WHAT do you do when the market for what you normally produce dries up?
Diversify. That’s certainly what they’ve done at Russia’s top-secret nuclear
facility near Sarov. By way of ringing the changes from producing weapons of
mass destruction, they have started making church bells.
Technicians at the facility say that after years of computer modelling, they
have mastered the ancient skills of bell forging. Once known only to Orthodox
monks, the art was lost during religious repressions in the Soviet era. The tone
and pitch of the first completed bells have been favourably assessed by local
musicians and even met the approval of acclaimed conductor and cellist Mstislav
Rostropovitch.
Located 350 kilometres east of Moscow and formerly known as Arzamas-16, the
centre hopes to become a leading supplier of church bells and is working on
several orders, including one to refit the local monastery.
Advertisement
Warms the heart, doesn’t it?
IF YOU ever feel the need to optimise functionalities while strategising a
mission-critical mind share, a website called the Web Economy Bullshit Generator
can help you find the right words for the task. It simply lists verbs, nouns and
adjectives commonly used in corporate speak and shuffles them to produce the
appropriate phrase for the occasion—or you can shuffle them yourself to
produce your own customised claptrap.
What’s more, the site tells us: “This handy application is now available on
your Web-enabled phone, for those times when you need some bullshit but aren’t
near a PC.”
Just pay a visit to www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html and reintermediate your
extensible methodologies.
ANOTHER case of the difference a bit of punctuation can make. Reader Horst
Martin was given a yellow courtesy cap by Lufthansa, the German airline. The
label inside stated: “One size fits all heads made in Taiwan.”
Martin prefers not to wear the hat, even though it fits him perfectly. He
says it makes him wonder if his parents were telling the truth when they told
him he was made in Germany.
JUST for a minute, we were lost in admiration for the down-to-earth way that
North Americans deal with difficult issues.
The October issue of the popular Canadian women’s magazine
Chatelaine carries a feature article and survey on BSE. “Readers talk about
BSE,” chirps the contents page of the magazine. “Our survey revealed some
refreshing attitudes. Where do you stand on this issue?”
We turned eagerly to page 84, intrigued to see how many different opinions
there were on the dread disease, only to find the lead sentence saying: “Women
have been examining their breasts for lumps for years.”
For a moment we were utterly stumped. But bless the strap line at the top of
the page, which clarified everything. The article, it transpired, was about
“Breast Self Examination”.
IT IS well known that some bosses are far from happy when their employees
make use of their right to paid maternity leave, but it is unusual for them to
go public about it.
That, however, is what seems to have happened in this advertisement in the
Bognor Regis Observer for a greenhouse laboratory assistant at a local
horticultural firm: “Seeking a reliable and conscientious person for busy
micropropagation laboratory, to cover for maternity leave. Knowledge of sterile
procedures an advantage.”
WHILE in the US recently, we visited the new Interactive Gallery of the New
York Stock Exchange. Visitors get to play with computers that are supposedly
running the same system they can see being used on the floor of the exchange
below. “We have 3000 flat-screen computer displays; only NASA has more computer
firepower,” boasts the recorded commentary.
Unfortunately three of the gallery terminals had crashed. One was vainly
trying to reboot, with on-screen error messages revealing that the operating
system chips date back to 1992.
Perhaps this explains why the floor of the exchange is littered with scraps
of paper which the brokers keep handing each other.
WHERE do men get those habits that women find so irritating?
According to the instructions provided on Harpic Limescale Remover, users are
advised: “Always leave the toilet seat in an upright position.”
Unfortunately for Harpic, half of humanity does not agree.
BE PRECISE! This is obviously the motto of the manufacturer of a
plastic-wrapped sandwich that reader Roy Mazucco bought recently from an airport
food shop. The list of ingredients told him that it contained: “37.2 per cent
bread, 38.4 per cent pastrami, 17.3 per cent iceberg lettuce and 7.1 per cent
cocktail gherkins”.
Feedback is intrigued to know how these quantities are
measured—especially the gherkins that make up exactly 7.1 per cent of the
sandwich.
FINALLY, here is one high-tech company that is definitely ahead of its time.
Go to www.singlechips.com for information about LoggerLand North’s aquaculture
monitoring and control equipment. At the bottom of the page, under the proud
“Our Products Are Y2K-Ready” banner, appears the text: “Last modified Monday,
July 31, 3900.”
