(Image: Paul McDevitt)
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
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As clear as crystal
A HIDDEN gem is uncovered by Trevor Howland in the pages of Crystal Energy, a book that promises “150 ways to bring success, love, health and harmony into your life”.
As jaded cynics, we were tempted to think that crystal fruitloopery has no place in modern life, but turning to the chapter on business success proves us wrong. There we learn that, when placed on our desk, malachite “will soak up some of the electromagnetic pollution emitted by your computer”. Handy for those who can’t afford an EMPpad (22 August).
Even better, by circling the malachite around the computer twice daily, “its healing energy can be an added repellent to any new viruses that are attacking software programs”. Just remember to “cleanse the stone under running water” afterwards – preferably away from your computer, Feedback advises.
Many Britons would support a gull cull, “though that varied by age,” the BBC reports. “Half of respondents aged 18-24 opposed a bird cull, while the same number of over-60s backed one.”
A bad moon rising
SOME of the other advice in Crystal Energy is more practical, if ominous. The chapter headed “Silencing noisy neighbours with white moonstone” recommends that if you have been driven to your wits’ end by ceaseless clamour from next door, you should wait for a dark night with a waning moon, “which symbolizes natural endings” and perhaps unnatural ones too.
In the jet black of this night, grip a hunk of moonstone tightly in your fist like Macbeth with his dagger and “trust in the stone’s power”. Having done the deed, we are told, serenity will return to your home. Possibly followed by a police investigation.
Where the sun doesn’t shine
PREVIOUSLY, Howard Bobry asked for Feedback’s help to find a phrase that means “this is so incredibly stupid that it’s difficult to respond”, after being told to trim the ends of his decking boards to overcome curling caused by moisture (8 August).
Marion Hanna writes to say that she also finds herself in need of such a phrase. “A local company here in Australia told me that they would not supply me with a solar-powered sun awning on a west-facing window,” she laments. The company’s rationale was that “there would not be enough sun on it to operate it in the winter”.
Final cuts
IN HOWARD’S case, Steve Martin proposes replying to the manufacturer with an equally stupid suggestion. For example, Howard could recommend that “in the interest of public relations, the company trim the ends of all their decking presale”.
This strategy is not without its risks, as George Fisher illustrates when he recalls: “Some 70 years ago, I was trying to find the end of a ball of string without much success. My father suggested that someone may have cut it off.”
Finally, Christopher Jacob suggests describing incredibly stupid responses as “beyond wrong”, a term associated with Michael Shermer, who found ample opportunity to popularise the phrase as editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine.
Mucky business
CONTINUING our litany of Truly Horrible Ideas for Saving the Planet (THISPs), Alex MacDonald lets fly with a feather-brained scheme.
“Seagulls are attracted into towns by the abundance of food waste, and leave behind white droppings,” mulls Alex. If seagull populations were boosted by suspending the collection of food waste, and their droppings allowed to accumulate “to a depth of several feet”, there would be enhanced reflection of solar energy from our towns and cities, he believes.
“There are minor issues with this proposal,” admits Alex: a massive population of aggressive seagulls, and the smell of the guano, “which some may find mildly unpleasant”.
However, he reckons that the climate engineering will be self-regulating and will confine itself to affluent areas – the principal contributors to climate change – because less affluent areas “do not exhibit the prodigious food waste upon which this proposal is founded”.
Patent lather
US patent is titled “Method and device for interactive virtual control of sexual aids using digital computer networks” – and that’s just what it covers. The idea was nothing new when the patent application was filed in 1998, but a company called TZU Technologies is using it to sue small sex-toy start-ups for patent infringement.
Patent-infringement suits based on dubious claims are hardly new. But we are amused to see the matter-of-fact way in which the government bureaucracy deals with sex toys. Their elaborate classification scheme for tracking the subjects of patents buries such toys deep in “subclass” A61H for “physical therapy apparatus”, with US patent 6,368,268 B1 draped across several further sub-subclasses, from the descriptive “A61H19/44: Having substantially cylindrical shape” to the brusque “A61H2205/086: Buttocks”.
However, Feedback is chiefly pleasured by the choice of parent class for this entire series, namely “A: Human necessities”.
Starry ide?
SAGE advice from The Telegraph for those intent on watching the Perseid meteor shower and a fly-by of the International Space Station: “Amateur astrologists are urged to sit in a deckchair facing north-east.”
Perhaps the conjunction of the two events is an ominous portent, worries Ian Beaver, or then again, “maybe the journalist should be urged to sit in a deckchair facing well away from a typewriter”.