Ingenious

[EternalOptimist]

Have you ever seen something, and thought, 'now that is very clever'. I dont mean designing rockets or stuff. I mean really simple stuff.


1. There was a family birthday, held in a church hall about forty odd years ago. My mum had made a great big cauldron full of stew and everyone was starving. A big queue formed and my mum looked at my dad and said 'ok where is the ladle?' he had forgotten it.
World war III was imminent. Dad picked up a large tea mug and started filling people bowls with the stew using the mug as a ladle.
I thought 'now THATS clever'

2. My brother and I would aways fight over who had the most on their plate, there was never enough food to go around. My nan was looking after us one night. She made me divide the chips up amongst the plates. Then she asked my brother to pick first. Neither of us complain
I thought 'now THATS clever'

[DimPrawn]

My favourite brilliant idea is to take too much tax off of working people and then try and figure out how to send the right amount back to the right people using a Working Tax Credit.

Brilliant minds some people have.

[EternalOptimist]

My favourite brilliant idea is to take too much tax off of working people and then try and figure out how to send the right amount back to the right people using a Working Tax Credit.

Brilliant minds some people have.

Sometimes I think you are too brainy and rich for this site DP

[threaded]

Have you ever seen something, and thought, 'now that is very clever'. I dont mean designing rockets or stuff. I mean really simple stuff.

Reminds me of a contract a while back.

I was brought in to work out why this bit of kit failed to launch.

Turned out they were trying to stuff 500kb/s down a bit of twisted pair in the umbilical.

Thought, 'now that is very clever, not!'

[NickFitz]

Many years ago I came across the idea that industrial sites that take water from rivers should be required to return their effluent upstream of their inlet. That way they have an incentive to properly decontaminate the effluent, as any contaminants will get into their own systems.

[TimberWolf]

A (mechanical) clock mechanism is quite ingenious.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

Have you ever seen something, and thought, 'now that is very clever'. I dont mean designing rockets or stuff. I mean really simple stuff.


1. There was a family birthday, held in a church hall about forty odd years ago. My mum had made a great big cauldron full of stew and everyone was starving. A big queue formed and my mum looked at my dad and said 'ok where is the ladle?' he had forgotten it.
World war III was imminent. Dad picked up a large tea mug and started filling people bowls with the stew using the mug as a ladle.
I thought 'now THATS clever'

2. My brother and I would aways fight over who had the most on their plate, there was never enough food to go around. My nan was looking after us one night. She made me divide the chips up amongst the plates. Then she asked my brother to pick first. Neither of us complain
I thought 'now THATS clever'

1 is cutting the Gordian Knot, which is clever enough.

2 is clever: neither you nor your brother should have a right to complain (if you don't like it, you should have divided it up better; if he doesn't like it, he can just choose the other one) but I have tried that and it doesn't always work. Usually the person given the task of dividing up complains that they are unable to do that, but should not be penalised for this. That is plausibly true.

3 What would have happened if you had had 2 brothers?

[Tarquin Farquhar]

Many years ago I came across the idea that industrial sites that take water from rivers should be required to return their effluent upstream of their inlet. That way they have an incentive to properly decontaminate the effluent, as any contaminants will get into their own systems.

I like that logic. Why don't we let the government approve as many nuclear power stations as they like, on condition that the first one goes in St James's Park?

[OwlHoot]

Someone saw an alsation running towards an iron fence with a huge stick in its mouth. The mutt was obviously intending to run straight through the fence, between a pair of sturdy iron uprights, and it looked inevitable that he would have a nasty prang. But at the last moment he swung his head round so the stick was parallel to the uprights, and ran straight through without a scratch.

[thunderlizard]

I still think the pulse dialling on old rotating dial telephones is clever.