Patent Figure of the Day

This is an actual figure from a published PCT application.  You can check it out here.

Just to be clear, this is not an application filed by some guy working in his garage.  No, this is an application filed by a serious, big-time company.  Their patent attorney works at a serious, big-time AmLaw 100 firm.  I guarantee that his billing rate is north of $650/hour.  And it's not like they didn't have a chance to clean it up first:  there's a US priority application that was filed a day earlier, and a provisional application that was filed one year prior. 

So the first question this raises is:  forget about hiring a professional to do their drawings, they didn't have time to find a ruler in the year from their provisional filing date to the filing of this case?  Forget a ruler, how about a piece of cardboard, for cripe's sake?

And the second questions is:  what does this figure possible add to the application?  Bear in mind that this case was filed in 2004.  Is there any way to credibly argue that your understanding of ANY invention that you might file on in 2003 or 2004 would be assisted by this figure?  

Amazing.