THIS weekās thought-provoking paper title, submitted by Martin Gardner, is āFrom computer to compostā. Itās not about new regulations on recycling dead electronics, or even about the thoughts that consumers have when their electronic devices keep crashing.
It is published in the journal Theory & Psychology () and, according to the abstract, it āintroduces the compost heap as a metaphor for autobiographical memoryā. How does it do that, then? It āconsiders four entailments of the compost heap analogy that may serve, very roughly, as counterparts to such concepts as encoding, storage, and retrieval. They are: laying it on, breaking it down, stirring it up, and mixing it in.ā
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We did have a punchline to all this, but various parts of our memory seem to have broken down, overheated, caught fire and decayed into foetid gloop.
āBEWARE of Internet Fraud Starā (sic) warns an email from the āEconomical & Financial Crime Commissionā of Nigeria. The note boasts that the agency has locked up over 687 fraudsters and recovered over $322 million, which it plans to return to its rightful owners.
We didnāt realise Nigerian scams could be so profitable. Nor do we know why our name is on the refund list of previous victims; nor why the real Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission website mentions nothing about the repayment initiative; nor why the email came from a Hotmail account.
Emails promising to repay the supposed victims of previous scams seems to have become the latest fad among the scammers. Another email we received announces the āUnited Nations 2006/2007 scam victims compensations paymentsā programme. It claims the UN has authorised payment of $500,000 each to the 150 people who fell for earlier Nigerian scams. Unfortunately, 36 victims remain unlocated and, once again, we are on the list.
Is it just our paranoia that keeps us from cashing in on these golden opportunities? Thereās no need to worry, says an email seemingly from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Why is the FBI monitoring the internet and the global financial network? According to this note, itās to check the validity of contract payments from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Apparently, an overdue contract payment of $10.7 million in our favour from Nigeria āis 100 per cent genuine and hitch free from all facet and of which you have the lawful right to claim your fund without any further delayā (sic).
The email thoughtfully warns that scammers send similar messages, so we should be careful to use only a certain email address and phone number for the Central Bank of Nigeria. Curiously, using a famous search engine to check the phone number and address reveals that they only show up on websites exposing scammers.
If appeals to greed donāt work, perhaps the opportunity to steal from a charity will. After all the get-rich-quick schemes, we opened an email from āUnicef Managementā with particular care because it too came from a Hotmail address. This one was offering us the opportunity to skim 10 per cent off donations from Unicef in our region. Pull the other one.
Perhaps the āFraud Starsā are getting down to the bottom of their barrel of tricks. We have just received an invitation to join āKoffibasseyā on Yahoo Groups, together with a promise to send us $950,000 so long as we provide all our personal details. We are left wondering what the members of that Yahoo group talk to each other about. Hopefully, it is not how they were conned by Koffi Bassey.
āA notice in the local garage where Dennis Millar gets his car serviced reads, apropos of nothing in particular: āLadders must be used at all timesā
JUST recently, catching up with the November 2007 issue of Which? ā the UK Consumersā Association magazine ā Philip Harper was somewhat befuddled by its review of microwave ovens, which gives the capacity of each in ācubic litresā.
He notes that, alas, āthey donāt provide conversions into cubic pints for we fuddy-duddies who have difficulty visualising 9-dimensional spaces in these new metric unitsā.
Alert readers will recall a series of advertisements in Ā鶹“«Ć½ that used this same nonsensical unit of measurement in describing a certain carās engine capacity. We are, of course, too polite to say which car, but if you guessed the car was Swedish, you wouldnāt be far wrong.
FINALLY, installing an upgrade to Adobeās Acrobat Reader software, Neil McManus did something only a Feedback reader would do. He checked out the first of the 50 or so patents listed. , he found, was issued on 9 March 1886 for an ingenious design of towel rail.
It looks like Adobe realised the mistake. While Adobe version 7 still lists the towel rail, Adobe 8 adds a āDā to the patent number: is more appropriately something to do with fonts. Shame really, we preferred the towel rail.
