Virtually Paul

A Lightbulb Moment

June 5, 2007 on 6:43 pm | In Friends, Humour, Quotes |

I was watching TV one night earlier this week with someone who shall remain nameless when an ad for Channel 7s “The Rich List” came on. Feel free to identify yourself in the comments if you’d like to take responsibility.

If you haven’t seen the show, you’ve got two teams that play off against each other. During part of the game, individual teams need to communicate with the host, without the other team hearing the interaction. So, Andrew O’Keefe, of “Deal or no deal” fame, has two big red buttons on his desk. He tells the TV audience that these big red buttons make the “pods” containing the opposing teams, soundproof. It’s all rather simple really.

My TV watching counterpart had this question to ask me:

Person: “Hey Paul, you know how he presses those buttons? … Yeah, well… How could pressing a button make something soundproof?”

Me: “Um… I think you’ll find that the pods are soundproof to start with and the button just switches off the microphones and speakers inside them.”

I tried to back-pedal at this point and convince them that the buttons actually raised and lowered sets of hydraulic flaps off-camera… but it was all too late for that.

The person looked at me curiously for a few seconds, taking in the explanation. Then the light went on and they smiled sheepishly at me. Needless to say I’m not going to be letting this one go just yet.