JUST before the latest vampire movie hit the screens, Feedback鈥檚 eye was caught by a strong candidate for our paper title of the week award, in a press release from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 鈥淏lood as perfume and the mate-choice decisions of a mosquito-eating jumping spider鈥�, by Fiona Cross at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and colleagues. Alas, by the time we came to check the link to the published paper () the title had become 鈥淗ow blood-derived odor influences mate-choice decisions by a mosquito-eating predator鈥�.
What happened? Did the press office hype the title, did the editors dull it down to be properly boring, or did the authors get cold feet at the last minute? Feedback would love to know.
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鈥淲hy is the odour-elimination spray that Kevin Brook recently bought lemon-scented, and what does this say about its efficacy?鈥�
Free so long as you pay your top up
PROMOTING its mobile phone service, T-Mobile in the UK asks on its website if we would like 鈥淔REE internet & texts for life?鈥� and explains: 鈥淭op up 拢10 each month and get free internet and texts next month, every month.鈥�
Feedback is confused. We did what Feedback readers do, which is mental arithmetic. A healthy 16-year-old could spend up to 拢10,000, at 2009 prices, to qualify for the free internet and texts offer, for life.
THE sign-up on the Captain Cash money-saving website run by the London-based Sunday tabloid News of the World asks applicants to select from the following: 鈥淚n a typical month, I buy the NOTW: never/less than once/1-2 times/3-4 times.鈥�
Michael Barraclough is still trying to work out which of the first two options to tick.
SURVEYS consistently find that people鈥檚 fear of crime is out of proportion to their risk of actually being the victim of a crime 鈥� and for people living in safer neighbourhoods it may even be inversely proportional. Now we have a partial explanation. Kay Bagon sends part of a survey carried out in the largely suburban English county of Hertfordshire that asks: 鈥淗ow safe do you feel walking along in the area after dark: very unsafe, fairly safe, bit unsafe, very unsafe, don鈥檛 go out after dark鈥�.
THE ubiquity of inappropriate online advertising by fruitloops appears to be yet another unforeseen consequence of the wonderful, liberating communications revolution. For instance, Feedback frequently sees serious newspaper analysis placed next to links to conspiracy theorists. After all, what鈥檚 the point of being a conspiracy loon nowadays if you don鈥檛 pay for the that show your links wherever a famous web search engine finds the relevant words?
When this happens, the website editors and the advertising people can all put their hands up and say 鈥渘ot our fault, guv鈥檔or, it鈥檚 all done with algorithms and keyword auctions, untouched by human hand.鈥� For example Pete Booth, accessing the BBC website from outside the UK, swears he saw a serious science article decorated with an ad for . 鈥淵ou will be able to build a Magnetic Power Generator,鈥� this website claims, 鈥渨hich creates absolutely free energy, and doesn鈥檛 require any resource like wind or solar energy to function.鈥� Oh yeah?
An even better illustration of the oddness of online ads is that the advertised link here isn鈥檛 even to the inventor鈥檚 site. It belongs to someone trying to collect milli-cents each time someone clicks on their link to go to the actual, site, .
That site complains that 鈥渇ree energy devices have been suppressed by the corporate world鈥� and features a video claiming that an (apparently entirely unrelated) water-powered engine 鈥渇ound it virtually impossible to secure financial backing, after鈥� 鈥� and here the voice-over gets gravelly 鈥� 鈥渃ertain Pentagon officials paid him a visit鈥�. But, bravely, for only 拢30.45, discounted from US$197, they will sell us instructions for building our own free-energy magnet machine.
Visit any of these links at your own risk. Here in the Feedback complex we鈥檙e wrapping all our computers in tinfoil, just to be on the safe side.
ALMOST finally, here are the answers to 麻豆传媒鈥榮 picture quiz, the Wellcome Curiosities Challenge, on page 80 of this issue: 1 A, 2 C, 3 D, 4 D, 5 C, 6 B, 7 D, 8 B, 9 B, 10 A.
FINALLY finally, it remains only to thank the thousands of you who have written to us over the past year, or posted your comments online. It is impossible for us to answer every email or comment and we don鈥檛 have room to publish all your suggestions for stories 鈥� but we do read them with pleasure and most of what we do publish comes from your skill at spotting the absurd. So thanks again. We wish all our readers an enjoyable holiday break and a happy new year.