OneAndOneIs2

The soft-spoken comedienne Rita Rudner allegedly said that Men are self-confident because they grow up identifying with super- heroes. Women have bad self-images because they grow up identifying with Barbie. - possibly the most profound thing I've yet heard a comedienne say.

It was certainly true in my case: Amongst the collections of old, old photographs that my mother hoards are a few showing me with a coat hanging down my back, cape-like, and wearing wellies - the closest my somewhat-younger self could come to a Superman costume in those days... I loved the Superman films. (Tho I drew the line at wearing my underpants on the outside - there are limits!)

But Superman's biggest problem is, we all know he's invulnerable. How can you build suspense if your hero is guaranteed to survive? (Even when he DID die, it was only temporary, after all...)

That's why the most common themes in Supes' stories involved Lois Lane being in danger he might not be able to save her from, or kryptonite, or a sudden loss of his superpowers - things that made him suddenly vulnerable again.

Hence the reason, I think, why I was so fond of the TV series, the Greatest American Hero. Here we had a super-hero who, somewhat reminiscent of Green Lantern, was a normal guy who was given his powers by benevolent aliens. Rather than a power ring, tho, the G.A.H. powers derived from his suit, rather Iron Man-style.

The suit made him bullet-proof. It let him fly, and levitate objects. It made him super-fast, and could even turn him invisible.

So far, so humdrum: Sounds just like Superman, only without the alien origin and shiny green rock allergy, right?

There was a stroke of genius in the series, however: The suit was handed over with a book of instructions on how to use it. That book was lost in the desert before it was ever read. Thus the hero had all these powers, but no idea what they were or how to make them work. He crashed every time he flew. He got stuck in invisible mode. He levitated the wrong objects. And though the suit made him bullet-proof, he always worried about guns because the suit didn't cover his face so he wasn't sure if a shot to the head would hurt him or not.

Having no instruction book was what made the hero. It made his ineptness believable on a continuing basis, episode after episode. And I know this, because my brother bought me the complete set on DVD for Christmas last year and I'm working my way through them.

It also meant that many of the kids watching it decided that when they grew up, they would in fact read the manual rather than just trying to blunder through on their own.

Which is all well and good, if you HAVE the requisite instruction book.

I bought a laptop some time ago - an HP NC4000, second hand. It's an underpowered beast, but I like it because it's small and runs the latest Ubuntu perfectly - even the 3D desktop.

Because it was second hand, there was no manual. And it was a long time before I stopped having problems with the touchpad.

Sometimes it would act like I was holding the button down, even though I wasn't. Sometimes it would scroll down the page for no reason. Sometimes it would click on something I didn't want to click. It aggravated me no end.

Eventually, through trial and error (and Google) I discovered that a tap on the pad was considered a mouse-click. A double-tap-with-dragging-movement was interpreted as click-and-drag. And a vertical stroke on the very right of the pad was a scroll-wheel equivalent.

Once this was established, I got very fond of the touchpad and how cleverly it emulated all the functions of a real mouse. If only I'd had an instruction book to start with, I'd have been happy with it right from the start.

Why do I mention it now? Because I'm using a Windows laptop at the moment, and in theory it works the exact same way. In theory.

But the scroll-wheel functionality doesn't work. Well, it does in one or two applications, but mostly it doesn't. And that means no wheel in Firefox.

So that means no scrolling on long pages - a huge annoyance - and no mouse-gestures based history menu - another huge annoyance. I'm hoping there's a way to stop it trying to be clever, because having gotten used to a decent touchpad at last, I'm going nuts trying to use a laptop that doesn't have one.

If only the laptop had come with an instruction book, I might have sorted it out already...

Something else that doesn't come with an instruction book, regrettably, is humanity. Over the years, we've tried to work out our own. There's a huge body of literature on the subject - from the popular & well-known "Men are from Mars" type, to the more heavy-going treatises on psychology and the like.

Since psychology and related topics play an important part in getting kids to behave, I picked up a library book a while ago on one of the latest trends: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP.

Essentially, this is a way to alter the way you or somebody else thinks/reacts through awareness of thinking patterns and body language. (Big oversimplification there)

It's got a few interesting points in it. For instance, if somebody is trying to remember what happened, their eyes will generally go left, whilst if they're making something up, they'll look to their right. Hence if a teacher asks a pupil "Explain what happened before I got here" after an incident, if the pupil looks to the teacher's left, it's likely that a work of fiction is about to issue forth.

So that's handy. And another point of interest was a way of stopping negative reactions to a scenario - such as always feeling unhappy when you go to work, for example.

What you do is, you create a link in your brain (hence the "neuro" bit) between a positive reaction and a certain stimulus. e.g. you think about something that makes you happy, and once that is clear in your mind and actually inducing a feeling of happiness, you do something like touching a knuckle - any gesture you're unlikely to make without intending to - and so link the gesture to the emotion.

You do this a few times, until the gesture itself induces a feeling of happiness. Then you do the same thing, only using a different gesture and linking it to the emotion you don't want - like the "I hate going to work" feeling.

Then (the clever bit) you perform both gestures at the same time, linking the positive and negative reactions together and "short-circuiting" them so that, in theory, your brain can't evoke the "hating work" feeling without also invoking the "happy" feeling, and so canceling out your automatic reaction to disliking going to work.

Great idea in theory, but as I'm a student on half-term, I can't test it out. Hey, did I mention I'm going to the Science Museum on Friday?