Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Trial by water
AS THE nights draw in in the northern hemisphere, we return to the subject of unconventional sunscreen. At the height of the London summer we mentioned claims by the Colorado company Osmosis that it had produced a drinkable sun screen (5 July). The “Harmonized H2O UV Neutralizer” is now less prominent on , but digging suggests the ingredients are ““.
Brian Handley alerts us to the UK consumer magazine Which!, which asked the British Association of Dermatologists about the product. The : “it’s complete nonsense to suggest that drinking water will give you a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of 30”.
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And David Geddes forwards the company sent him, which begins “This randomized clinical trial…” Its authors appear not to have entirely understood that concept. They selected 24 subjects and report that a “decision was made to not do a double-blind test for this application because of the ethical implications of knowingly causing a sunburn”. All received vibrational water and were exposed to California sun for an hour: five had minor sunburn and three “significant” burns.
And from this we learn what?
Dorothy Russel sends a photo from Ithala Game Reserve in South Africa: “Return path to reception”. But she didn’t take it
Advertising standards fail
DIGGING further, we the New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority against Osmosis Skin Care New Zealand on 8 July. It ruled that the company should remove an advertisement from its website for drinkable sunscreen.
Visiting the given in the ruling now produces the message “Something has gone wrong. Sorry about that.” What is there to add?
Decent desert dessert
WATER. Wonderful stuff. Hard to find, by definition, in the desert. While filing the piece about our fascination with dehydrated water last week, our piling system threw up a message from Roger Riordan. He is “fairly sure” that he heard at school in 1944 that German scientists had invented dehydrated water: “Place one cup in a bucket, add one gallon of petrol, stir, and in five minutes you will have one gallon of high-quality drinking water.”
We suspect that this comes from soldiers’ frustration at fuel being more available than refreshment in arid lands. We were surprised how hard it was to find references to other examples online. One exception was in the from North Carolina on 12 July 1953, which appears to refer to a comedian’s shtick about dehydrated water for hikers. There must be more.
Now, organic dehydrated water
MORE currently, you may enjoy the customer reviews at . We particularly liked the observation from someone who had “been concerned that it would be challenging to generate my homeopathic medications after the Rapture” and was relieved to have a handy product to store in their bunker.
Pencils for the End Times
FOLLOWING an online advertising accident, we found ourselves to something called , which appears to be a newsletter for people who don’t have insider information on factors affecting share prices. The small print sings the praises of the exciting new material graphene (see “Carbon and… on“). A heading, however, invites us to invest in “the Graphite Revolution”.
Yes. In case of the Rapture, or whatever, we shall be laying down stocks of pencils. Good plan.
Footfall field facts
READER Mark Fawcett alerts us to an uncertainty in what we had thought was a perfectly standard unit of area. on a study of the ranges of domestic and wild cats, the BBC used football pitch units. Except that it specified “Old Trafford” pitches, making the Manchester United ground the reference standard of area.
Why so exact? Feedback had, like Mark, been ready to accept that there was an unambiguous standard: one football pitch = 2.3 micro-Rhode-Islands or 0.34 microWales.
This readiness may have been connected with our having been, back in our schooldays, an excellent positional player in whatever sport was foisted upon us. That is to say, wherever any ovoid object covered in mud with a veneer of ice was about to be – we were somewhere else.
But, fearlessly mining the , we find that football fields vary by a few metres in length. This is exciting.
Your parking space crashed
FINALLY, Harvard University has an online system designed to allow visitors to pay for parking spaces on the crowded campus. To register, they must enter the department they are visiting, and the department code.
The website helpfully lists the department names, but not the codes. In desperation, a colleague started casting runes on famous web search engines. Success! But, on entering the code, they encountered a browser error message, finally explained by a note in the Frequently Asked Questions: “Recent updated versions of select web browsers may not support the One Day Online Permit Purchasing System.”
Feedback is mildly puzzled that online registration error messages don’t feature in this publication’s list of revolutionary achievements of our species (see page 32).