Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
God Particles for sale
“SINCE the beginning of time, mankind has sought to fully understand the laws by which our universe works,” it says on the website we’re reading. This site hails the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which it insists on calling “the God Particle” despite our report that physicist Leon Lederman preferred “the goddam particle” (25 February 2012).
Then it brings us the news that parts of the CERN accelerator “exposed to the surge of energy which showed substantial evidence of having the God Particle” were sent to “the leading universities and research centers in the world”.
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And what did they allegedly find? That “the energy of the God Particle has some amazing effects on migraine prevention, on treating different kinds of skin conditions, up to a surprising improvement among those who [were] ailing from sexual dysfunction disorders”.
To share in these literally incredible benefits, for $199 you can get a spherical pendant, supposedly from a “bearing” in the CERN accelerator spirited away by “a maintenance team”, from . Feedback certainly hopes this isn’t true, since CERN’s real maintenance team “equipment irradiated in or near the beams may become radioactive”.
Shane Dwyer tells of an advertisement for Shark motorcycle helmets in Australian Motorcycle News: “Anti-noise neckpad: –4.5dB (A 300 per cent reduction in noise level)”. That really is quiet
Convert cups to millilitres
READER Ray Husthwaite needed to convert the ingredients in an American recipe from cups of cream to millilitres, so he tried , which told him – spelled the American way – that “1 Cup = 236.58823625 Milliliters”.
Ray’s recipe required only a quarter of a cup of cream, so he put in “0.25” and hit “Convert to Milliliters”. The conversion came out at “59.147059062500006 Milliliters”. Ray wonders how he might manage this degree of precision – to roughly the nearest femtogram – in his kitchen.
Phantom conference paper
LAST year, we reported on calls to present papers at “scamferences” and how one such “conference” eagerly accepted a paper signed by Phil Clapham’s dog (18 August 2012). They keep coming.
Those behind the for Education, purportedly to be held this December in Singapore, are even more eager. They inform us that “the acceptance notification has been sent…today”, suggesting we check our email spam folder for the good news.
Alas, neither of our filing systems, paper or electronic, has any trace of any submission to this conference. The dog insists he sent nothing.
This looks like a new twist on scamference spam, targeting professors who are even more absent-minded than Feedback.
Is this the real thing?
THERE is a conference, organised for November in Hong Kong by the . It has a rather more convincing website than the alleged event mentioned above. It is at a hotel that appears to exist. We’re starting to be sceptical of every conference, though.
Edinburgh’s top jokes
A LIST of the , as voted for by critics and fans at the , the annual arts jamboree in Scotland’s capital, sparked controversy when only men were honoured. It took Feedback reader Guy Robinson to note that, less controversially, two of the winning jokes were science-based.
We particularly liked this from : “The universe implodes. No matter.”
Feedback, having experienced the Fringe, would not necessarily recommend to female physicists that they spend 10 days next year staying in an overpriced cupboard and drinking too much. But stardom is surely calling.
Up to no good
INNOVATION in marketing is ceaseless. Feedback has oft noted the usefully uncertain meaning of the qualifier “up to”. Now Gavin McEwan sends a photo of a poster in the window of TK Maxx (a purveyor of clothing), claiming: “Always up to 60 per cent less.”
Assuming that the reference point is the manufacturer’s recommended retail price, Gavin reads this as a firm promise that everything inside bears a price between 0.4 RRP and infinity, but not less.
Purely in the interests of exploring natural-language epistemology, he ventured inside and bought a pair of jeans reduced from £110 to £18 – as he says, “83.6 per cent less”.
Richard Lucas follows up with an advert for the Sony Xperia Z smartphone that proudly announces that it is “water resistant up to 1 metre for under 30 minutes”. We can think of no way of falsifying this claim.
Furry and intelligent
FINALLY, north-eastern England made the news over the summer “silly season” when a member of the UK House of Lords implied that its desolation made it suitable for fracking oil and gas. Tony Compton sends evidence from Hexham, Northumberland, that they have not only scenic spots, but also “some very intelligent furry animals”. This takes the form of a beautifully hand-lettered sign, photographed at Howick Hall in Northumberland, that reads: “Rabbits and Hares this gate must be kept shut.”