FEEDBACK just bought a Speedo snorkel. The instructions supplied are for the most part refreshingly sensible, advising against diving too deep, for instance, or overbreathing before going underwater. But one large-print warning puzzles. āUse only in water,ā stresses Speedo.
Where else would someone use a mask and snorkel tube? Walking, driving or riding on dry land? In an ocean of methane or ethanol? Climbing a mountain or dancing? Or dining out?
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Holidaying in Scotland, David Moss was bemused by a sign encouraging him to exercise the ultimate in caution: āSlow down / please drive with care / 0 MPH
APPARENTLY 56 per cent of the adult population snores. āConsequentially,ā we read in a for an app for your iThing on the Apple iTunes store, āit is estimated that people who have partners who snore regularly spend a total of two years of their lives awake?ā As little as two years?
Paul Thorpe has decoded the claim in the product description that āthis app has sound frequencies that detect snoring in the environment and puts an end to it by emitting sounds during the snoring.ā
āGenerating noise on detection of snoring,ā he points out, ādoes not seem to address the issue.ā Maybe there is another app that oneās partner can use to filter out the sound made by the anti-snoring app?
āOf course,ā Paul concludes, āthen the first app, to remain effective, would need countermeasuresā¦ā
Start of a specialism, gods willing
ON 7 January we reported: āInstrument supplier Anton Paar has filed a patent application for āmeasurement of the theological properties of material samplesā. Andy Prior applauds this concern for smart materialsā beliefs.ā
Nigel Perry reports that this could be a swiftly growing field of research. He notes a on the SAE International website entitled āRheology of jet fuel contaminated hydraulic fluidā. This states: āA coaxial cylinder viscometer has been used to determine the theological properties of a hydraulic fluidā¦ā Perhaps Andy and Nigel should start jockeying for the inevitable professorship? And perhaps they ā or some other interested party ā could explain whatās going on here. We suspect the curse of the spellchucker.
READER Martin Gardiner admits he got wound up when battling the internet banking system of a well-known financial corporation. His PI(N) number, which he is quite convinced was the correct one, kept getting refused.
Later, the helpful representative at the bankās call centre informed him that: āSometimes itās not the actual data you enter, but the way in which you enter it.ā Martin has been trying to use his computer keyboard more affably since then, but he says heās still having problems.
POORLY chosen acronym of the month: the word PUNT appears in a recent press release from the US National Nuclear Security Administration, where it stands for āPeaceful Uses of Nuclear Technologyā ā as in āU.S., China Advance Nuclear Safety and Security Cooperation through Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Technology (PUNT) Agreement.ā
Not only is PUNT ugly, it is also unsuitable. In US slang it means giving up, delaying or trying to pass a problem on to someone else. It probably derives from the practice in sports such as rugby and American football of āpuntingā (kicking) the ball away when a player is stuck and bound to lose control of it anyway.
AS WE reported on 19 May, canal enthusiast Wally Pratt proposes to deal with the problem of unequal distribution of water across the UK by dehydrating the water where there is plenty of it, then transporting it in pellet form to hydrate it again in areas of drought.
Bruce Lucas suggests taking the idea a step further: āI think Wally Pratt is not such a wally nor a pratt, but is thinking futuristically. Given the way we are polluting our waterways, it may become necessary to dehydrate the water at source, transport the oxygen and hydrogen separately and recombine them at the user point.ā
Feedback wonders: are these suggestions entirely serious?
DONāT bother breaking into this van. Ben Cracknell sends a photo of a delivery vehicle bearing on its back door the message: āNo medicine, money or oxygen is left in this vehicle overnight.ā
āThose doors,ā as he notes, āhave a good seal on them.ā Weāre worried about the difficulty of opening them in the morning, unless the vanās owners avoid a partial vacuum by replacing the missing oxygen with another gas.
Andā¦ is there really an āinformal marketā in illicit oxygen? Feedback suddenly feels ridiculously innocent.
FINALLY, delight is the only word to describe Chris Milburnās feelings about his purchase on 21 June of a Dell Inspiron 15 computer from Tier 1 Online ā and especially the delivery service. He copies us an order completion note showing that it shipped on 20 June. Feedback wonders what Tier 1 goods that we hadnāt yet thought of purchasing are even now winging their way to us.