Everybody loves corporate governance
THE UK business school Mike Page belongs to subscribes to the Ebrary book reader service. When he tried to access a publication, Ebrary told him: āThe document you wish to access is currently being viewed by another user. Your institution permits access to the document āCorporate Governanceā by limited number of users at a time. There are 2147483646 people in line ahead of youā¦ You can now add yourself to the waiting list for access to the document.ā
Mike is impressed that about one-third of the population of the planet is trying to access this surprisingly popular publication at the same time.
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āThe instructions for Steve Markhamās solar battery-charger promise that its charge regulator will ākeep the whole solar system in proper working conditionā. Cherish it, Steveā
Israelās declining population
A REPORT on Decemberās in the normally reliable London Daily Telegraph notes that: āThere are only 1500 firefighters operating across Israel, a number widely accepted as woefully inadequate for a country of 7.6 people.ā
Ken Lassesen, who noticed this, is surprised that the population of the country has fallen so sharply. On the bright side, he assumes that one of the 7 people left is pregnant.
Britainās expanding population
THINGS are hardly better over at that ironclad redoubt of science reporting, the UKās Daily Mail. Stephen Lunn was researching statins. He unearthed from March 2010 titled āThe other side of statinsā. It featured anecdotes from people attributing side effects such as memory loss to these cholesterol-reducing drugs, which doctors prescribe increasingly as patientsā ages increase.
What caught Stephenās eye, though, was the accompanying panel: ā54 million: The number of adults in the UK with high blood pressure, thatās one in every two.ā
āDo they know something we donāt?ā he asks.
Even the all-seeing CIA hasnāt been told: the UK population in July 2010 as 62,348,447. Is the Mail suggesting that in addition to this there are 46 million asylum seekers ā to pick another of its preoccupations at random ā hiding under our beds?
AN āESPO 860 frameworkā is a list of refuse and recycling products recommended for procurement by local authorities in the UK, Ellie Lutterkort tells us. Last yearās ESPO 860 included an advertisement for a kitchen bin liner. Its dimensions were given as ā210 + 190 Ć T-Shirtā. Ellie says she really canāt imagine what they meant.
Promise of incomprehensibility fulfilled
āI AM not sure if this is fruitloopery, because I canāt make sense of it at all. I assume it is trying to sell something ā perhaps a service or an idea ā but have no means of identifying it,ā Nic Plum informs us.
He is talking about he was directed to in a āsystems analysisā group on the LinkedIn social network site. The document is called āReflections on confronting the system resilient growth challenge among the āSystemic quadruple power play'ā.
The impenetrable five page document that follows amply fulfils the headlineās promise of incomprehensibility. It is put out by a company called Alphafields which, Nic suggests, ālooks like a management consultancyā. It does, sort of, but then again it may be something quite different. Its website, , does little to make the purpose of its existence clear.
Nic is reminded of the entertainer Rolf Harris, who used to do drawings on his TV show. As his drawing proceeded, he asked the audience: āCan you tell what it is yet?ā
The answer in this case is, no, we canāt.
WIKIPEDIA, in its interesting entry on the ā that constitutionally peculiar island off the coast of north-west England ā observes that the current incumbent, Adam Wood, has been holding the position from ā2011-Presentā. It started saying this, by the way, in 2010.
CAN this be true? Sian Cole was looking through some iPhone apps and came across one for Dominoās Pizza. It states that people can choose from 1.8 billion pizza combinations, a claim that is repeated on the .
What Sian (who admits that she is not a mathematician) wants to know is: how many ingredients does it take to make that many different pizza combinations? We have asked round the Ā鶹“«Ć½ office, and several people here think the claim can be stood up. What do readers think?
Hope youāve had your breakfast
FINALLY, āHope youāve had your breakfastā is the subject line of an email from Robert Milne. It refers to a message he received from about courses and events on the topic of āSustainabilityā. One of these, at the UKās Centre for Alternative Technology, is a āCompost toilet taster dayā.