Is it part of the sub-editors job description to come up with headlines that can be interpreted ambiguously?

Here I was thinking that Mr Hicks had a lacerated posterior! It turns out the supplies were cut.

Bern

In 1980, or thereabouts, New Scientist held a competition. Readers were asked to submit questions to examine unusual subjects. The prize winners were presented in the March 13, 1980 issue:

University of Creation

Institute of Advanced Theology

Final Year Examination

Paper I: Practical

Candidates must attempt all sections in the order given.

Section 1 Practical Cosmology

In the container No 1 provided, you will find one void. From this you are to create a universe with an inhabitable planet. This planet should have earth, sky, water, night and day as an absolute minimum. Marks will be awarded for originality.

NB Candidates are advised to create a handful of dust for use in section 3.

(Time allowed: 2 days)

Section 2 Applied climatology

Devise a system of zoned climate and weather bands for the planet created in section 1. The weather created should be seasonable, with seasons varying with locality, and should be suitable for the propagation of the vegetation provided in container 2.

(Time allowed: 2 days)

Section 3 Advanced techinques in genetics

Using any raw materials you wish, create a varied collection of wildlife for the planet. There is no limit on variety, but your collection must include aquatic, amphibious, air breathing, and flying creatures which must be able to reproduce their own kind. Other forms may be created provided they are able to thrive and mutliply in the location in which you place them. Marks will be deducted for any imbalance introduced betweeen sections 2 and 3. The handful of dust from section 1 is to be used to created a living being in your own image together with a breeding partner. These will be needed in section 4.

(Time allowed: 1 day)

Section 4 Neuroengineering

The life forms created at the end of section 3 are to be provided with the ability to think and reason, using a heuristic central nervous system. Candidates are warned to take extreme care in this secion, as the slightest error could damage the delicate balance created in sections 2 and 3.

(Time allowed: 1 day)

Candidates will be allowed one day’s grace before Paper II: Theory.

Alan Jones, Dartford New Scientist, 13 March, 1980

Did a bit of tidying up yesterday and came across a couple of receipts dating back to 1990. Them were the times when I had an Amiga 500. They didn’t have a hard drive, just an in-built floppy disk drive which booted the system. I assume that the inbuilt memory acted as a RAM drive to hold the system instructions. So to load a word processing program you would have to remove the boot disk and then load the program.

With all that swapping in and out driving me around the bend I went and bought an external 3.5 inch floppy disk drive. The cost? $199. I had occasion to buy another one (internal) last year - $10.

The second receipt was for some additional memory. The Amiga came with 512KB built in, but there was a plug where a ROM unti could be added. The cost for an additional 512KB was $149. This took the total memory to 1MB. I notice that now you can get 1GB (1000MB) for about the same price. So that’s a two-thousandth reduction in the cost.

If I remember correctly that additional memory was held in place under the console with a piece of sticky tape.

Thought I’d pass on a link to this tip for speeding up Firefox. I’ve had a preference for this browser for some years. But lately I’ve found the system as sluggish as a wet sponge. I know that some of the problem is at the other end. But I thought some of it could have been local. And I was right. Found this trick for use with broadband and it worked a treat:

forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php [ opens in a new window/tab ]

PS speaking of sponges - how deep would the oceans be if there were no sponges on the bottom?

I found these two suggestions as ways to make it more difficult to lose young kids. I pass them on because anything that ccan do that should be spread around. Anyway here they are (and I got them from here)

If you have your children with you out in public, and it’s a busy place, there is almost always a nagging fear of, “What if I get separated from them?” One of the solutions you can use to help alleviate this fear is to get a Sharpie® and write your cell phone number clearly on your kid’s arm. It’s easy to do, doesn’t wash off, and is a very clear way for another adult to contact you should your kid get separated from you. I should note that this is more useful for very young children. Older children should know your number by heart.

Set up a generalized, agreed-upon place for your kids to find you or for you to find them in a store if they get lost or separated from you. For example, “the back-left corner of a store”. Make sure they know where that is when you walk in the store. Maybe have them point it out to you. In that example, make sure they know that “left” means “left when facing the back of the store”. Also, don’t make it near an entrance. Just try to make it something that they can figure out if they are by themselves and something that is general enough to be applicable to almost any store.

That second one reminds me that some Australian Aboriginal tribes used she-oak trees as the meeting place in case of emergency. Young children were taught to head for the she-oak trees if they got lost.

An outstanding summary from Stephen Downes

A list of ten things everyone should learn

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s History of Nearly Everything again. A thought popped into my head that the greatest creation is a thought or idea. It exists, but it is in no single place. Someday the human species will not exist. That may take a few more years, or (hopefully) many more years. Then the only thing that will be left of the species will be remnants on earth but also an expanding band of electromagnetic information only a few light years thick. centred on the sun. So, when the species is gone, all that will remain are the ideas and thoughts and of course the billions and billions of images from the countless years of broadcasting.

Last night I watched a documentary on the battle between the Darwinian theory of evolution and the new theory on the block - intelligent design. As I understand it Intelligent Design postulates that if you investigate something sufficiently deeply, and still can’t explain it, then the only solution is to call on an intelligent designer.
To me (science trained and a firm holder of Darwinism) intelligent design is nonsense. It had me picturing scientists working away slavishly in the lab for hours on end only to throw their hands up and say ‘We don’t know the answer, it must be intelligent design!’ Imagine if this had been the case centuries ago. Oh, that’s right, it was like that centuries ago!

We recognise that in the meantime we have discovered and clarified much. What was not understand then, at least is better understood now. So, if something now is not understood, it is totally illogical to claim the input of an intelligent designer. It is more logical to claim that there are some things we still do not understand, but we will continue to look into it using scientific methodology.

This is about the umpteenth resurrection of this site. This time it’s serious. we’re into the business of designing and hosting websites, and desktop publishing.

On the website side of things, the emphasis is going to be on websites for small businesses, individuals and families - basically those who could not afford, or would not consider the high prices charged by the larger design firms.

So, I can do everything with the website: design, upload, maintain, train and host. The basic package would cost $AUD150 per year. Personally I have found the big advantage of having your own website is the personal nature of your email address. Also it means that you don’t have to go through the tedious rigmarole of changing your address whenever you decide to change your service provider.

Of course the cost for anything other than the basic package would be negotiable.

I’ve just finished reading a great little volume by Gerald Durrell. It may be that it only appears to be good after reading so much drivel recently. Certainly Durrell writes good English (something that Dan Brown is unable to do).

This book is a set of short stories set in various times from the thirties to the fifties. Some tell of the farcical misadventures that have befallen the author. One longer one recounts the author’s reading of an occult manuscript.

Title: The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium, Gerald Durrell, Fontana Collins, 1981 (First published 1979)