Miniature Calendar is a creative project by Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka, featuring miniature dioramas using common household objects.
The rort of printers
The business model around inkjet printers is to sell the hardware cheap to snare customers into paying again and again for ink cartridges that cost more by volumethan champagne. But that's not enough for Canon, which now disables scanners and fax machines entirely when the ink runs low, shutting down these functions until the cartridges are replaced. The company is now being sued in a class action lawsuit which says that consumers had been deceived into buying a product that was designed to artificially and unethically introduce functional bottlenecks by tying them to ink levels, even if there's no practical link between them. And you have to have (and use) all the colours even if you're just printing black. That prevents people from getting by with the one $25 black tank even for plain text documents.
In trouble at work
"I was accused of being disrespectful because the six people I CCed on an email weren't listed in order of seniority."
"I was told off for using a word in a report that my boss didn't know (minutiae). I asked her to give me a list of all the words she didn't know so that it wouldn't happen again."
"When I was an intern, my boss got mad at me for being late for work because the bus I was riding caught fire. She told me to plan better next time."
"I got told off for telling a customer what time we closed. The owner of the business felt this was classified information that could be used for a robbery. I wish I was making this up."
"I got told off for eating a banana around a male colleague."
"I got an official warning for humming the theme to Thomas The Tank Engine while at the photocopier. I had been doing it for six months, so maybe fair enough.
Murray Anderson, of Pakuranga, writes: "Back in the late 1950s at Taieri High School, our teacher, Jack X, decided to give two strokes of the cane to the whole class of 30 odd, as no one would own up to some perceived wrong. What he did not realise for some time was that we had all lined up again and some I think, for a third time. He was absolutely worn out by the time he caught on to the ruse."
"As a pupil at Auckland Grammar in the 50s," writes Paul Mortensen, "I had a teacher who caned us while we were sitting in our chair and doing little flicks on our buttocks which was quite painful. If it was a major infringement, he would take us out into the corridor. One day I was caught firing a pellet at another boy and taken out. After closing the door, he said this is for the boys inside and thrashed the wall! There were loud oohing and aahing from the boys inside. I was then told to go back and look as if I had been caned."
Princess Di at the Bowie concert
Barbara Shepheard writes: "If you look closely at the picture of the woman at the Bowie concert in Friday's Sideswipe you will see lines around her knees indicating that she is actually wearing tights, albeit very tight ones!"
