STEVE POWER: Our universe has really shrunk

I was watching a repeat of the BBC's Professor Brian Cox TV series the other day. It's called '²Wonders of the Universe'² and you can see him enthusing about how wonderful the universe is. I did a bit of investigating about the show and found out that only four episodes were made. Considering how the universe is almost infinite and incalculably huge, four episodes aren't exactly a lot. If there were that many wonders to the universe, you would have thought they'd have needed more than four shows to cover it. Maybe they're conning us and the universe is only about as big as the Isle of Wight?
Professor Brian CoxProfessor Brian Cox
Professor Brian Cox

n Why call something a crab stick when it has no crab in it, and the stick doesn’t have any of the qualities a stick should have? I don’t mean to quibble, but a stick needs to be hard and firm, not squidgy and squashy like a crab stick is. So if it contains no crab meat and isn’t a stick, can we just start calling them ′rectangular-shaped seafood protein sponges′ please? I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue, but at least it’s more accurate.

n My mate saw the best job advertised online the other day. It was a job vacancy for a ′job description writer.′ Which begs the question, who wrote the job description for the job description writer vacancy? If they’re so bad at their job that the firm needs another job description writer will anybody apply for the vacancy of job description writer, if the job description was so badly written that it puts people off applying? I think I need a lie down now.

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n I was doing some shopping at the weekend and something struck me, it’s okay to browse for ages in a bookshop.

However, if you’re in a butcher’s shop you can’t browse for more than about a minute can you? In a bookshop you can inspect book after book and the shop assistant won’t bat an eyelid. But if you ask to look at more than one joint of meat in a butchers, they’ll start thinking you’re a bit weird.

Then I realised why we are so afraid to ask for a look at all the products a butcher sells, it’s because they have all those sharp knives and cleavers behind the counter!

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