You Must Be From Away

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I know someone who’s a moderately famous nuclear scientist. (If they name an element after you, I assume the “moderately famous” tag is appropriate. Even if its half-life is only 22 seconds…….)

We were around there for dinner the other evening and the candles on the table – – same height – extinguished within seconds of each other.

“Hmmm” he says. “I wonder why that happened”

I ventured the theory that the house was slowly filling with carbon dioxide, that the candles are an elegant alternative to canaries in mine shafts and that we should perhaps stand on the chairs in an attempt to survive.

“That’s not a good idea” he said “That’ll just make matters worse. You’ll be putting your head deeper into the gas cloud”

Despite my dire and unsuccessful attempts in the distant past to succeed at chemistry, I’m pretty sure that carbon dioxide is heavier than air.

With some trepidation, I said so.

“Carbon is 12, oxygen is 16 times 2 is 32, total of 44 – you’re RIGHT” he said.

That’s the difference between brainy people and the rest of us.

We have to memorise stuff like that.

They can work it out in their heads if they need to.

Murray Gell-Mann facetiously describes the “Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm” thus:

1. Write down the problem
2. Think very hard
3. Write down the answer

Same thing, really…

>People with nothing to say writing for people with nothing to do

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Most countries have laws to protect littlies against the the double demons of alcohol and nicotine.

(Some places even go to the other extreme, but that’s another story…)

Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s Family Minister (and – with 7 kids – eminently well qualified for the job) came up with a useful policing idea.

By the media and political reaction, it also appears to be quite novel, in that no-one in the past appears to have thought to find out how kids are getting the stuff, but anyway..)

You recruit kids who are marginally under the legal age for purchasing fags and booze, team them up with a grown-up (who lurks about in the background with the handcuffs) and send them out to see if retail outlets are IDing adequately.

Bloody hell!

You would have thought she was sending them off to child slavery or into the clutches of the neighbourhood paedophile.

“Outrageous! Corrupting our children!” Wuggawugga. Rant Rant

So the chattering classes all agreed it wasn’t a good idea, Ursula took the idea back to the drawing board and things have quietened down.

I see an opportunity here.

I have a bit of time on my hands and I wouldn’t mind drifting around, trying to buy alcohol and cigarettes and seeing if I get IDed.

Might even get some free samples.

So I shall be applying to Ursula for one of these unfilled jobs.

If they turn me down, I’ll sue on the grounds of age discrimination.