We all know a few Dad jokes, but there's also the lesser known category of techo nerdy jokes. One such relates to a piece of software inside your computer called a TWAIN Driver (for capturing images off scanners etc).
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The name itself has a cutesy appeal to it, but then some wag decided (incorrectly) it means "Technology Without an Interesting Name".
Another witty but more serious label is the Jesus bolt, which derives from the evocative last words of a pilot who has just noticed that a crucial bolt has fallen off. Or, to put it in a less colourful way, a Jesus bolt is a single point of failure.
You can imagine quite a few Jesus bolts in different settings.
Perhaps it's the bolt that secures the steering wheel on your car. Or it could be the valve in your heart that you'd like to keep fluttering for a long while yet.
Engineers are acutely aware of this sort of thing and go to great lengths to reduce the risk.
One example is the internet - it doesn't bear thinking what would happen if that failed.
Not because you couldn't see who "liked" your photo, but because the economic system couldn't handle it.
It's so deeply embedded in commerce that you couldn't pay your bills - after which businesses would suffer a catastrophic loss of income.
For this reason the internet probably doesn't have a Jesus bolt, but there are some parts of its infrastructure that we cannot afford to fail.
On a bigger scale, could there be Jesus bolts that apply to our entire civilisation?
Indeed there are, and one is so pervasive it's almost invisible.
A clue is to look at whatever device or piece of paper you're reading this on. No matter what that is, it's almost certainly critically dependent on oil.
If you're an old school newspaper reader, the inks are probably derived from oil. If it's an electronic device of some sort, the many plastics and dyes are oil products.
MORE ASK FUZZY:
Ditto, we could say that just about every manufactured item around you is directly or indirectly a product of oil.
In fact, it would be easier to list the things that do not have at least one oil component.
This should change our perspective away from the idea that oil is just about the world's energy supplies because it's far more than that.
The challenge we face is that we cannot keep using oil forever.
It's not just the climate damage it's obviously causing: it's that we are eating into oil reserves at a prodigious rate and it's not clear what the viable alternatives are.
The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is on 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM. Send your questions to AskFuzzy@Zoho.com; Podcast: FuzzyLogicOn2xx.Podbean.com
