Flexi-Time
The time upon a clock is always wrong,
For any two will not concur –
Some dole their endless stock of seconds long,
While others scatter theirs a-blur.
So never trust upon a clock:
’Twill gain a tick but lose a tock.
Flexi-Time
Category: Engineering, Maths, & Physics
Seismic Sirens
Seismic Sirens
“A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.”
– Geology Now
It only takes an ankle,
Or the merest hint of wrist,
And oh, calamities abound !
These wenches shock the very ground !
The seething earth they rankle
With each rendezvous and tryst.
It only takes a look or pout
To make the boiling magma spout.
The History of an Industrial Revolution, Located in a Parallel Universe
The History of an Industrial Revolution, Located in a Parallel Universe
There was a time before the steam,
The world was truly manned –
Each ditch was dug and plough was drug
By animal or hand –
And all the light to see by came
From tallow or the sun.
So lives would trudge on just the same,
Each short and brutal run.
There was a time before the steam,
The only help was wind or stream –
So up we moved to brook or hill,
Forever lashed to nature’s will –
We’d tap the earth to drive our mill.
A little better, maybe – but we’d only just begun.
There was a time before the steam,
The world was short and slow.
Our only fuel was ox or mule,
Or when the wind might blow.
And all the warmth in winter came
From hearths of wood or peat,
With forests lost to make a flame
And give a little heat.
There was a time before the steam,
Before the pitch-black golden seam,
When all the energy not hooved
Could not be bottled, bred or moved.
Our lives could only be improved
By pilgrimage to power on our thousand weary feet.
There was a time before the steam,
The world was harshly ranged –
The days were long, yet swiftly gone,
And nothing ever changed.
But then came coal – the good earth’s soul,
The black and frozen fire –
And finally we took control,
And built our chimneys higher.
There was a time before the steam,
But that was then – before the gleam
Of pistons, valves and proud machines
Whose vapour-thrust provides the means
For endless and precise routines –
To serve our ev’ry labour and to never miss or tire.
There was a time before the steam,
To which we dread return –
But once the coke is up in smoke,
Well, what then will we burn ?
We’ve still got wind and rivers, sure,
But only local clout –
And charcoal gobbles trees the more,
Till none are left to sprout.
To where there’s folk about.
Will there be times beyond the steam,
A flywheel to prolong the dream ?
If only we can tame the spark –
The lightning bolt, the static arc –
And store it, then release its bark !
Or else we face an Age of Dark, when all the lights go out.
The Voyage of the Novum Organum
The Voyage of the Novum Organum
’Twas in the summer of ’20
When our galleon set sale.
Now gather ye, and plenty,
As I lay the fearless tale:
We soon approached the pillars bold
That Hercules himself, we’re told,
Had planted, so’s to say “Behold !
Behold these sights, and quail !
Here lies the End of the Earth, my friends,
And who knows what may lie beyond ?
It’s time to find what you’re worth, my friends,
If dareꞌst ye leave your pond.
Will you view my gates as a warning ?
Then head for home on the turning tide.
Or will you view my gates as a dawning ?
Then pass on through to the other side !”
Who knows if God shall forsake us ?
Who knows where the currents take us ?
Over the seas on our questing quest:
With our fortunes pressed for the holy grail,
As on and on we sail.
So wise old Captain Bacon
Gave the word to pass on through.
We prayed he weren’t mistaken
And a-gambling with his crew.
We sailed betwixt those ancient piers,
And set a course for new frontiers.
Once Argonauts, now pioneers !
’Twas time to earn our due.
“There lies the Start of the Earth, my friends,
When we find out what lies ahead !
It’s time to give rebirth, my friends,
It’s time to raise the dead !”
We knew great riches would await us,
All our maps were full of exes !
We dug up booty with apparatus,
And unearthed keys to fresh complexes.
Follow the clues, be smart and plucky –
Here be dragons, if we’re lucky !
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The better we guessed, the more we unveiled,
As on and on we sailed.
We plumbed that deep wide ocean
So’s to chart her reefs and bars
The first we found was motion –
It was written in the stars !
Then spied we microscopic forms –
A hidden world of tiny swarms.
We shuddered, but we rode such storms,
And better for the scars.
There lies so much joy on this Earth, my friends –
Let’s find out what we share her with !
There’s nowhere upon her in dearth, my friends –
She’s always more to give !
We sailed upon her seas of numbers,
Fathomed her amounts amounting:
Formulas and patterns slumbered –
Ev’rything, we learned, was counting.
And the point where the limit of our learning meets,
There’s always a fair wind filling our sheets.
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The more we professed, the more we regaled,
As on and on we sailed.
The further out our striving,
So the better stocked our stores.
