[Misc] Rotary Washing Lines and...

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Boomerangs?

Come again?

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Correct! My Mother trained at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford so it was one of the first things we learnt about medicine as kids

• research”

There was a commemoration plaque installed at the Alexander Fleming museum in 1999 which reads:

In 1928, at St. Mary's Hospital, London, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This discovery led to the introduction of antibiotics that greatly reduced the number of deaths from infection. Howard W. Florey, at the University of Oxford working with Ernst B. Chain, Norman G. Heatley and Edward P. Abraham, successfully took penicillin from the laboratory to the clinic as a medical treatment in 1941. The large-scale development of penicillin was undertaken in the United States of America during the 1939-1945 World War, led by scientists and engineers at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture, Abbott Laboratories, Lederle Laboratories, Merck & Co., Inc., Chas. Pfizer & Co. Inc., and E.R. Squibb & Sons. The discovery and development of penicillin was a milestone in twentieth century pharmaceutical chemistry.

In 1941, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the University of Oxford were able to isolate the purified compound, penicillin F. Fleming, Chain, and Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the work into the medicinal application of penicillin conducted at Oxford University.

Btw Mark Oliphant who was one of the key physicists on the Manhattan Project under Oppenheimer was Australian - does this mean the Australians invented the Atom bomb? Nah.

Chain was the supervisor of my former research head. He told me that Chain once said he had no time to read the scientific literature because he was too busy writing it. He was an arrogant rude German arsehole.

One time a young cardiac surgery visited Chain to ask for help making something he could use to stop hearts degenerating during bypass surgery. Chain threw him out. My (later to be) boss felt bad and ask the surgeon if he could help. A few years later the surgeon had set up my (later to be) boss with a lab on a research floor where I now work, and he invented the St Thomas' Hospital Cardioplegia solution which has saved countless lives during heart surgery. My (later to be) boss had one regret - he didn't patent the idea and Abbott Pharma stepped in and made all the cash. A mistake he never made again.....

 

[Superphil]

Sir Alexander Fleming ‘invented’ Penicillin at St.Mary’s Hospital in London. He was Scottish, and there is absolutely no mention of him doing anything down under.

Penicillin most certainly been used for ‘down under’ since its invention .

 

[el punal]

Penicillin most certainly been used for ‘down under’ since its invention .

That’s why you had to be careful with telephones and their STD codes.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

Chain was the supervisor of my former research head. He told me that Chain once said he had no time to read the scientific literature because he was too busy writing it. He was an arrogant rude German arsehole.

One time a young cardiac surgery visited Chain to ask for help making something he could use to stop hearts degenerating during bypass surgery. Chain threw him out. My (later to be) boss felt bad and ask the surgeon if he could help. A few years later the surgeon had set up my (later to be) boss with a lab on a research floor where I now work, and he invented the St Thomas' Hospital Cardioplegia solution which has saved countless lives during heart surgery. My (later to be) boss had one regret - he didn't patent the idea and Abbott Pharma stepped in and made all the cash. A mistake he never made again.....

My uni supervisor was from Queensland, as it happens. Great bloke (wouldn't have caught him messing about with the parameters of the Infinite Monkey Theorem), but he did once do a lecture immediately after a minor operation to remove some sort of bump from his face.

Now, the large plaster on his face we could all have safely ignored. But the (presumably extremely strong) painkillers he was on apparently removed any last vestige of his already pretty minimal brain/mouth filter. It was far more entertaining than a lecture that was notionally about soil had any right to be, but I can't claim to have learnt anything other than "don't do presentations while high". Actually, maybe that was the point.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

My uni supervisor was from Queensland, as it happens. Great bloke (wouldn't have caught him messing about with the parameters of the Infinite Monkey Theorem), but he did once do a lecture immediately after a minor operation to remove some sort of bump from his face.

Now, the large plaster on his face we could all have safely ignored. But the (presumably extremely strong) painkillers he was on apparently removed any last vestige of his already pretty minimal brain/mouth filter. It was far more entertaining than a lecture that was notionally about soil had any right to be, but I can't claim to have learnt anything other than "don't do presentations while high". Actually, maybe that was the point.

Know thy audience, innit.

My own folly (and I have certainly mentioned this, passim) was cracking the same joke for 10 years that always got a laugh, about how sudden cardiac death isn't a bad way to go, given the other options, but 'as long as I'm about 125 at the time, and in bed with a couple of naked young women'.

No laugh. Just silence.

The demographic had moved on and 80% of my class were now women, and a good proportion from the more conservative end of the ethnic minority spectrum.

 

[el punal]

Know thy audience, innit.

My own folly (and I have certainly mentioned this, passim) was cracking the same joke for 10 years that always got a laugh, about how sudden cardiac death isn't a bad way to go, given the other options, but 'as long as I'm about 125 at the time, and in bed with a couple of naked young women'.

No laugh. Just silence.

The demographic had moved on and 80% of my class were now women, and a good proportion from the more conservative end of the ethnic minority spectrum.

“F*** me!” should have been the punchline to that speech - now I wonder what the reaction would have been then?

 

[maffew]

Google Maps reminded me I still have this on my watchlist on Netflix about some East Germans who came up with something that looks remarkably similar to Google Earth

Good watch that is, recommend

 

[Klaas]

Great comeback.

*doffs cap*