Do Australians call North America "Up Over"?

I don't know what you think about 1836, and what life was like in those days before cable, telephones, cameras and Tastee-Freez outlets.  Maybe you don't even think about 1836; that would seem normal.

Faraday

But when I think of 1836, I think of people sitting around by candlelight, bored to tears.  Little did I know until I researched today's topic that an English scientist named Michael Faraday (born in Newington Butts, England in 1791) did research that year that allowed him to say that the excess charge on a charged conductor resided only on its exterior and had no influence on anything enclosed within it.

And on THAT, we can all agree, I'm sure.

The offshoot of Faraday's work is something called a "Faraday Cage," which is, at long last, something I have heard of, although not by that name.  You know those late-night commercials for magic metal wallets that stop sharpies with remote devices from grabbing your credit card information and pictures of your wife and kids right from the wallet in the back seat of your pants?  Those wallets use a Faraday shield, to keep electromagnetic waves out of your pocket. 

And that leads us to why Tom Colella now drives an Uber car in Australia.

Twisties

Quite a stretch, so let me fill in the canvas. Colella was in Australia to begin with, an electrician by trade, and he did not like being an electrician all that much, it seems.  He decided that a good way to hide from his employer would be to hide his company-issued PDA (remember them? Personal Digital Assistants?) inside a sort of Faraday cage.  And he had one handy - the foil-lined bag of Twisties corn chips, a sort of down-under Cheetos.  He put the PDA in the empty bag and that disabled the GPS function, leaving him with confused bosses on his orange-stained hands, and plenty of time to do anything but what he was supposed to be doing.

When his employer noodled out the plot, they hauled him in front of the Fair Work Commission, the forum that settles workplace disputes.  They were able to wash their hands of Tom after the ruling came down that said, "As an experienced electrician, Mr Colella knew that this bag would work as a [Faraday] cage, thereby preventing the PDA from working properly — especially the provision of regular GPS co-ordinate updates. I note that Mr Colella's supervisors knew that he placed his PDA in the foil bag and that they should have known the effect that this action would have on the PDA device."

The tribunal concluded that they could "find no plausible explanation why Mr Colella would create a faraday cage around his PDA, except to obstruct the GPS collecting capacity of the device. Mr Colella appears to have been deliberately mischievous in acting in this manner."

That's it! He was being "deliberately mischievous"! And that was enough to tie a can to him.  And he is now driving a Uber around down under, while he looks for another job as an electrician.

His new employer will do well to make sure he brings any and all snacks to work in plain Ziploc bags.