WE HAVE run several stories in recent months about signifiers that relate to obsolete concepts – either in the form of words, such as blueprints which were blue once but aren’t any more (25 June), or pictures, such as a sign showing a steam locomotive to warn of the proximity of a railway carrying modern trains (14 May), or gestures such as the “air signature” used to order the bill in a restaurant (7 May). Now Daniel Smith directs us to a discussion on BBC news about obsolete sounds that are deliberately fabricated ().
Engineers, the article says, have taken to tweaking acoustics to make us feel good about products that are being sold to us, or for the sake of safety. Examples include the rigged “satisfying clunk” of a car door closing, the faked noise of a shutter on a digital camera, or the artificially created “engine sound” of a silent electric car that warns pedestrians of its approach.
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Daniel notes that in this way, sounds that would otherwise be lost in the relentless progress of technology are preserved. “Imagine,” he says, “if this concept of familiar sounds had been developed earlier. Would cars all make the sound of horses’ hooves instead of the newfangled and confusing drone of an internal combustion engine?”
“Profiling port manager Don Mann, The Oregonian mentions his time on an ice-breaker ship that “crossed the North Pole three times and the South Pole once”. Ken Lassesen wants pictures”
SOME kind of record is, we think, set by the notice that Ross Russell received from UK delivery company Parcelforce, inviting him to track the progress of a parcel in his general direction. It points him to a website that uses a string of 1024 characters to reference his parcel, each a digit or a letter from A to F. Assuming this is a number in the hexadecimal (base-16) system beloved of computer software, the system is set up to track 161024 separate parcels – around 101233 in mundane decimal numbers.
As Ross notes, this is considerably larger than the number of atoms in the universe – generally estimated to be around 1080. So each atom in the universe could receive 101153 parcels before Parcelforce ran out of identifiers. Even Feedback’s colleague who, doing an MA, has developed a severe second-hand book habit, manages fewer than two parcels a day… it’d take her more than 101150 years to use up one atom’s allocation… 101140 times the age of this universe.
Does Parcelforce, being set up for privatisation, know something about emerging markets in parallel universes that we don’t? If so, they’re even weirder than we think.
Ross did something that only a Feedback reader would, and inspected the 1024-character string closely. It contained no instances of 2, 3, 5 or 6. Either this is a staggeringly improbable coincidence, or this is a very unusual number system.
We can say, though, only that we “think” this is a record. Feedback’s fallible human memory tells us we have mentioned similarly huge numbers in the past. But can we find these mentions in the supposedly precise and omniscient electronic archive? Can we heck. Perhaps we should add tracking numbers to our stories.
Nonsensical quackery of the week
NONSENSICAL quackery of the week comes from Hydra Hi-Energy water, whose website employs a panoply of woo-woo fruitloopery to tell us: “Enjoy the natural energy boost of a new level of cellular hydration. Hydra’s proprietary process restores the natural polarity and high frequency energies once found in the most healing waters on Earth…
“Hydra Energizer contains 50 bipolar trace minerals that are enhanced with quantum physics technology to deliver into your extracellular matrix the full range of frequencies found in your body’s energy field. This restores natural polarity to your body, which reduces stress, boosts energy production, helps protect against EMFs and improves detoxification and cell hydration.”
As far as we can see, none of this means anything, but the writer qualifies for our outstanding fruitloopery of the week award.
Giving liquor vibrational frequencies
MORE twaddle of this ilk comes from a company that tellingly calls itself Vibrational Living. This offers the Water Band, a strap costing $9.95 that you place around the bottom of a glass or bottle of water “or any beverage”. This apparently “Energizes liquids with beneficial vibrational frequencies” and will “improve your health by truly hydrating your body to the cellular level.”
Tastes just like ordinary water
FINALLY, there’s the Langenburg “oxygen water” that Peter Thomson bought in a “very serious earth-persons’ café” while visiting friends in Eugene, Oregon. In addition to reminding him that the contents were “pH balanced” and “mineral balanced” (but without saying balanced to what), the label proclaimed that the water was “structurally restored”, “microclustered for hydration”, and contained “high levels of stable oxygen”.
Oddly, Peter says, it tasted just like ordinary water. He is left wondering if an ice block is “macroclustered”.