h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Who went to design college and designed those teapots you get at every service station that no matter what you try and do, will always drip out the end all over the table everytime you try to pour from them?????

The stainless steel ones are the worst

I think you using the word design says it all. To me the word design has come to symbolise something that is nice-looking(at least in some people´s eyes) but non-functional. Like those chairs people buy that look so nice standing in the living room, but you shouldn´t attempt sitting in them.

As far as I'm aware these are nothing more than a simplistic and modern evolution of the China teapots commonly used in British Colonial India by Victorian families who needed to feel just a little more superior toward their Indian servants. If you can convince yourself of someone else's inability to perform as simple a task as pouring tea, then your culture is obviously superior.

I think they mentioned this on a Channel 5 documentary.

Oh, alright. Of course they didn't. The truth is that holes are specially built in to the teapots so that they can act as personal alarms when blown through the spout.

Always read the fine print on the menus.

Your thinking about this from the wrong angle, the dripping Teapot is the most cunningly designed and engineered piece of work ever conceived, as the second most simple device after the wheel, the design of the spout has been refined to prop up the world economy.
If someone actually made a teapot that worked you would only have to purchase one in your entire life, but due to this cunning design floor, you are forced to purchase many pot in your life span thus funding an entire industry of teapot manufacturing, not only this but half the worlds textiles industry is also supported, in turn the washing powered company, technology company’s (washing machine manufacturers), complains departments etc. So the next time you spill your tea over the table, remember not only are you keeping thousands of people employed (inadvertently even yourself) but you are using the most fantastically well engineered single item on the face of the planet, you should rejoice and not complain.

Are you claiming that the built-in obsolesence (sp?) of teapots is all that's holding the capitalist system together?

Crikey.

DG

I am indeed implying that without the build in spillage facility of the humble teapot then society as we know it would not exist.

I have a feeling that is why a lot of the worlds technology is invented. To keep people employed. Somebody really believes the "Idle hands are the Devil´s playground" thing.

Ahh, yes - useless jobs. Why is 100% employment so great? What happened to all the leisure time we were supposed to get from new technology? Why the need to 'create jobs'?

If you have a look at last week's post, Ormondroyd's column has a link to a great subject on this very subject.

DG, wondering if he is 'distinct enough' from DrGonzo...

'...last week's The Post....' that should be. As opposed to last week's post, which could be construed rather differently.

DG

Curse globalisation


What’s was (sp?) in an earlier message.

I wasn't 100% sure of my spelling. I never am.

DG