SEARCHING for metaphors to illuminate the meaning of numbers can all too often lead writers into dark places. Mary Vango, for example, was a bit surprised by what the magazine of the UK consumer rights group Which? had to say in a report on food packaging: âThe average bacon packet was nearly 15 grams and we [in the UK] eat about 50 million packets of bacon a year. Thatâs 7500 tonnes of packets, the equivalent of 50 blue whales.â
We canât help thinking: âMmm â blue whale rashers.â We also canât help thinking, like reader Jeff Gottfred (24 April): âWhatâs that in elephants?â
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Enter UK newspaper The Guardian, which announced in an article about : â51¶ŻÂțs put the annual net loss of ice and water from the ice sheet at 300 to 400 gigatonnesâ â and then reached for ââŠequivalent to a billion elephants being dropped in the oceanâ. The paper later removed the metaphor, but not before reader Martin Midgley sent us this comment: âAccording to my maths, that means an average elephant weighs in at 300 to 400 tonnes. The story is quite terrifying enough without visions of these gargantuan beasts, each almost as heavy as a million squirrels, or 70⊠er⊠elephants.â
Worrying as that sounds, it is apparently nothing compared with the number of elephants that already exist in the ocean. Several readers were quick to inform us last month that on the Australian ABC News website states: âAn army of bacteria weighing as much as 240 billion elephants is lurking in the depths of the oceans, researchers say.â
And thereâs more from Mary Vango, who spotted the BBCâs Focus magazine stating confidently: âThe total amount of water in a typical cloud weighs as much as 200 bull elephantsâ. Would those be African elephants, the smaller Indian ones, or the gargantuan Guardian-reading elephants that keep falling on our heads?
It is all getting rather difficult to comprehend â but James McMillan takes us into the murkiest territory yet. He reports the Discovery Channel getting stuck in its attempt to quantify pressure and ending up telling us that special concrete for bank vaults is âten times stronger than normal concrete: it can withstand pressure of up to 12,000 pounds per square inch⊠Thatâs the equivalent of 100 elephants dancing on stiltsâ.
At this point, we give up on the elephants. Our imagination just canât cope any more.
âCharles Plumb is rather concerned about a question raised by his motherâs Samsung GT S3650 cellphone, which asks âDo you want to erase history?â
WHAT a shame. Our piling system has only just unearthed the flyer sent by Frank Wellwood about what must have been a fun day in Exeter, Devon, UK, on 28 March. This was a Quantumwave Laser Presentation and Training day, and was billed as: âThe first of its kind using the worldâs newest cold laser technology combined with state of the art quantum scalar waves to address every aspect of stress, health and pain reliefâ.
Entry to the event at Exeterâs Gipsy Hill Hotel was free, with lunch and refreshments included. Best of all, it was presided over by Jacqueline Kareh, who is a âQualified Quantumwave Laser Trainerâ.
Where, we wonder, does one pick up such a qualification, other than in La La Land?
TRYING to reach an engineer in a large aerospace company, a colleague only managed to get through to voicemail. It told him, not so helpfully, that the person he called ââŠis out of the office and will not be checking messages. When you hear the tone, please leave a messageâ.
DILIGENTLY reading the terms and conditions on his new school bus pass, Ewan Edington from Cambridge, UK, was struck by Item 4: âA âNo Smoking Policyâ is enforced on all home-to-school transport and is non-transferableâ. So is smoking allowed on the return journey, Ewan wonders?
Ewanâs father Murray asks in addition whether Cambridge County Council has previously encountered pupils who believed the no-smoking policy was transferable. To what or to where could it be transferred?
MORE on schools: reader Adrian Roseâs daughter Katherine goes to one in Hampshire, UK, that seems to be a hotbed of nominative determinism. Dr Otter is the head of biology, the head of food technology is Mrs Curry, the head of maths is Mr Power and the head of science was until recently Mr Unit.
Take Granny to be microchipped
FINALLY: End worries over wandering elderly relatives now! âFree microchipping for retired peopleâ is on offer in the English seaside town of Ilfracombe, according to the sign shown in Andrew Blackieâs photo.
The clip-art pictures of pooches below the slogan may offer a clue to what the Ilfracombe Rehoming Centre really intends to offer senior citizens: the microchipping is for their dogs, not them.
