A GROUP of chemists at the University of West Florida recently found
themselves in a rerun of a famous urban myth.
Readers may remember the one about the hospital cleaner who supposedly
unplugged a patient’s life-support system so that she could use the power socket
to plug in her vacuum cleaner. The chemists in Florida remembered it too, after
their Internet server suddenly went down one evening, while some of them were
accessing it from home.
Yes, a member of the cleaning staff at the university had decided that the
socket strip connecting the server to its power supply was a more convenient
place to plug in a vacuum cleaner than the socket on the opposite
wall—even though this meant unplugging the server first.
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The chemists were offline for several hours. But at least their offices were
nice and clean when they went in the next day.
THERE must be something about vacuum cleaners, as they also figure in a
website we discovered recently called Pretty Strange Patents. It lists some of
the odd inventions around the world that people have filed as patents, including
a vacuum cleaner disguised as a dog (US patent 3 771 192). Or, as the patent
describes it: “A toy dog resembling a real dog and having a hollow interior in
which is mounted a vacuum cleaner having a suction hose which is retractable
from the tail end of the dog.”
The device is designed to groom real dogs, the idea being that the animal
will be fooled into thinking it is being groomed by another dog that just
happens to sound like a vacuum cleaner. “This enables vacuuming a dog after a
hair cut and grooming without causing fear to the dog,” says the patent.
Top idea, isn’t it? To find out more, go to
soundreach.simplenet.com/psp/us3771192.htm.
WHAT matters to you most when you are choosing a book? The subject? The
author? The publisher? The cost? The colour of the cover?
If it’s the last of these, then go to the New England School of Law library’s
website, which has indexed the school’s reference room by colour. So, for
example, if you’re looking for a book with a blue cover, you should look at
http://38.232.116.10/search/ i?SEARCH=Blue. For red, go to
http://38.232.116.10/search/i?SEARCH=Red. Or to select any colour, try
http://38.232.116.10/screens/well_its_redbks.html.
Feedback tried it out, and was interested to note that the Attorney
General’s Commission on Pornography: final report is blue. What else?
A WHILE ago we reported on a horticultural company that reminded people that
the trees it mailed out were not necessarily dead if they didn’t have leaves,
but were deciduous and would sprout leaves in the spring (22 April). This
reminded reader Mike Ellis of a time one winter when he was touring
Massachusetts by bus.
After passing miles and miles of bare trees, the woman sitting next to him
said: “Aren’t the trees strange? Do you think they use a defoliant?”
It turned out she had been raised in southern California and had never seen a
large stand of deciduous trees before. She had, however, seen TV film of the
effects of the chemicals unleashed by US forces on the forests of South-East
Asia during the Vietnam war.
REPORTING on a plane crash, the online aviation newsletter Avweb has come up
with a felicitous new coinage.
“The aircraft,” the report says, “. . . was on its second approach when the
crew reported engine problems. `Earwitness’ reports and radio transmissions
suggest that a failure of both engines occurred.”
We look forward to further Avweb bulletins involving tastewitness,
smellwitness and (gosh!) touchwitness reports.
AND here’s a fine piece of incomprehensible corporate speak. In a report on a
joint venture between Alcatel and Fujitsu, the June issue of Australian
Electronics Engineering quotes Fujitsu’s executive vice-president as
saying: “This agreement allows each company to leverage their respective
expertise and complementarity to respond faster and more effectively to customer
requests for end-to-end UMTS solutions encompassing radio, core network and
terminal products”.
Hands up anyone who can tell us how to leverage complementarity.
HOW would you feel if someone threw a CD player at you? Physically and
mentally sore, perhaps? If so, you’ll be pleased about the warning that comes in
the “safety” section of the manual for the Enlightened Audio Design Ultradisc
2000 CD Player.
Precaution number 7 states: “Do not use the Ultradisc 2000 as a projectile in
a catapult or similar hurling mechanism. Use of the Ultradisc 2000 as a
projectile can cause personal injury as well as damage to the transport
mechanism, and will void the warranty.”
Wise advice, indeed.
FINALLY, reader Geoff Percival has a new Bosch dishwasher. It came with a
manual which, among the many instructions and warnings it offers, states: “The
water inside the dishwasher is not suitable for drinking.”
