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64 | NewScientist | 10 August 2013 FEEDBACK MODERN information technology is a great boon – although Feedback sometimes suspects that its main function is settling pub arguments. We recently mentioned an extremely bored afternoon whiled away reading the UK Post Office Guide, back when it was an inch-thick paper publication (6 July). We had idly wondered why it was against the rules to post “quinine coloured pink” to India. A colleague who read the column quickly fired back an explanation, garnered by the simple expedient of asking a famous web search engine to look for occurrences of “quinine coloured pink” and “India” in the 17 million books and journals it has scanned. Thus we now know from a snippet of an article in a 1907 edition of the Pharmaceutical Alan Trusler sends us the label from a pack of Tesco’s Micro oats showing a “best before end” date of “Jan 10 9020” Journal that: “Some years since it was decided by the Government of India that all quinine sulphate supplied for Government use… should be coloured pink, as a guarantee of its purity and to distinguish it from the commercial article commonly sold in the bazzars [sic].” A very sensible explanation too, although this means that one fewer question is available for the next quiz held in the pub in which we are writing this. ON THE UK government’s public petitions website at bit.ly/ petitionpage, Tom Rogers found a page in the “Rejected Petitions” category that made him smile. The rejected petition asked the responsible government department – in this case the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons – to “Ban anyone adding a new petition until they have read all the existing ones to check whether or not someone has already posted one on the subject”. Dave Goodwin, the author of this petition, claims to have read through the current list of petitions and found that “there are a great many topics that are repeated, some as many as 8 times – if someone is too lazy to check whether or not their pet topic has already been posted they should be declared too stupid to post their own one…” Below this complaint, Her Majesty’s government offers the following explanation for why Goodwin’s petition is in the Rejected section: “There is already an e-petition about this issue.” This must be one of those rare cases in which the government shows it has a sense of humour. AS SOON as he read the first sentence of a leaflet he picked up at a “New Age” festival, Rick Sareen “knew this was one for you guys”. The sentence was: “Pyramidical Memories Transmutation is a quantum tool of the 5th dimension which neutralises old, restrictive reactions and patterns…” Rick says that he then read more of the leaflet, and by the end he was less sure which sentence he should send us – so he scanned the whole leaflet and forwarded it. It’s too long to pass on here, but for those with a taste for the barking mad we can recommend a website mentioned in it. It’s called letinto.com and it includes a section on a theme that is becoming increasingly fashionable in fruitloop circles these days: a “DNA upgrade” (see 27 July). Enjoy – or not. FRIENDS in a medical family in North London tell us how they worried about their cat getting too fat. They tried cutting back on its food, but the cat just kept on getting fatter. What could explain this? The local pet shop suggested an experiment and sold the family a brightly coloured new collar with the inscribed message: “If you are feeding this cat please phone this telephone number”. The number of people who phoned ran into double digits – enough to make a very fat cat indeed. IN THE window of a Boots Opticians shop photographed by Andrew Doble in the town of Wokingham in the UK, there is a poster bearing, in very large letters, the words “Eye tests available today*”. But note that asterisk. Tucked away in the bottom corner of the poster, in letters so small they are almost invisible, are the words: “*subject to availability”. FINALLY, Noel Akers sent an email that had us laughing and blushing at the same time. “Following so closely the raft of stories about the UK and US governments’ monitoring of their citizens’ electronic communications, I found it genuinely creepy to get an email from New Scientist reading ‘We’ve noticed that you have not read the New Scientist newsletter that you receive each week in a while…’.” You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback PAUL MCDEVITT
Transcript of Feedback
64 | NewScientist | 10 August 2013
FEEDBACK
MODERN information technology is a great boon – although Feedback sometimes suspects that its main function is settling pub arguments.
We recently mentioned an extremely bored afternoon whiled away reading the UK Post Office Guide, back when it was an inch-thick paper publication (6 July). We had idly wondered why it was against the rules to post “quinine coloured pink” to India.
A colleague who read the column quickly fired back an explanation, garnered by the simple expedient of asking a famous web search engine to look for occurrences of “quinine coloured pink” and “India” in the 17 million books and journals it has scanned.
Thus we now know from a snippet of an article in a 1907 edition of the Pharmaceutical
Alan Trusler sends us the label from a pack of Tesco’s Micro oats showing a “best before end” date of “Jan 10 9020”
Journal that: “Some years since it was decided by the Government of India that all quinine sulphate supplied for Government use… should be coloured pink, as a guarantee of its purity and to distinguish it from the commercial article commonly sold in the bazzars [sic].”
A very sensible explanation too, although this means that one fewer question is available for the next quiz held in the pub in which we are writing this.
ON THE UK government’s public petitions website at bit.ly/petitionpage, Tom Rogers found a page in the “Rejected Petitions” category that made him smile.
The rejected petition asked the responsible government department – in this case the Office of the Leader of the House of
Commons – to “Ban anyone adding a new petition until they have read all the existing ones to check whether or not someone has already posted one on the subject”.
Dave Goodwin, the author of this petition, claims to have read through the current list of petitions and found that “there are a great many topics that are repeated, some as many as 8 times – if someone is too lazy to check whether or not their pet topic has already been posted they should be declared too stupid to post their own one…”
Below this complaint, Her Majesty’s government offers the following explanation for why Goodwin’s petition is in the Rejected section: “There is already an e-petition about this issue.”
This must be one of those rare cases in which the government shows it has a sense of humour.
AS SOON as he read the first sentence of a leaflet he picked up at a “New Age” festival, Rick Sareen “knew this was one for you guys”. The sentence was: “Pyramidical Memories Transmutation is a quantum tool of the 5th dimension which neutralises old, restrictive reactions and patterns…”
Rick says that he then read more of the leaflet, and by the end he was less sure which sentence he should send us – so he scanned the whole leaflet and forwarded it. It’s too long to pass on here, but for those with a taste for the barking mad we can recommend a website mentioned in it. It’s called letinto.com and it includes a section on a theme that is becoming increasingly fashionable in fruitloop circles these days: a “DNA upgrade” (see 27 July). Enjoy – or not.
FRIENDS in a medical family in North London tell us how they worried about their cat getting too fat. They tried cutting back on its food, but the cat just kept on getting fatter. What could explain this?
The local pet shop suggested an experiment and sold the family a brightly coloured new collar with the inscribed message: “If you are feeding this cat please phone this telephone number”.
The number of people who phoned ran into double digits – enough to make a very fat cat indeed.
IN THE window of a Boots Opticians shop photographed by Andrew Doble in the town of Wokingham in the UK, there is a poster bearing, in very large letters, the words “Eye tests available today*”.
But note that asterisk. Tucked away in the bottom corner of the poster, in letters so small they are almost invisible, are the words: “*subject to availability”.
FINALLY, Noel Akers sent an email that had us laughing and blushing at the same time.
“Following so closely the raft of stories about the UK and US governments’ monitoring of their citizens’ electronic communications, I found it genuinely creepy to get an email from New Scientist reading ‘We’ve noticed that you have not read the New Scientist newsletter that you receive each week in a while…’.”
You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.
For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedbackPA
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