The Health and Safety officer at work has sent a risk assessment questionnaire form to each employee. This is one of the questions:
Do you require as part of your routine job role to move items?
If yes, do you require using unusual strength?
Unusual strength?
How do you reply to that?
Mainly I apply my simple, ordinary, usual strength in my workplace in lifting a stapler, or suchlike – however sometimes instances indeed require of me using my unusual strength. But this does entail me first shouting “STRENGTH OF THE BEAR!” in the office to do so. Very occasionally I require both unusual strength and a strange level of reciprocal motion in a repetitive activity, and for those eventualities I additionally shout "REPETITIVE ACTION OF THE KILLER WHALE KEPT IN CAPTIVITY IN FLORIDA TO A CRUEL DEGREE" across the office floor.
It is health and safety gone mad, I tell you.
Monday 23 May 2011
Friday 20 May 2011
Something to unlearn
A study has suggested that being brainy is not a genetic talent. Providing the opportunity and time are present then, the researchers claim, anyone has the equal potential of being just as smart as anyone else.
I was listening to the topic being discussed on the radio. "So, even at my age, I could take up advanced mathematics and gain a degree or more?" the DJ asked. "Given the correct conditions, yes. This notion of people thinking they are just not intelligent, or better at, say, maths than history has no scientific foundation"
The thing was, I was surprised that this was even being talked about without mentioning a certain Mr. Stephen Hawking.
You see, many years ago, Mother Tombs told me Stephen Hawking was nothing special until he had to go in a wheelchair with a debilitating disease. It was at this point when he then found himself with a lot time on his hands to think about stuff. Think really quite hard.
Now - as a motivational tale to get me to concentrate at school it was, at best, a morally dubious lie. But as an interesting vignette told with misplaced authority over an evening meal because I still thought somewhere in the back of my mind it was fact, when this topic of the myth in genetic learning came up again: "of course, Stephen Hawking is surely the most extreme example of this in action..." - well that didn't go down well. At all.
I was listening to the topic being discussed on the radio. "So, even at my age, I could take up advanced mathematics and gain a degree or more?" the DJ asked. "Given the correct conditions, yes. This notion of people thinking they are just not intelligent, or better at, say, maths than history has no scientific foundation"
The thing was, I was surprised that this was even being talked about without mentioning a certain Mr. Stephen Hawking.
You see, many years ago, Mother Tombs told me Stephen Hawking was nothing special until he had to go in a wheelchair with a debilitating disease. It was at this point when he then found himself with a lot time on his hands to think about stuff. Think really quite hard.
Now - as a motivational tale to get me to concentrate at school it was, at best, a morally dubious lie. But as an interesting vignette told with misplaced authority over an evening meal because I still thought somewhere in the back of my mind it was fact, when this topic of the myth in genetic learning came up again: "of course, Stephen Hawking is surely the most extreme example of this in action..." - well that didn't go down well. At all.
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