cornerstone

Top haggling takes an Oscar performance - sounds like you earned one!! Cheers!

And the card says..... "The lift" WINNER! Good work! Every point made, by the way, was a good one. I'm sure that about 3% of domestics are caused by brain teasers. By comparison, 72% are Ikea-related. Okay I have another one: Imagine a bridge 4 km long and strong enough to hold 10,000 kg, but no more. A loaded transport truck weighing exactly 10,000 kg drives onto the bridge. At the half way point, a sparrow weighing 30 g lands on the truck, yet the bridge doesn't collapse. How could this be?

Good work!

Ach, you've been sore ever since our replica toaster business got burned. I said write "Amateur ECT kit" on the customs form, but would you listen? "Metal bread cosy" indeed. As for the dog thing, I'm only in it for the biscuits, and you know it.

And you're problem with this is? Me running, er next to eddie, or no, that's me on the other side. I'm in there somewhere anyway.

@ryyannon - no, I said I like to dress as eddielee to amuse the dog. @usil - don't worry about the hair - it's all in the nails. Just how does that dog get his nails looking so gorgeous?! Artoero?

Hmm...mechanical legs. I like it! "It's good, but it's not right...!" (Have a good one!)

Okay....! As I said, you have to get what is written on the card! A survey was conducted of all the various mechanical modes of transportation people use to get to work each day. What did it find was the most common form of transportation?

And the card says..... "It was just moments after twelve o' clock." WINNER! Okay, great start, another one coming right up!

I have a bunch of cards with some brain teasers on them. A few of them are good, some of them are easy, quite a lot of them are annoying. I figured that whereas the annoying ones are normally, well, annoying - they could provide a bit of scope for some funnies too. So feel free to play along, or wind everyone up as well. There is only one rule: the 'right' answer is always what is written on the card. Take it as a given that I agree with you that there were a million better answers - it's us versus the quesion card for shits and giggles. Here's a relatively easy and uncontroversial clock-related question to start things: TwoTone has a clock that chimes on both the hours and the half hours. The clock strikes once for each half hour, once for one o'clock, twice for two o'clock, three times for three o'clock, etc. As TwoTone commando rolled into his house one day, he heard the clock chime once. A half hour later it chimed once again. A half hour later it chimed once, and a half hour later it chimed once again. Since the clock is working properly (of course), what time was it when TwoTone entered his house?

There are lots of Tiffany and Chanel rep earrings out there (see ioffer), but I've never managed to find the right deal with the added Western Union and postage fees to want to buy any of it (jewellery in general). Maybe one time if I double it up with a watch purchase... But if you shop around gen earrings aren't necessarily all that expensive (I mean, there's nothing to them). Cheers!

What can I say: it has been made quite clear in both Vanity Fair and Vogue that brown cat fur straps are in for golden labs this season! Major faux pas! More seriously - yes, my other hobby is dressing up dogs for amusement. And for the record, that was one giggle and six thumbs up (I have an extra two sets of arms, thus my interest in watches).

And it's all the waiting for referrals too - a process of elimination at the speed of an asthmatic ant. "Just feckin' fix it!" is what you want. The 'wait and see' thing just doesn't cut it after a while. Still - removing 2 discs sounds drastic - it's a solution but, you know, you end up looking like this: On the pinched nerve: obviously there are loads of google links to excellent sites on pinched sciatic nerves, but it must be reassuring (?) to know that your agony is shared! It seems to be a rest job. Hopefully, because you injured yourself doing something slightly innocuous, it will sort itself. It's a personal thing, but I'd be speaking to a GP before I went to a chiropractor. Fingers crossed for all of you!

LOL!

Ah, thanks! I've been lost since it disappeared from all our avatars.

Or at the very least, not dangling off a boat I agree that the boat probably pushed him off - the driver might just have been used to braking his car, but that bit fat boat would bring massive additional momentum. What's most surprising is that it stopped!

If you think that's bad, just imagine being in a hurry and getting stuck behind one of TwoTone's ladies in the ATM queue....

Some lovely pieces! Great work!

G'day / Auch aye!

Cheers for the other number! Telstra's contempt for the public knows no bounds.

Good work! Now where did you say the porn was?

Thanks for a great post. I'm only playing devil's advocate here - your post comes from a very interesting link - but it is PR spin on legalese. As in - they are promoting Swiss made as being "you can smell the cockoo clocks", but the ETA lawyers are interested in the very limits of the law, the bare minimum they have to do to make it 'Swiss'. So what has been written in the link puts the very best 'spin' on how Swiss these watches are. Law is only as good as the way it is interpreted. From our point of view - all the bits about being a Swiss watch are irrelevant, our watches aren't finished in Switzerland. The test of being a Swiss movement is slightly different. 50% of the value of the components have to be Swiss. But what is interesting is that some components are a lot more valuable than others. The jewels are made in Switzerland, and make up a disproportionate amount of the value. The actual 'value' of the other metal bits that make up the majority of the movement is less (relatively-speaking). What this means is, more than 50% of the actual movement - what you see when you look at it - is NOT Swiss made. And that is with a totally legitimate Swiss movement. Swatch have stated openly that they take advantage of this. Conversely, since all the jewels come from Switzerland - even your so-called Chinese ETA's have valuable Swiss parts in them. There are two other legs to the test of being Swiss made. One is that it 'has been assembled' in Switzerland. The big question is how much or little work is involved to qualify for this 'assembled' test. It doesn't say manufactured - I actually suspect that this involves either putting a few major working bits together, adding one final part, or generally just 'finishing' it. This entire area is debatable - from from a PR viewpoint 'assembled' sounds strong, but from a legal view it looks like quite a weak test. The final test is that it is inspected in Switzerland. I'm assuming that this doesn't happen for the so-called Chinese ETA's. I think that Ofrei do supply Swiss made movements - their Valjoux movements page explicitly says so twice, even though other threads here say that they are not finished as well as a Swiss movement. (Bearing in mind that many ETA movements are available in different finishes at different prices - just visit their website) It's my opinion that the so-called Chinese ETA's miss some minor assembly in Switzerland and a final 'Swiss' inspection. However, given that Chinese factories are perfectly capable of assembling cars, electronics, and anything else you throw at them (let alone factories run by Swiss companies) - I honestly don't see why watch movements should be considered beyond their wit. Is it possible that 'factory seconds' that don't pass inspection reach the market? Well yes, I suppose. But it doesn't sound very Swiss, and it's a machine process. When the China can make working movements, who needs a Swiss one that doesn't work? Much more relevant, I believe, is what happens to the movement after it leaves the factory. The conditions in which the movement is stored and the watch is assembled are not nearly as good. This is why we hear of grit or dirt in the movements - and they will not be as well serviced as a gen before it arrives on your wrist. As I said, just devil's advocate. But in terms of the movement I think there is very little other than legalese between a Swiss ETA and a Chinese ETA.

And he's probably shouting, "stop gawping and get on the back of the f*%king boat!!"

Aye, trying to wing a "no fault" claim! "My car was underwater when it was hit by a falling truck." Insurance: "Whoa! Back up a bit there. The car was...." "Underwater. Yes. Anyway this MASSIVE truck....." A couple of other embarrassing ones: