Ha ha

A pensioner's wife rang him as he was driving home.  "Henry", she said "I've just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the M6 - please be careful".  Henry said "It's not just one car - there's hundreds of them!".

Not again!

Classic FM have produced their Hall of Fame for 2016 (see 21/4/15) and guess what's number 1? Yes, that damned lark is still ascending!

Hit the snooze button...

I was intrigued to see yesterday in my Google calendar described as Easter Monday (Regional Holiday) - what's with this "regional"?  Then I found, thanks to a friend of a friend, that it is not officially a holiday in Scotland - although many people and businesses treat it as such.  So I looked a little further into it, and it becomes more and more complex.  It seems that firstly you have to differentiate between public holidays and bank holidays.  Public holidays get their authority from the common law, and there are only two of them - Good Friday and Christmas Day.  Bank holidays get their authority (currently) from the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 which specifies Easter Monday, the last Mondays in May and August and Boxing Day, but also provides for other dates to be added by Royal Proclamation - and New Year's Day and May Day have been added under this provision.  These dates however only apply in England and Wales - the Act specifies different schedules for Scotland and Northern Ireland to allow for things like St Andrew's and St Patrick's Days, and crucially for what we are discussing here, Easter Monday is not included in the Scotland list.

And the bride wore...

Interesting fact I came across the other day is that the "tradition" that the bride wears white only goes back to Queen Victoria.  Prior to that, red was considered the appropriate colour for a bridal dress and white had connotations with death and mourning.  Victoria's choice of white was seen as pretty revolutionary at the time, but was quickly picked up by the society press of the day as symbolic of purity and innocence and soon became the fashion, and remains so to this day.

Nannies in the park?

Is a pram the same as a push-chair?  Well, no it's not.  You don't see many prams these days, but effectively it's a bed on wheels -  four big wheels, and the baby occupant lies down flat.  A push-chair. as the name suggests, is a chair - a chair on small wheels, where the occupant sits.  So what? Well on the game-show "The Chase" - which I watch from time to time - a contestant was asked what the UK equivalent of the US "stroller" was and was told her answer of "pram" was incorrect and the right answer was push-chair.  Lot of people gone on Twitter and such to say they're the same thing. But, as explained above, they're not. Perhaps not a particularly well constructed question, but the answer she gave was wrong.

Le sac du chien?

Bit of a fuss over a Mayfair restaurant refusing to allow a customer to take home their left-overs.  The "doggy bag" is pretty traditional in America (where they tend to serve much bigger portions than over here) but this side of the pond it's not so common. But you've paid for it, so it could be argued that it's yours to do with as you please, and if, for whatever reason, you don't finish it at the table, you should be able to take what's left away with you.  The restaurant in question has refused to comment, but it has been suggested that the objection might have come from the chef, who might fear his reputation could be tarnished if his food is not consumed under ideal conditions - like having been allowed to go cold and then warmed up in your microwave for instance.  More likely I think is the restaurant's fear of being sued if such re-heating were to result in food poisoning (rice is particularly dodgy I understand).  I've never had the problem - I always clear my plate!

Here, pussy, pussy...

Oh dear, I was really hoping I wasn't going to have to explain Schrödinger's cat (see 23rd March), but here goes.  Quantum mechanics says that a subatomic particle can be in more than one state at the same time - until it is observed.  So - as a sort of joke - Schrödinger came up with the idea of putting a cat in a box with a very weak source of radioactivity, a geiger counter and a vial of poison gas.  There's a 50-50 chance that over the course of an hour the radioactive source will decay and emit a particle. If this happens, it will be picked up by the geiger counter and this will release the gas and the cat will die. The box is put away out of sight and sound for an hour. The question is - is the cat alive or dead?  Obviously if you open the box you will find out - but before you do?  Schrödinger maintained that, according to quantum theory, until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead - in a so-called "superposition". Opening the box forces the superposition to collapse into one of the two possible outcomes.  In the same way, observing a subatomic particle forces it to adopt a particular state.  No, I don't really understand it either, but that's the best I can do.

Same difference?

Oh, for the days when people played sport for fun!  Simply for the pleasure of it. Those days I fear have long, long passed.  Today it's all about money.  And combine that with the recent rise in "feminism" and it makes for a potentially toxic mix.  So - tennis.  At the top level, men play over five sets, women over three. In general, the men's game pulls in more spectators than the women do - though there have been exceptions. So should men be paid more?  I think there's little doubt that at Wimbledon, the male champion has potentially to work some 66% harder for his title than his female counterpart, and yet the prize money is the same.  Is this fair?  I'm keeping my powder dry, but what do you think?

Ha ha

Schrödinger - "How's my cat, Doc?"
Vet - "I have good news and bad news..."

What's the difference?

How do you feel about this idea that all schools should become Academies?  I think I've mentioned before that in my opinion, the closer you can get decision making to the "sharp end" the better that decision making is likely to be.  I'm a great believer in the "lowest level of competence" approach (see 12/4/09). And the point about Academies is that, as regards schools, decision making is taken out of the hands of local authorities and put in the hands of the teachers - well, head teacher actually - and clearly this has the potential to result in decisions being made in the best interests of the school rather than the best interests of local politicians.