Perpetual motion all the way into empty pockets

IHAVE a fascinating book about interesting inventions through the ages, some of which were designed but never actually made because they didn’t work. One chapter is about perpetual motion machines. Throughout human history, people have had an idea there must be a way to make a machine that runs forever without needing any fuel.

It’s rather like the old alchemists’ dream of finding a way to convert lead into gold. My late friend Gordon, who was a mechanical genius, thought he had a possible design for a perpetual motion machine based on spinning discs and powerful magnets that would alternately attract and repel each other.

It was ingenious, except for one minor problem – it didn’t work.

One of the basic laws of life is that you don’t get anything for nothing. There’s a price to be paid for everything, even if it is a hidden price. I was reminded of this when I read a rather gloomy news story saying businessmen were looking forward to a bleak Christmas shopping season.

Customers had splurged so enthusiastically on “Black Friday” deals that they had very little money left for the usual Christmas shopping spree.

I suspect many shop owners thought the idea of Black Friday would give them a double helping of customers’ cash.

There’s a small flaw in this argument – customers don’t have a double helping of cash to spend.

This sort of thinking seems to govern a great deal of official South African thinking. Our city has run out of water, so we are urged to save water.

We save a great deal of water, so the city receives less income from the sale of water.

So we are told the price of water will be increased to make up for the loss of revenue from water sales.

The same with electricity. Eskom couldn’t supply enough power, so we had load shedding.

Then we were urged to save electricity, use lowenergy lamps, install solar water heaters, buy generators and solar panels. We complied and helped Eskom out of the mess.

Now we are told we will have to register any off-grid generating systems and we shouldn’t be surprised to discover this, so we can eventually be taxed heavily in order to make up for the reduction in Eskom’s revenue.

I suppose this is as close to perpetual motion as we are ever likely to get.

Last Laugh

A mother was in the shopping mall with her 4-year-old child when he happened to swallow a R1 coin and started choking. As he turned blue in the face the mother rushed up to a teller shouting: “Help! My child is choking on a coin!”

Immediately a man in a suit stepped out of the queue and came forward. He lifted the child, gave him a sharp whack on the back and the coin came flying out. “Oh, thank you, doctor,” the grateful woman cried. “Don’t mention it,” the man said, “but I’m not a doctor.”

“How did you know how to get that coin out so fast?” she asked. “I work in the Receiver of Revenue’s office,” he replied.