麻豆传媒

ARE you one of those unlucky people whose garden is besieged by wild deer that nibble the nasturtiums and leave undesirable lumps on the lawn?

One way to deter these intruders is to spread the dung of large cats such as lions and tigers strategically around the garden. Some zoos do indeed sell such products as a sideline, but extra help is at hand for gardeners who are running low on lion dung. The solution, according to a letter published in The Veterinary Record, is to festoon your hollyhocks with human hair.

The writer, W J枚chle of Denville, New Jersey, says that this ploy has worked for him for the past 28 years. 鈥淭he best 鈥� my wife tells me 鈥� is what I comb out from my sizable beard 鈥� but even hair collected at ladies鈥� beauty salons does the trick,鈥� he writes. 鈥淓ither make little bags from discarded pantihose or stockings, and fill them with hair, tying them strategically to shrubs, young trees or stakes in flower and vegetable beds, or just spread the hair on the ground,鈥� he advises.

And as a bonus, says J枚chle, a person鈥檚 barnet makes darned good fertiliser. 鈥淭he odour when opening a plastic bag of men鈥檚 hair will tell you why it is effective,鈥� he writes, without saying whether he means as a fertiliser or a repellent. So there you are. Hair today, deer gone tomorrow.

EVEN people who use the Internet can become cynical about the electronic communications revolution. A person signing himself as 鈥淢ike鈥� is sending round a list of 200 or so anagrams of 鈥渋nformation superhighway鈥�. Here are some of them:

New Utopia? Horrifying sham!

Our new profanity aims high

Now I hop the imaginary surf

Waiting for any promise, huh?

A rough whimper of insanity

Hey, ignoramus! Win profit? Ha!

Enormous hairy pig with fan

I swamp, horrify huge nation

Wishing for a Utopian rhyme

I鈥檓 on a huge wispy rhino fart

Origin of the unwary mishap

I, prisoner of a naughty whim

Yearning for opium, hash, wit

Waiting for one鈥檚 hairy hump.

AN UNUSUAL record was shattered at the recent 1995 Paris Air Show by one Eric Garcia, an engineer with the French company Intertechnique, which makes oxygen masks for civil aircraft. When Feedback met Eric he was standing inside a specially built mock aircraft cockpit, well into his 50th hour strapped into an oxygen mask.

Eric鈥檚 assistant explained that on civil flights one crew member must wear an oxygen mask at all times while the aircraft is flying above 40 000 feet. This can mean up to 8 hours at a time wearing the tight, uncomfortable mask. Eric was demonstrating just how comfortable his company鈥檚 new mask is and was determined to continue wearing it 鈥� for how long, the assistant did not know.

A worried Feedback asked whether Eric was in danger of starving since there was no obvious way of passing even airline food through the mask. 鈥淥h no!鈥� said the assistant. 鈥淗e takes the mask off every few hours to eat and drink.鈥�

The last we heard, Eric had been in the mask for 100 hours and was still going strong.

A RECENT article in The Times described the race to create 鈥渢he most powerful magnet in the world鈥�. Inevitably, it dealt with the measurement of magnetic strength using a unit known as a gauss. This unit, the article explained helpfully, 鈥渋s named after Karl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician who dabbled in magnetic phenomena in the 1830s鈥�.

Given Gauss鈥檚 eminence in both fields 鈥� mathematics and magnetism 鈥� Feedback is puzzled at the dismissiveness of this description. What next? Will The Times describe Albert Einstein as 鈥渁 German physicist who dabbled in cosmology in the 1920s鈥�?

YOU have to hand it to Richard Branson. Just as Feedback was getting tetchy about Virgin Atlantic鈥檚 failure to reply to correspondence dating back many months, a circular arrived from Branson apologising to all those people who had not been getting the replies they expected.

鈥淭o be honest, we hadn鈥檛 anticipated demand far enough ahead,鈥� he writes with disarming frankness. But the best bit is the postscript: 鈥淭his is particularly embarrassing since Virgin Atlantic has just picked up the award for the friendliest and best telecommunications service of any company in the EC [sic]鈥�.

So, at a stroke, Branson has apologised for the kind of sluggish response time that would put other companies out of business, publicised the fact that his airline had won a telecoms award that Feedback had never even heard of, and taken the wind out of the sails of all the hacks who had heard about the award and were on the point of comparing it with Virgin鈥檚 actual performance.

FEEDBACK is all in favour of museums, but aren鈥檛 the Americans going a bit far with some of their more exotic ones? One high point along the New Jersey Turnpike, reports the daily newspaper USA Today, is the Trash Museum to be found at the Meadowlands Environment Center in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The 鈥渕eadowlands鈥�, for those not familiar with northeastern New Jersey, are the wetlands local people used to call swamps, where they dumped all their rubbish.

IT CAN be hard to let go of the old ways. London鈥檚 National Gallery has taken a bold step into the future by publishing The Complete Illustrated Catalogue in two forms: as a printed book and as a CD-ROM.

But the gallery can鈥檛 quite face the idea of people only consulting an electronic version of the catalogue. 鈥淭he CD-ROM,鈥� its press release tells us, 鈥渨ill not be available separately.鈥� In other words, if you want the CD you鈥檒l have to buy the book as well.

SEVERAL readers have sent us e-mail notes pointing out that not only is the exploding whale story true, as we explained here on 20 May, but there is a film clip of the incident available on the Internet. The story goes that when a putrefying whale was washed up on a beach in Oregon the authorities decided to dispose of it by blowing it up, with disastrous consequences. Anyone who wants to see the film (which is a delight) and has the necessary software can get it from ftp://ftp.cathouse.org/pub/cathouse/urban.legends/gif/ul/whale.avi. But be warned: it鈥檚 an 11-megabyte file.