To teleport or not to teleport ...

Just recalled a conversation I overheard when H and I were having lunch in between trying on dresses. (Me trying them on, not him, obviously...)

A man and his nephew (I presume - they looked fairly alike, and the teenager spoke about his mum and dad, so it was not his father) were discussing whether or not people would want to use a teleporter.

Now, the reason my ears pricked up at this (other than the fact that we were right next to each other, barely a gap between tables; you can't have a private conversation in London, I think!) was that I have recently started reading another Man Booker nominee, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (I'll put the review on my other blog when I've finished it), and in that book, the narrator is asked to value a company that specialises in travel - using a teleporter. He works out how much people are prepared to travel by Concorde, thinks of the amount of time saved by being able to go from New York to London instantaneously, and values the company at a couple of billion dollars or so. The interviewer then points out that he has greatly overvalued the company because there is one factor he has not taken into account: whether or not people will actually feel confident in using this means of transport, which would somehow require their atoms to be dispersed and somehow reformed elsewhere.

And this was the topic that the man and teenager were discussing. What were the odds of someone dying using this machine, and what did the odds have to be before people would actually want to use it. The boy suggested if the machine was 99.9% safe, then that was quite good. The man then worked out (and forgive my shoddy maths, the following figures might all be completely wrong, if so then it's because I can't remember what he said so I'm making it up - his figures sounded quite accurate) that if someone was using the transporter roughly three times a day, then they would use it about 1000 times a year; at 99.9% this would mean that ... Sorry, I can't even begin to make those calculations just now!, but let's just say that he worked out that you would be at quite a high risk of dying ... The two recalibrated the figures until they got a percentage they were happy with, where you might by likely to die once in fifty years or so ...

Then there was a philosophical discussion of how someone might die. If it was known how you would die, ie if when you used this machine, the manner of death (on those rare occasions when it malfunctioned) was always the same (eg the box you were sitting in would fill with smoke, the walls would begin to collapse, you would ... ), would that make you more or less likely to want to use this form of transport? The man proposed that people don't mind travelling in cars because they wouldn't necessarily know how they might die if they were in an accident, there are so many different ways.

Finally, there was a discussion on whether or not people would choose to use a manner of transport that they didn't understand. The boy thought that it could be frightening if they didn't understand how the machine worked. The uncle pointed out that by the time such a machine was invented, we would understand how it worked - no one understands anything that hasn't been invented yet. Other than me curiously wondering how that statement would apply to Jules Verne or Leonardo Da Vinci, the boy contemplated the thought that people wouldn't have understood that rubbing two sticks together would make light (and heat) until they did it.

By now the time was passing on, the ice cream sundae had been devoured, and off the two philosophers went.

Questions

A couple of fine days, partly because of the support I have received from other members of staff in helping get classes settled. With the new Year 10 groups, it's important that they follow the rules from the start, and see that they will be able to learn in the lesson, so it was great to have people around at the start of the lesson as I placed pupils in the correct seats. Hopefully pupils will eventually get the message ... I had to send one pupil to the Referral Room because he moved seat after being told not to. They don't seem to understand the concept of a seating plan ...

Other than that, the highlight of today was chatting well into lunchtime with a few Year 10 boys. There had been a very small class because most of the class were sitting an exam, so we used it as an opportunity for them to ask questions, and for us to discuss such issues as "Why did Jesus not come down from the cross?", "Why are we here?", "Are ouija boards 'real' in some way?", "What will happen to good people who do not believe in God when they die?" and "What if Jesus had got married and had a child?" One boy sort of pulled me up when he said that I hadn't once said, "I don't know" - I'm not sure if he meant it as a criticism or a compliment, but I used that opportunity to point out that I (obviously) don't know the answers to these questions, but since I'm interested in them anyway, I've spent a lot of my time reading up on and finding out about the alternative answers.

My Year 11 class was also quite focused (well, some of them were for most of the time, which is saying something ... and those that weren't were sleeping or simply staring straight forward with a blank look on their face, so at least they weren't disturbing others!).

I hope Friday passes smoothly ...

The evening before the tube ...

We went to Angel to try and book tickets for "The Last King of Scotland" - no luck, it was fully booked even two hours before. So we headed on to the opening at Sadie Coles, which was quite nice, and we met a man from Australia (but who's been in London for ages) and we talked to him for a bit. Then we left the opening and returned to Angel, where we had a lovely meal at a Turkish restaurant, before returning to the tube.

Some observations ...

"... an apprrrrrrrentice orrr somethin' ..." (Just after a conversation on the Scottish burrrrrr ... Listen, that was a Scotsman! What's he doing here?!

A woman bending down to roll up the ankles of her jeans ("I'll just fold them up until we get there"), revealing beautiful sparkly, multi-coloured sequin-y kitten-heeled shoes (mmm, sound beautiful, don't they?!)

At the Turkish restaurant, the huge barbeque, where the chef sat rotating the skewered kebabs of quail, aubergine, chicken and lamb, was covered by a bronze canopy leading to a huge extracter, which was embossed with pastoral images of rutting goats and grazing cows.

My favourite picture at the opening had a multitude of blue strokes which revealed two stars.

Overheard ...

... on the tube.

A man with a large rucksack sat down beside me, and next to another woman. I was engrossed in "Casino Royale". He turned to the other woman and started telling her something. I thought they must have known each other, although there hadn't been any sort of greeting when he sat down.

Then she said, "How do you know that?"

"I was told by British Intelligence. That's absolutely true."

Hmmm. Had he been inspired subconsciously by my choice of reading material? Don't think MI5 would be involving someone who blabbed quite so indiscriminately!

Pause.

"The country is full of facist agents. It's despicable."

Quite. And at that, H and I reached our stop.