Understanding the Global Economy

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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

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?

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).