"Virgin"

Without exception, one query came to me from the RD magazine as mentioned below. Could you kindly give me a hand to realize what it means?

"The brain stem is a signal box, and mine was working so badly that it might as well have been operated by Virgin."

(Does Virgin here means Virgin Blue airplane?)

ANSWER: Possibly, Virgin refers to Virgin Blue airlines out of Australia, because it has a small fleet and only about 30 destinations or connections. The connotation is that the character's brain stem can not signal to very many destinations or locations in his brain.

On the other hand, it could refer to the Virgin Group airlines based out of England, which has a record of malfunctions of its airbuses, especially, a 2005 computer system problem. The connotation here is that there was some miswiring causing the malfunctions and the character's malfunctions are also due to wiring problems.

If indeed, it refers to one of the above, one good way to find out is to know when the writing was published and to know a little bit about the author. For instance, is he English or Auzzie; in which case he would be very familiar with both airlines.

Now, if the sentence read: "it might as well have been operated on by Virgin," then, in this case it would indicate that the character is referring to a Dr. Virgin, who he didn't very much approve of, i.e., a surgeon who botches operations habitually.

Also, if the sentence read: "it might as well have been operated on by a virgin," then, it would be referring to a person (doctor) inexperienced, as in being his first or initial operating room procedure, who would naturally be mistake-prone.

Thus, I would require more information to give an absolute answer, but since you have read the whole RD story, you can probably now guess the answer from my conjectures. "Ambiguous Bill"