» Corporate Idiocy


When I was at uni it cost 10p to print a sheet of A4 on campus. Once your credit had run out, and you tried to print, obviously they needed a way to tell you to top up

The way they chose to inform us was that the printer, for every document you sent, would print a sheet of A4 with a massive sad-face smiley and a note that your credit balance was not sufficient.
(Sat 25th Feb 2012, 2:11, More)

» When I met the parents

Women drivers
Driving round to meet the bird's folks for the first time, some whore pulled out in front of me on a roundabout. Cue a long blast of the horn, and me generally acting the tosser behind her for as long as she was ahead of me.

The ex thought it was a magical coincidence that we both arrived at her house at the same time, and blamed destiny or some other crap like that. Bloody hippy.
(Tue 24th May 2005, 20:33, More)

» Corporate Idiocy

Go green
A few years back my then-employer implemented a "great idea (TM)" - all emails were to include, in the signature, a little picture of a tree and the message "Help save trees - Please only print this email if you really need to"

Every day at 5pm the printer would be littered with countless discarded sheets, containing solely that line, where its inclusion had pushed a printed email from one page to two. And yes, while thinking it was a great idea to include that line in people's signatures, no-one had thought about the possibility of double-sided printing.
(Sun 26th Feb 2012, 2:17, More)

» Gambling

The Lottery
To set the record straight, the lottery is a game of probability and your risk-tolerance, not a "tax on the stupid".

The chance of all 6 of your numbers being drawn is 1-in-13,983,816 - [(49*48*47*46*45*44)/(1*2*3*4*5*6)].

If the prize is £13,983,816 then spending £1 on a 6-ball ticket is a risk-neutral event [ignoring that 2 tickets can share a prize, but that there's a prize on 3/4/5 balls generally negates that].

Even so, if someone bets £1 on a prize less than £13,983,816, it doesn't make them stupid - just makes them risk-loving. That is, the 1-in-13,983,316 chance of winning say, £10 million, is worth £1 to the risk-lover, rather than the £0.7151 that a risk-neutral agent would pay.

So stupidity? No.

A game of probability played by agents with differing risk-profiles? Yes.
(Sat 9th May 2009, 15:06, More)

» What's the most horrific thing you've seen?

Pigeon pinata
When I was at university, there was a covered walkway. For some inexplicable reason had netting on the underside of the roof.

Once, I noticed a pigeon (clearly dead) hanging from the net. Poor bastard must've got caught up in it and starved to death.

Fully 7 days later, the same pigeon was still hanging from this net, looking pretty much the same as he did a week before.

He was soon about to look a lot different.

Cue a group of chavvy types. I watched from a fairly safe distance as they investigated the bird, and poked it with a stick as kids do with most dead things. Then, one of them grabbed the stick and starting hitting that thing like it was a piñata.

I guess you could say it was piñata of sorts. On the third hit, the pigeons head literally came off to raucous laughter of the group.

The fourth hit? The belly of the bird takes the full swing, it splits and thousands of maggots gush forth from head, arse and belly. I've never seen anyone move as fast or scream as loud as those kids.
(Mon 25th Jun 2007, 15:37, More)