Humour

Aborigine skills

So. I was walking in an Australian desert with an aborigine friend. I never carry a watch, and in the desert they can get very hot on your wrist. But I wanted to know what time it was. So I asked him if he knew.
He stopped, looked around, took off his hat and scratched his head.
10.30, he said.
After what seemed like hours I asked him again what time it was - and he went through the same procedure and said - 11.55.
I just had to ask him how on earth he knew - what outback skills enabled him to be so accurate.
Ah, he said. That's easy. I keep my watch in my hat!


Dear Cassius:

Are you sill working on the Y zero K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to fix everything at the last minute. I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty. We called in Consultus, but he simply said that continuing downward using minus BC won't work and as usual charged us nightly for doing nothing useful. Surely, we will not have to throw out all our hardware, that is hourglasses and sundials, and start again.

Macrohard will make yet another fortune out of this I suppose. The money lenders are paranoid of course! They have been told that all usury rates will invert and they will have to pay their clients to take out loans. It's an ill wind....

We are hearing stories of the citizens hoarding food stuffs and preparing to decamp to the hills. And that all the sundials will crash to the ground unless they are recalibrated before midnight at the end of this year, 1 BC.

As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards. We have heard that there are three wise men in the East who have been working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over. Plans are being made to stable all horses at midnight at the turn of the year as there are fears that they will stop and try to run backwards, causing immense damage to chariots and possible loss of life. Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway, we are still continuing to work on this blasted Y zero K problem. I will send a parchment to you if anything further develops.

If you have any ideas please let me know,

Plutonius