Such lightness with fear
WHEREVER there’s fear, there’s a market. No sooner had Feedback been enlightened about the menace of blue light from LED lamps (19 July) than a arrived from Interworks Unlimited, promoting the Konnet Care Vision Protective Shield with “new advanced Patent-Pending UV Blue Light Deflection Technology with fiber coating”. It warns of the perils of cataracts, nearsightedness, retinal damage and “lens mutations” due to ultraviolet light exposure.
What you really need to save your vision, it says, are shields that block 99.99 per cent of the ultraviolet light from smartphone and tablet screens at wavelengths between 380 and 400 nanometres. It is true that long-term exposure to ultraviolet light can contribute to cataracts, but only at much shorter wavelengths.
But is any of this relevant? The sun, after all, delivers a wee bit more blue and ultraviolet light to your eyes than a tablet, smartphone or LED. Best stay indoors in the dark?
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In mid-July, Richard King notes, the ad on the UK’s weather forecast page was for “showers for the elderly”. How wonderfully apt
Cleanse a foul infected world
OTHER menaces that offer very, very rich markets are those of infection and contamination – which magical thinking holds to be one and the same. A company kindly illustrates this by sending Feedback a for its “New flight-size air-spray” that is “perfect for travellers”.
Good news: their product “could see an end to the bugs that passengers pick up”. After all, it “kills 99.9% of bacteria instantly. Spraying hands with and using it to wipe trays and clean chair-arm buttons will eliminate bacteria, ensuring you arrive at your destination, just as healthy as when you left… Hands are the most consistent point of contact for cold, flu and bacteria.”
Hang on. The main infection concern on aircraft is about colds and flu. These are of course caused by viruses. Most antibacterials won’t touch these, though acid . And there are suspicions that overuse of antibacterial chemicals encourages the evolution of precisely the nasty bugs that the company warns about elsewhere in the press release.
We certainly don’t look forward to being seated next to someone obsessively spraying their seat and tray table.
Where pestilence did reign
THINKING about aeroplanes, viruses and horrors reminds us of the seriously worrying web address of a story in London’s Metro newspaper, which for once we shall give in full: . Someone had thought to correct the headline to “Ebola outbreak: British doctors ordered to look out for deadly symptoms amid warnings of virus risk to UK” by the time we read the page.
We most sincerely hope that the original headline, copied faithfully into the web address for the benefit of search engines, doesn’t become true while this ink is drying.
The powdering tub of infamy
LAST month we mentioned our recollection that “instant booze” was one of those stories that comes around once every decade or so (5 July). While checking what the ingredients of the powdered alcohol product Palcohol might be, we discovered that this is almost exactly true.
In 1964, one Harold Bode filed for “an alcoholic dry beverage powder”, which focused on encapsulating flavours in modified starches but also produced an alcoholic powder.
In 1974, William Mitchell and William Seidel applied for a series of patents for “alcohol-containing dextrin powder”. , and assigned to the General Foods Corporation. One specifies that when “blended with one package… of Holland House Bloody Mary Mix… the resultant cloudy alcohol beverage was judged to be of excellent quality”.
Then in and there was a bit of a fuss about a German company (since disappeared from the web) marketing such a product. Does anyone have any sightings from 1984 or 1994?
Hide not with sugared words
BLENDING the themes of comestibles and mortal dangers, Feedback was astonished to stumble across a series of US ads that ran from the to the promoting refined sucrose as a health food.
One, from Sugar Information, Inc. in the mid-1960s, that “She needs sugar in her life. For energy. She needs energyless artificially sweetened foods… like a turtle needs a seat belt.” It comes with a “Note to Mothers” that warns: “Exhaustion opens the door a little wider to the bugs and ailments that are always lying in wait. Sugar puts back energy fast.” promoted the idea of eating sugar at “the fat time of day” – when you’re “over-hungry and want to overeat” – to “turn your appesat back to low”.
Our appesats must have been set to high: we were eating sugar-soaked Indian sweets as we typed this. We’re shocked, but in no place to moralise.
We enter the forbidden gates
FINALLY, Jim Cable and Tony Richardson send photos of a sign at the UK’s lovely Beaconsfield service station: “Alcohol purchased at M&S may not be consumed on or off the premises.” What, not even powdered alcohol?