Wally, you started something now...

Wally triggered this little story, in his “Space post, coast to coast “. He picks up on a letter which spoofs from the C.S. Lewis Perelandra trilogy.

I have in mind a 30 minute radio programme, I am fairly sure that “Spectrum” (Jack Perkins and his team) were responsible, that related the story of “a machine to interpret politicians’ speeches”. Oh but we have dire need of such a machine today.

It is a propos as the timing of its original broadcast was just prior to the 1975 (perhaps 72) elections. We are now in the “phoney war” stage of the next elections and rapidly approaching the point where some "realism" should be reinjected into the process.

The “Machine to Interpret Politicians’ Speeches” (known as MIPS) was designed and developed by a team of Radio NZ technicians of the Arcane Lab at Broadcasting House. It was first tested in a covert operation during the Prime Minister’s weekly press conference. It quickly became apparent that the Arcane Lab had succeeded far beyond their wildest imaginings. It was easily able to distinguish between “I am not going to speak while that man is present” “Tom Scott will leave the room NOW” and “At the end of the day, after consulting with Departmental officials, and in the final analysis the outcome must remain confidential at this time.” ”I haven’t the faintest idea what he is talking about.”

During the weeks following these initial tests, there were further informal experiments using recorded interviews with a wide range of politicians and other commentators with often surprising results.

News of the power of MIPS spread rapidly and Arcane Laboratory was approached by Head of Security Intelligence Service (NZ's CIA) requesting their help with the interpretation of a strange high frequency transmission that had been detected in Central Otago. At first, MIPS was unable to translate from this source. The breakthrough came when it picked up on three small passages – “big smoke” “godiwishihadacoldone”, “gettoutathat Duke”, and “giddawaaayback Jess”. As MIPS built its vocabulary on this new language it became apparent that the transmission was between a UFO and its mother-ship in high orbit.

The programme developed from there into a radio version (pre-dating it by some fifteen years) of “Third Rock from the Sun”. Among the gems it produced –

A definition of “elections” – the process by which the second class superior species selects the 100 most unpopular members of the first class superior species and then locks them into a beehive where they proceed to pass repressive laws and regulations on those that put them there.

A research team (of one) trying to figure out the meaning of “sex” starting with “I can show you a good time” and ending with the research team refusing to leave Manners St after having met Carmen ( a transvestite, night club owner, and prostitute of considerable repute).

Ahhh, nostalgia….