A group of boy scouts who have been taught the art of map reading were on a trekking camp;the job of map reading and navigating the team was volunteered by an eager Sardar.After climbing for more than half a day with absolutely no clue as to where they were headed,the boys pressurised the Sardar to read the map and tell the group where they are.Sardar, after consulting the map,his notes and a thorough scan of the towering peaks all around made furious calculations in his notebook.At last he jumped with joy."I have figured where we are.We are right on top of that mountain,"and pointed at a peak a few miles away.
A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes"
contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real life
Dilbert-type managers. Here are the finalists:
1. "As of tomorrow,
employees will only be able to access the building using individual security
cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their
cards in two weeks."
(This was the winning
quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, WA.)
2. "What I need is a
list of specific unknown problems we will encounter."
(Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. "E-mail is
not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for
company business."
�(Accounting
manager, Electric Boat Company)
4 "This project
is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with
it."
(Advertising/Marketing
manager, United Parcel Service)
5. "Doing it
right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule."
6. No one will believe
you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now,
go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell
them."
(R&D supervisor,
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)
7. "My boss
spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed
corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit
it. The disk I gave her was write-protected."
(CIO of Dell
Computers)
8. Quote from the
Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
(Marketing executive,
Citrix Corporation)
9. My sister passed away
and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died
on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He
then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would
be better for me."
(Shipping executive,
FTD Florists)
10. "We know
that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it
with the employees."
(Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
11 . We recently
received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that
a memo will be issued today regarding the memo mentioned above."
�(Microsoft,
Legal Affairs Division)
12. One day my Boss asked
me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I
asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it
tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!"
(New business manager,
Hallmark Greeting Cards.)
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: �"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
�One student replied: "You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building." This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer, which showed at least a minimal familiarity the basic principles of physics.
�For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows: "Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t2. But bad luck on the barometer."
�"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
�"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 ∏√ (l / g)."
�"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
�"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
�"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor�s door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
�The student was
Niels Bohr, the only person from Denmark to win the Nobel Prize for Physics.
contributed by Ms.Bhuvana Sundaram
Little Tommy was doing very badly in math. His parents had
tried everything;
tutors, flash cards, special learning centers, in short, everything they
could think of. Finally in a last ditch effort, they took Tommy down and
enrolled him in the local Catholic School.
After the first day, little Tommy comes home with a very serious look on his face. He doesn't kiss his mother hello. Instead, he goes straight to his room & starts studying. Books & papers are spread out all over the room
and
little Tommy is hard at work. His mother is amazed. She calls him down to
dinner and to her shock, the minute he is done he marches back to his room
without a word and in no time he is back hitting the books as hard as before. This goes on for sometime, day after day while the mother tries to understand what made all the difference.
Finally, little Tommy brings home his report card. He quietly lays it on the table and goes up to his room and hits the books. With great trepidation, his mom looks at it and to her surprise, little Tommy got an A in math. She
can no longer hold her curiosity. She goes to his room and says: "Son,
what
was it? Was it the nuns?"
Little Tommy looks at her and shakes his head "No".
"Well then", she replies, "was it the books, the discipline, the
structure,
the uniforms, WHAT was it?".
Little Tommy looks at her and says, "Well, on the first day of school,
when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around."
FORGETTABLE OR UNFORGETTABLE