Using the public facilities in a shopping centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Russell Pearse was confronted with a sign above the urinal instructing "Aim Higher". The effect was not, probably, what Victoria University in Wellington had in mind when it launched its recruitment campaign.
They seek it here, they seek it there....
""New 'super-Earth' found in space", BBC online announced
last month (May 2007). "As opposed to where? "Behind
the sofa?"”
A Safe Prediction
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology clearly has a sound grasp of statistics.
Melbourne's newspaper The Age reported on 16 April that it had "cautiously
predicted the drought-inducing El Niño effect might be replaced
by the wetter La Niña". Maybe. "There's a 50-50 chance
of exceeding average rainfall," said senior forecaster Terry Ryan.
Absolutely. If "average" means "median", definitely
so. Mark Hughes, "a fully fledged Australian taxpayer", spotted
this and was "delighted that my taxes are being spent on things like
supercomputers" to work out insights like this. A good thing too,
we say. Four years ago things weren't nearly so clear: "Generally
across large parts of Australia there is a 50:50 chance we will get median
rainfall across the summer months," an expert from the bureau announced
then (Feedback, 8 March 2003).
Categorical logic isn't what it used to be... (New
Scientist - 7 April)
In his local bookshop, Peter Wagner noticed a book entitled All The
Tunes You've Ever Wanted To Play. Alongside was another book entitled More
of All the Tunes You've Ever Wanted to Play. If the title of the first
book is correct, Wagner wonders, then what is the need for the second?
Law of the Excluded Middle? (New Scientist
- 24 March)
A notice on a the window of a restaurant on the south bank of the Thames
in London states: "Sorry, no children allowed inside or out." Carla
Pittau wonders how this can possibly be accomplished.
Which mermaid didn't you see....? (New Scientist
- 24 April)
On a map of walks in Cornwall in south-west England, Eddie Street found
the legend "Non-existent footpath". Why they should have decided
to mark this particular non-existent footpath out of all the other non-existent
footpaths in the area he does not know - and nor do we.