As someone who wasn’t allowed to take so-called “non-academic” subjects like art when she went to school, Toni Mulholland of Stockton was impressed and somewhat jealous when her “three-year-old granddaughter’s friendly class” studied Picasso through their own Cubist create works of art and increase their knowledge of two-dimensional forms by painting compositions in the style of Piet Mondrian. I can’t wait to see what the toddlers do next in their STEM curriculum. Maybe they’ll move on to something more classic like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man?”
Reports that large numbers of great white shark carcasses have washed up on South African beaches after being attacked by cooperating killer whales, resulting in an exodus of great white sharks from the area, led Stewart Copper of Maroubra to hope that “they don’t all swim west across the Pacific to you-know-where, but the question remains, would an orca consider us a friend or a meal?”
Unlike Peter Miniutti (C8), Nick Walker of Suffolk Park was amazed by the professional newspaper readers on the train in the early 1980s. “They would have the paper folded lengthwise and then folded lengthwise again, and then they would be on the next page with their hands in a minute without disturbing their fellow passengers.”
Bondi Junction’s Eric Scott wonders if “Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who worked on the camera (or whatever he called it at the time), and Alexander Graham Bell, inventing the telephone, would have bothered if they knew the combined result would be a device (C8) used to send pictures of your genitals and notify everyone on the bus about your personal affairs?
Rob Baxter from Naremburn suffered from drivers not having access due to cardless barriers in car parks. “Recently I parked at the Glebe tram sheds after 6pm (free parking), and left after 1 hour. The exit boom gate charged me over $40 to leave, which is what I had to pay to get home on a Sunday night. Three emails failed to yield a refund. Is this a new scam, or just a case of artificial unintelligence?”
When Shane Dominick of Merrylands worked for the sadly defunct Co-Op Bookshop selling lifetime memberships (C8), “he witnessed a co-worker having a heated argument with a member about when life actually ended for the purposes of his membership . I don’t know if we had a solution to the question.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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