PARAPLEXED

Instead of wasting time with prime ministers, chancellors and 'independent' pay review bodies (all of whom seem only to understand percentages and not very well at that), we should give the task of resolving the various pay disputes to a Broadcast Engineer. Here's how it would then work: Decide on the salary level at which nobody can really justify a further increase right now. For argument, let's say £100k. Call that 'peak level' and normalise to it. Now apply gamma correction to the entire workforce earning less than £100k. By this approach, the hierarchy is preserved (i.e. nobody overtakes anyone else) but those most in need receive proportionately more generous increases. This is far cheaper and fairer than applying a flat rate percentage. It is also simpler. Having fixed the peak figure (e.g. £100k) it only remains to decide on gamma. For example, for gamma = 0.7, someone currently on £10k would receive an increase of £9,950, someone on £50k an increase of

Krishna teaches that the eternal soul journeys from unmanifest to manifest through conception, pregnancy and birth. Death, whenever and however it occurs, returns the soul to the unmanifest where it awaits rebirth. The point being that the eternal soul cannot be destroyed. Abortion, like any form of killing merely destroys the manifest state, but the soul is imperishable. What is the Christian view on this? Shouldn't the fate of the soul be of more concern to the faithful than the fate of the body?

There are two pretty good ways to weigh a car: Drive it to the nearest public weighbridge and wait your turn. Look up the manual under General Specifications, ‘kerb weight’ But let's suppose the nearest public weighbridge is fifty miles away and you've lost the manual (and temporarily forgotten how to use public libraries and the Internet) and the burning urge to weigh your car just won't go away- what can you do about it? The good news is, you need hardly any equipment. All you need, for a reasonably accurate result is: a hand-held tyre pressure gauge which can be analogue or digital a retractable steel measuring tape a calculator, pencil and paper, or a good head for mental arithmetic The method Park the car on some clean, level concrete Observe that the car is held up by its four tyres (!) Measure the width of the tread of one tyre: e.g. 6 inches Measure the length of tread in contact with the ground: e.g. 7 inches Work out the area of tread touching the ground: e.g. 6 x

Not For Me is the working title of a new song. It's a work in progress, awaiting a finalised lyric, but the musical elements are all in place. Hope you like it!  

 Just one of twenty-odd familiar nursery rhymes uniquely shredded and illustrated by Douglas McClure. Available on Amazon "The Three Jars - Being an Anthology" by Douglas McClure. Check it out!

  The triode was invented in 1906 by  Lee De Forest and by around 1920 was refined enough to be commercially viable for widespread distribution. It  was the World's first 'Active Device'. It could amplify and oscillate. It (and its derivatives) made possible all of the technologies of modernity – public address, radio, audio/video recording, television, radar, radio telescopy, electron microscopy, computing, the Internet, artificial intelligence. Without active devices, modernity would vanish in a flash. Those who really want to turn the clock back need only abandon science, technology and education. Nature will do the rest.