IMPOSSIBLE-TO-OBEY quantum instructions continue to flood in, like this one seen by Richard Lambley at a Yatesās Wine Lodge: āPlease order your food from all till pointsā. Martin Wakefield, however, is the first to report mounting a challenge to such confusing commands. On observing the notice in the booking office at Bishopās Lydeard station on the West Somerset Railway that exhorted him to āUse both windowsā, he asked whether he should do this consecutively or simultaneously.
āThe sign is addressed to the queue,ā he was told, leaving him wondering why the discovery of the queue as a sentient life form has not received more attention.
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PETER LUPTONāS company, NCH Swift Sound, gets a special mention in Feedback for its free audio streaming server. Why? Because Lupton provides the shocking news that the word āfreeā no longer lives up to its name. He tried to register āFree internet radio broadcastingā with the AdWords service of a famous web search engine (FWSE). He received the response: āPlease remove the following trademark term from your ad: Free.ā
Eh? Off we go to the website of the UKās intellectual property office ā tying one end of a ball of thread to the keyboard to make sure we can find our way out again. We find that the word āfreeā is the subject of seven UK trademarks, covering carbonated soft drinks produced by Free Limited of Godalming, tobacco products labelled in white, gold, red and blue, penetrating preparations (the mind boggles), clothing, plus raw and manufactured tobacco (the subject of three trademarks registered by the same Brazilian company). No mention of audio streaming servers.
Neither does Lupton seem to have breached one of three European Union trademarks, one covering metal caps and lids, another lighting apparatus, and a third dealing with a huge range of things including publications for banks, competitions, holiday camps, education and entertainment. Once again, though, none of these trademarksp seemed to cover internet broadcasting. Was the FWSE being overcautious?
āThe packing for some artificial chamois-leather cloths that were bought by reader Julian Ravest claimed that the material āSoaks up water like a magnetāā
Lupton is now threatening to apply for a trademark on ānewā. He reckons this magazine should be able to manage fine just being called āScientistā, since no one has yet registered that word. We, on the other hand, are tempted to advocate renaming the magazine āFree Scientistā, just to see if anyone tries to stop us.
DOUBTLESS, many people are looking forward to the medical waste conference to be held in Chicago in May 2008 that Martin Gardiner has alerted us to. The conference, according to its website (), will be of interest to companies that ātransport and/or treat and dispose of hospital, medical, infectious, chemotherapeutic and pathological wastesā. As the organisers put it: āEach year, the medical waste industryās most powerful leaders gather to learn, network, and have lots of fun. You should be among them!ā
Errr. We hope you enjoy yourselves, folks, as you certainly deserve to. Even so, this is one jamboree we think we might give a miss.
READER Eric Wilsonās local clinic asked him to come in for a lung-capacity check-up. They made him blow into a device that measured his performance and related it to his age. The nurse then told him that he has the lungs of a 114-year-old.
As an 88-year-old he was disconcerted and puzzled: how did they know? The nurse told him that the figures were based on the average capabilities of each age group. His puzzlement remained. Where did they find enough 114-year-olds to get a meaningful average? He suspects that thereās a graph somewhere that has been extrapolated into the realm of nonsense.
IAN DARBY of Queensland, Australia, was reading The Ramsay Way ā the corporate newsletter of Ramsay Health Care ā when he stumbled upon a surprising sentence in a report that was headed āPrime Minister honours ANZACS at Greenslopes Private Hospital dawn serviceā.
āThe Prime Minister,ā the report said, āreminded all Australians that they āowe so muchā to the more than 100,000 troops who died in battle during the delivery of his Special Address.ā
Darby wonders whether lives could have been saved if the PMās speech had been shorter: āPerhaps the carnage could have been completely avoided if the PM had remained silent.ā
FINALLY, the UK Department of Healthās āPolicy and Guidanceā website has a section on contraception. It includes a list of useful links, one of which is āDownload Emergency Contraceptionā.
āIf this is an attempt to appeal to tech-savvy young people,ā says Ā鶹“«Ć½ biology features editor, Caroline Williams, āit is likely to lead to a lot of disappointment.ā