And always we’re arriving
Onto ever-stranger shores.
And on those lands we took our drills
And tapped the streams and dug the hills
And set down bridges, rails and mills,
And just and noble laws.
We learned how the whole of the Earth, my friends,
Is built from the same few blocks, not more !
We learned how the life round her girth, my friends,
Is built from life before !
We sailed away to explore and learn,
And still there is so much more to find !
We know we can never again return
To that ancient world that we left behind.
We’ll never be bored and we’ll never be done –
We’ll never arrive at the setting sun.
Over the seas on our questing quest:
The more we progress, the higher we scale,
As on and on we sail.
The Problem with Trolleys
The Problem with Trolleys
Help ! A tramcar hollers and wails !
Careering for workers, three, four, five.
A runaway tram is running the rails –
How will the navvies survive ?
But wait ! A set of points are looming –
Switch the switches, stop the dooming
Of the tappers, unassuming,
Unaware they’re barely alive !
But no ! The branch line also bears
A clueless worker – just the one,
Who hasn’t seen the tram that tears,
All twenty-seven ton.
And there are we, beside the junction,
Knowing points and how they function –
Can we act without compunction,
Should we do what should be done ?
And where has Health & Safety gone,
With workers present on the track ?
There’s something fishy going on,
If no-one’s got their back.
The dead man’s handle’s truly dead,
The brakes un-tripped, the lights un-red.
Reality, it seems, has fled –
Ah well, let’s give their quiz a crack…
They say a tram is loose and live,
So should we pull that fatal lever ?
Should we kill the one…or five ?
It’s easy – we kill neither !
Cut the power, wave our arms !,
And shout a warning, raise alarms !,
To keep all workers safe from harm –
Then no-one needs to be a griever.
Make the shrinks despise and fear us,
Scoffing their contrived disaster –
If they claim the men won’t hear us,
We shout louder !, we run faster !
Who cares for the rules they set ?
We’ve got our own, and better yet.
So will we stop the tram ? No sweat !
For common sense shall be our master.
Attacat
Attacat
There is a cat who watches trains
And makes his home in signal boxes,
Lives beneath the weathered gables,
Catches rats who chew the cables.
Grey, he is, with smoky grains
That fleck his coat the way of foxes,
’Cept the tramlines down his back
Which earn his name of Clickerclack.
They shine out silver, brow to rump
They even bear the marks for sleepers –
Branded thus, his fate assured
His working for the Railways Board.
So where a plague of rodents clump
Within the homes of signal-keepers –
Unannounced by midnight freight
Comes Clickerclack to extirpate.
He bites, he claws, he chews in half
And shreds them into vermicelli –
Drives them out and leaves his scent
To fright them off resettlement.
And when his work is done, the staff
Will feed him fish and rub his belly.
Then it’s off to boxes new
Aboard the 07:22.
Unravelled
Unravelled
Seamstresses, it seems to me,
Have played us for a mug
In their wares we wear and buy –
The clothes in which we’re dressed
Are not so snug
In button, toggle, hook and eye,
When all can fall to pieces
Through a simple bug
In how they hem each cuff and fly:
It only takes a hanging thread
And gentle tug,
To show how lockstitch is a lie.
Daedalus to Icarus
Daedalus to Icarus
Listen, son, you take these wings,
And fly ! You fly, because you can !
You fly for all your strength is worth,
Until all lands are in your span.
And you see all that I can’t see,
And never mind what gods may say –
You fly on up, towards the sun,
And maybe touch his face some day…
You fly, and you become a god !
For gods are made by what they know –
So you learn what the gods won’t say
And you take what the gods won’t show.
Just like Prometheus before,
And just like Newton yet to come,
You are the god the gods most fear
Who spreads the word and bangs the drum.
They claim the sun will melt your wings –
They scoff, until your dreams are heard
By star-struck brothers on a beach,
And giant leaps beyond the birds.
There’s many let their dread of hubris
Quench the spark that’s just begun –
But others leap with open wings
And dare to fly – so fly, my son !
Skywriting
Skywriting
Infact, they both used pencils
Up until Nineteen Sixty-Seven,
When a privately-researched pen was announced
And NASA and Cosmonauts quickly renounced
Those flammable, lead-shedding pencils –
Americans first, with Apollo 7.
They should be so proud, that commie space-guys
Are writing with Yankee-most free-enterprise.
A Pile of Babbage
A Pile of Babbage
You built a Diff’rence Engine
Just to see if it would work,
Then locked it in a cabinet
And let it snooze and shirk.
In all of its magnificence,
It’s still in cog and joint.
You say it makes no diff’er’ence –
I say, that’s just my point !
Rhyming Couplets 