Stressed

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 13 February 2008 12:48:11

An hour and a half from now I shall be standing in front of I don't know how many academics, demonstrating the electronic calendar service which we (Information Services) are rolling out to them. This particular group are piloting the service; in other words, it isn't ready yet. I do believe that as it stands it is a viable service.

Ironically, the venue for this afternoon's presentation is the lecture theatre where, 20 years ago, I taught thermodynamics to a class of engineering students. What made it especially difficult was that I didn't (and still don't) understand the subject. The only thing I have ever made sense of was a song by Flanders and Swann, entitled "First and Second Law", which contained such memorable lines as:

Heat is Work and Work is Heat

and

Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter

and the explanation that

'thermo' comes from the Greek word Thermos, meaning hot, unless you drop it

and the song ended with the words

That's entropy, man ...