Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Dodging the Nutribullet
THE Nutribullet āis the worldās first Nutrition Extractorā, claims the flyer that Barry Cash has. Earthās first life form would have something to say about that, were it to have a voice.
The flyer exhorted Barry to spend Ā£99.99 on what appears to be a kitchen blender with added marketing ā and was nicely timed to coincide with the collapse of New Yearās resolutions to eat more vegetables. Barry observes that the flyer also promotes a ārange of specially selected Superfood Powders that can take your Nutriblasts to another levelā. āI didnāt know I had a Nutriblast,ā says Barry, and wonders: is it a euphemism for, er, passing wind?
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Sunraysia Pure Squeezed Prune Juice informs Richard Lucas that it is āmade directly from crushed prunes brought in from our farmerās fieldsā. Ah, the prune fields of Sunraysiaā¦
Never going to let you down
FEEDBACK admires the effort in an essay on a famous scientist. It begins: āNever has a man influenced physics so profoundly as Niels Bohr in the early 1900ās.ā The next line reads just a shade oddly: āGoing back to this time period, little was known about atomic structure; Bohr set outā¦ā
A reason for the oddness is revealed when we see that the succeeding lines begin with the words āto, give, you, up, never, going, to, let, you, downā ā yes, the essay is an acrostic of a song performed by Rick Astley, in an ingenious example of the internet phenomenon known as rickrolling.
Do readers know of other acrostic or similar stunts in science?
Axiom pulpit
IN THE email inviting Anne Franklin to attend the ā3rd International Conference on Biodiversity & Sustainable Energy Developmentā, on 24 to 26 June in Valencia, Spain, organisers Omics Publishing Group describe it as āspecifically premeditated with a unifying axiom providing pulpit to widen the imminent scientific creationsā. Feedback now definitely wants an axiom-providing pulpit; but we donāt think weāll be attending any Omics conferences ā ā and weāre still trying to work out the economics of the organisationās 300 āopen-access journalsā.
Piece of PEE
AN INVITATION to another conference was saved from the wastebasket only by a colleague doing a double take at the title: āPEE 2014ā. It turns out that PEE is the ā2014 International Conference on Power Engineering, Energy and Electrical Drivesā. Our scepticism about its academic status is fuelled by its being co-located in Singapore with the ā2014 3rd International Conference on Micro Nano Devices, Structure and Computing Systemsā.
We are curious: are infelicitous invitations becoming a deliberate feature of such events?
Start of dubious relationship
THEN Feedback received another email: āSJP is a broad-base open access journal publisherā¦ We welcome submission of Original articles in basic and applied researchā¦ You are receiving this email because of your relationship with SJP.ā And thus begins said relationship, with the very deepest of scepticism on our part and suggestions of self-destructive tendencies on theirsā¦
The wheels of diplomacy
DIPLOMATIC language, meanwhile, contains many wonderfully obscure and precise constructions. A colleague sits in the cheap seats at the back of a UN institution. Recently, a country representative, who must remain anonymous, suggested discussion of steps that might be taken āin order not to move the discussion unnecessarily forwardā.
Prescient records
WHAT is the secret behind the advert that James Sandeman found online?: āSearch RAF Records,ā it says, ā ā records from 1350 through to WW1 and WW2. Free search.ā This seems to suggest that the UKās Royal Air Force ā and therefore powered flight as a whole ā is somewhat older than historians of technology have suspected.
Sing a song of nucleic acid
WHILE discussing the death of Phil Everly, one of the eponymous Brothers, last month, singer that āthe information of your DNA is carried in your voice, and you can get a sound [with family members] that you never get with someone whoās not blood-related to youā. Reader Lance Andrewes notes that āmuch as Linda is my all-time favourite artist, I do believe her quote comes from fa la la landā. Feedback started to hope that we could reconstitute Billie Holiday from the āDNAā in recordings of her voice, but the lo-fi nature of many records made us fear that we would not get who we were hoping for.
Erase with extreme prejudice
FINALLY, the manual for a JVC camcorder, Michael Pavitt reports, contains the following warning about the effects of its delete function: āThe data is not completely erased from the recording medium,ā and a suggestion: āIf you want to completely erase all of the data, we recommend either using commercially available software that is specially designed for that purpose, or by physically destroying the camcorder with a hammer etc.ā
Michael supposes that this may help the company make future camera sales to those who record something they would rather forget completely, whether for legal or aesthetic reasons.
