Cautionary Tales for Generation Tech

1. Cellphone Poem (and listen to The Cellphone Song).

Mobile Norman

Norman liked to be alone;

His best friend was his mobile phone.

He preferred the glowing case

to any boring human face.

Changing clothes or changing gear,

He kept the phone pressed to his ear.

Speed-dial, texting, e-mail too

He even used it on the loo.

Each new model was a blast

and each was smaller than the last.

His latest was the Buzz-4-Free;

half the size of a bumblebee.

He took the phone to bed one night;

snoozing by its tiny light.

But while he was in deepest slumber

someone tried to call his number.

In error, sleepy from  his doze,

He held the phone up to his nose.

Then sniffing, Norman felt a pain–

The phone had lodged inside his brain.

Now this is what young Norman does –

His eyes light up, his nostrils buzz.

When people call he’s always home,

A walking talking mobile phone!

© Raymond Huber

Cellphone audio (music and arrangement) by Phil Riley; Cellphone illustrations by Kirsty Lillico. Both first published in School Journal by Learning Media Ltd for the Ministry of Education. © Crown.

You found the answers to Fang’s puzzles:

1. One person was given an egg still in the carton.

2.  They are all palindromes (read them backwards).

3. The letters are the words for numbers; One, Two, Three, Four…

4. Make it appear shorter. Draw a longer line next to it – then the first line is shorter.

5. The ladder is not under water, because the ship rises with the tide.

6. Many reasons including chemical reactions and force (this riddle is 2000 years old).

7. Your name.

8. A wax candle.

9. The score is always zero-zero at the moment a game begins.

10. An envelope in the mail.

11. Rowing, back-stroke, tug-of-war.

12. There are four mistakes: the comma, the spelling of ‘contains’ and ‘mistakes’, and the meaning (there are not two mistakes).

13. I am the cleaner.

14. Planets in the solar system, vowels in the alphabet, holes on a golf course, squares on a chess board, bones in the human body.

15. Yes, one word is an anagram of new door.

16. They all end in -ough but none of them rhymes (sounds the same).