Chemistry without the chemicals
WAITING in line at the Heathcote post office in Victoria, Australia, Beck Lowe鈥檚 eye was caught by one of the items on sale there 鈥� the Chemistry 60 science kit for children, which boasts that it contains 鈥�60 Fun Activities With No Chemicals鈥�.
This improbable concession to 鈥渃hemicals鈥� hysteria is produced by Elenco Electronics. The kit aims to teach 鈥渂asic chemistry鈥�, along with 鈥渃rystal growing, physics, magnetism, optics, growing plants鈥� and much more, even including 鈥渃hromatography鈥� 鈥� all without chemicals.
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At least, it aims to do so without actually providing any chemicals. However, several of the experiments require the use of the kinds of substances you keep in your kitchen cupboard. So 鈥淪upply your own chemicals鈥� might be a better slogan for the kit 鈥� if it wasn鈥檛 for the fact that this includes the dreaded c-word.
At Guy Cuillin鈥檚 home is a Bosch Logixx dishwasher with a very special facility. Whenever someone switches it on, the display panel announces that it is 鈥淩ecalculating time鈥�
COMMERCIAL gobbledegook of the week comes from . It has the following to say about one of the products it is selling:
鈥淭he SpectraLink 8400 series enhances the customer value proposition through an optional integrated barcode scanner and an enhanced standards-based applications interface.
鈥淚n partnership with the Polycom applications development ecosystem, the SpectraLink 8400 product toolset enables new opportunities for end-user productivity solutions.鈥�
鈥淭his describes a PHONE!鈥� sobbed our informant Allan Jamieson when he told us about it.
Forwarding messages before they arrive
READER Keith Walters wanted to establish a rule in Outlook 2010 for automatically forwarding emails to a second email address. He set things up as he wished, and then checked the Rule Description box to see that everything was in order. It began: 鈥淎pply this rule after the message arrives.鈥�
He tried 鈥減retty thoroughly鈥� to find a way of changing the rule so that it would forward a message before it arrived, but without success.
COULD this be a way of sorting out the UK鈥檚 water problems, with drought in the south-east and flooding in the north-west?
Iain Spencer sends us a scan of a letter in Towpath Talk, a magazine for people interested in canals. A person signing himself Wally Pratt says: 鈥淲e can dehydrate water where there鈥檚 plenty, transport it south in pellet form and rehydrate it to fill southern reservoirs.鈥�
Iain comments: 鈥淚 hope it鈥檚 a wind-up, but I bet there鈥檚 someone out there who will think it鈥檚 a good idea.鈥�
A COLLEAGUE has been in correspondence with phone company Vodafone about a SIM card for mobile broadband that mysteriously stopped working. The company鈥檚 technical helpline has now explained in less-than-perfect English what it thinks went wrong:
鈥淭he reason that SIM card gets disconnected is explained as below (bit technical): When the number is not used for a particular time the SIM stays active but slowly and gradually it starts going down and becomes inert.
鈥淟ater to that state the SIM function goes down and dull and the impulse sent to the main network house weakens. This results in losing track of the SIM card/mobile number. As a result the SIM gets disconnected鈥︹��
Silly us. We always thought that digital codes were either on or off, not down, dull or weakened by time.
Danger of the duplicate emails
ONE recent morning, Olivia Davies鈥檚 inbox at work contained five duplicate emails emanating from her company鈥檚 health and safety department. Soon after, an apology appeared:
鈥淒ear all. This morning we received reports of multiple emails generated from the Workstation Safety Plus online package.
鈥淚 understand from the supplier鈥� that this was caused by a network connection error that left a queued process in a loop.
鈥淭his process has since been halted and you should not continue to receive such messages.
鈥淚t is rather ironic that the subject of the message was that of repetitive strain injuries and intended to help alleviate the problems caused by such actions as repeatedly having to open emails and click 鈥楧elete鈥欌�︹��
FINALLY, a restaurant in Cardiff, UK, displays a notice that Paul Thomas was moved to photograph and send to us.
It says: 鈥淏ombay Blue are proud that we have very special signatured dishes & fish dishes that have never been seen or tasted before.鈥�
Paul wonders how they know what they are cooking and when it is ready to eat. We wonder how they know if the dishes taste nice.
鈥淚t sounds like the ultimate 鈥楥hef鈥檚 Surprise鈥�,鈥� says Paul.