fellow passengers. In some more civilised countries you give your name to the driver, or conductor who will then announce you to the privileged travellers.

You must live in a civilised country, try it! Announce yourself to your fellow passangers with a 'A Lord/Lady Rhumbaba boarding'. Or, ask the driver to announce you to everyone else. The announcement is usually followed by polite applause from the other passangers.

Something to do during the idle moments...

2006-08-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

Do you frequent coffee-shops? Do you frequent coffee-shops that ask for your name and then yell it all over the shop when your concoction is ready?

Excellent! Then try this give someone elses name when they ask for your name. Or, give the name of a famous person. Give an inanimate object as your name (eg Red Triangle).
See if you can get the brew-meister to shout 'latte for Green Lantern' or some such. Give your fellow drinkers something to puzzle over...