What's In A Name

Names are important as Norwich Union, an insurance company with whom I have had some serious issues, will tell you as they try to infer that the name change will somehow miraculously bring commercial success and make them sexy overnight. But the latest reports of the Cyberknife on the BBC are interesting in that, without searching out the visuals, my imagination painted a picture of a thin-bladed switchblade-like surgical tool for slicing and dicing the dreaded malignant tumours that so plague society. I imagined the surgeon, flexing his fingers like James Coburn in the Manificent Seven, before sliding his Cybeknife from its sheath with a suitable steely sound effect and advancing on the diabolical tumour in a knife fighters stance, knees slightly flexed, eyes heroically narrowed. 

Imagine my surprise to find that the so-called Cyberknife is a massive robotic presence more Optimus Prime than Gillette. I've no doubt that it's a brilliant bit of technology and will advance the surgical treatment of tumours no end but I'd still rather my surgeon was James Coburn than that annoying robot that paints 'Picasso' on an endless lines of Citroëns.