Nothing's Perfect? What About Us!

        As much as I love my Eye-fone, I think that the idea of buying the latest model as soon as it comes out is as monumentally stupid and short-sighted as describing an up-coming evening with Jim Davidson as "entertainment". As much as I can, oh I don't know, check stock prices and launch a red bird at some green pigs all while on the loo, I'm aware that it isn't perfect. If used often, it has a battery life of roughly 32 seconds, and waits until you're hopelessly lost around Birmingham to tell you "sorry ol' chap, it appears that I need to sleep until I get some more juice", leaving you stranded. It is also mostly made of shiny glass, meaning that it simply won't sit on your leg without one of those horrid green covers that are available, and will inevitably get the tiniest of marks on the screen. Fixing this, however, isn't as easy or cheap as merely a new screen. Nope, apparently, the whole outside needs to be replaced! Now, I don't want to be "that guy" who calls Apple out on trying to profit from this "mistake", but they're blatantly trying to profit from this "mistake". Whinge aside, it's still a fantastic phone and overall, works brilliantly.


        The problem is that Apple have a very large and very efficient Quality Assurance department. The technical term we use to describe this department is "the public". When they launched it in 2011, people came across the very minor problem of the thing losing all signal when the user.... held it. Yep, you couldn't hold it when using the phone as a phone as it ceased being a phone, and became a tiny computer. After trying to suggest that users "hold it differently", not sure how, maybe with the aid of an elastic band around the head, they gave in and gave everyone free cases so they could hold it without touching it. Presumably, they fixed it as mine doesn't do that, but of all the bugs they could've had, that was a whopper. That's like selling a car  only for the public to ask "where are the wheels"? All you can say is "they're right th....... oh".

        Talking about cars, I used to drive around a Citroen C4. Sure, it was efficient when it wanted to be, and fast when it wanted to be. It was built on the Continent, so it was somewhat pretty and had character about it which made it infinitely better than something built in the Far East. Subarus, for example, are built by Fuji Heavy Industries! Seriously, how utterly soulless does that sound? No founder's name, no race history, no soul, no pizzaz. With a name incorporating the phrase "Heavy Industries", all I picture is the bottom line, and a bunch of Execs patting each other on the back for getting 4.5% growth instead of the predicted 4.4%. You're not an "enthusiast" to them, you're "the market". No, the Citroen was lovely and soulful... except one thing. When you parked but still wanted to listen to the end of a song or what some idiot politician on the radio had to say, you couldn't just kill the engine and catch the end of the guitar riff or the excuse. Turning off the engine killed the radio for a few brief seconds, meaning you absolutely always missed the punchline! Why, Citroen? Of all the things to muck up, you went with that? It's only a small thing, but after one too many missed points, jokes or bass-riffs, it becomes about a million times more annoying than Syphilis.

        So is there anything that is correctly built? Well, if we ask our clergy, then they'll smile to themselves, and point to you. Now these days, there are very few people out there who literally believe in the Bible stories of a 6,000 year old Earth, and those who do tend to also believe in the whole chemtrail, NWO nonsense. However you and I do seem to be the last refuge to point towards a theistic answer to everything. I mean, when I fall over from jumping to too many conclusions, the injury magically dries, covers itself and fixes itself! Impressive? That's nothing; your stomach acid can dissolve metal, but doesn't eat you because your stomach lines itself every couple of weeks! Amazing stuff! And don't even get me started on your eyes, because I'll be here all week! "Surely", we're told, "this suggests a design", and on the face of it, it seems reasonable.

        However, like the Citroen, there are a few points to look at where, if we were designed, it seems parts of us were sent to some dodgy contractors. For example; who's stupid idea was it to make the tube for breathing and eating the same? Two separate ones get rid of the whole "choking" nonsense that kills hundreds a year. Then, there's what's called the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve, that goes from the brain to the voice-box. Rather than going from the brain straight to the voice-box, it goes down and hooks around the arteries in the heart, before back-tracking and going where it should do. That's like going from London to Kent, via Truro. However, the last one has to come from American scientist Neal DeGrasse-Tyson, who said "and what comedian configured the region between our legs? Who puts an entertainment complex around a sewage system?".

        So, it turns out that nothing is perfectly built. Not even us. However like my eye-fone, and us for that matter, I can ignore the woeful battery life and all the little niggles and instead enjoy the whole thing for what it is: a fantastic piece of kit that does amazing things, all the time.

        Like let you navigate to the shops to buy a map because your phone died, or buy a newspaper because your stupid Citroen made you miss the important bits.

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