Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Licensed not to drive
BUYING some cake in a late-opening shop recently, Feedback encountered a pile of leaflets encouraging young people to apply for a “Validate UK” card to prove their age. Inside, we made the interesting discovery that in the UK you must show that you are 18 or over to buy an axe or crossbow.
This took us back to arriving to work in Pennsylvania some years ago – starting with a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a “non-driver’s license”, not least for the purposes of being “carded” to get into clubs and so on. This card would be an alternative in the UK, where not driving is less eccentric than in the US.
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The application procedure involves getting a “referee” to attest to the validity of the applicant’s passport, birth certificate or driving licence. But the referees vouch for themselves…
Maynards candy pieces “we are made with natural colours”. Simon Freeman ask what “un-natural” colours exist. Feedback finds talking confectionery equally troubling
Traditions of the youth
ILLUSTRATING the ID card leaflet discussed above are three diverse young people, at least two of whom seem to be brandishing a card borrowed from someone else – unless they’ve undergone fairly major cosmetic procedures since the photos were taken.
We are amused to see this tradition among young people down the ages being portrayed by , a company that declares its scheme to be government-approved.
Editorial practice practice
FEEDBACK’S inner pedant is stressed by the title that Adrian Smith forwards: “Is mind-body relaxation by yoga is effective to combat with lifestyle stress?” He received it in an email from publisher Wolters Kluwer, who added that this was the most popular article in the series of journals that includes the Annals of Medical & Health Sciences Research.
In promoting its “best practice in editorial practices”, this email also invited Adrian to join an “association of Indian Journal Medical editors” (The article’s title currently appears correctly at ). The problem we face here is that if we point at anyone’s possible mishandling of the English language, something is likely to go dreadfully wrong with our own use of it nearby. It occurs to us that this phenomenon should be called “prosaic justice”.
Reader, he married Australia
WHILE we’re tempting prosaic justice, we pass on Chris Williams’s observation from UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph. It recently claimed that, in 1955, UK politician Greville Janner “married Myra Sheink, an Australia”. If this is an unusual unit, we dread to think of what.
Rest in peace Enigma
RESPONSES to the demise of our Enigma competition after 1780 puzzles over nearly 34 years were roughly summarised by Mike Wright: “The last Enigma? Say it ain’t so!” David Cooper “always thought doing it regularly would be a good thing to do when I have more spare time, and I suppose too many other people thought the same”.
Dennis Chesters suggests that our “death notice” on the leader page had insufficient gravity (21/28 December 2013, p 5). He suggests “a proper Victorian black-outlined box, listing: birth/death dates, offspring, famous accomplishments, and interment location” – and one last puzzle, with no solution.
Bad vibrations
SURELY it cannot be coincidence that several readers have independently informed us of a marvellously bonkers conspiracy alarm. Trevor Cox, as a professor of acoustic engineering, has special reason to be concerned. Apparently, the standard pitch for orchestras, which is the note middle A at 440 Hz, was foisted on the world by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
It must be true. It’s on the internets. At least, it’s either Nazis or the ever-elusive Illuminati, or Bad People generally. At we learn that “This unnatural standard tuning frequency… removed from the symmetry of sacred vibrations and overtones, has declared war on the subconscious mind of Western Man.” This thought is credited – as so often with conspiracy “theories” – to a website with anti-Semitic links.
Ralph Finch, meanwhile, has lost all record of why he has the newer-age interpretation of this from , which informs us that “A=432 Hz… is an alternative tuning that is mathematically consistent with the universe… it is a pure tone of math fundamental to nature.”
That sounds like “vibrations”, a precursor of “quantum” as an indication of fruitloopery.
Apparently people have been investing in kit that can play their recordings at 432/440ths the intended speed, to achieve a pure harmony with the universe thingy. Have they tired of simply playing them backwards and listening for hidden messages?
Grand unification on tower
FINALLY, reader Paul Baron informs us that on the uppermost observation deck of Auckland’s Sky Tower in New Zealand, visitors are advised that “on Jupiter, you would weigh two and a half times [as much] as you do on Earth because of the planet’s strong magnetic field”.
Paul says visitors are also informed that the tower weighs the equivalent of 6000 elephants and asks “so what would it weigh in Tesla?”
