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Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Bigger and bigger beasts

COPE鈥橲 rule, named for 19th-century American palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope, came from his observation that animals in many groups tended to grow larger over time. Thus horses evolved from tiny Eohippus into deer-sized animals before reaching full size.

Now evolutionary biologist and blogger Craig McClain reports its vindication in a radically independent data set. At he observes that the 1954 Godzilla, in the , was 50 metres high. This year鈥檚 is 150 metres tall.

Such empirical observations are always tastier when seasoned with a proposed mechanism, and McClain has one: the monsters are keeping up with the skyscrapers. 鈥淔or Godzilla to continue to plough through buildings in major metropolises,鈥� he writes, 鈥渁 more formidable size is needed.鈥�

The sign that Victor Lovedale sends says: 鈥淲ARNING Stereotypical lookalikes operate in this area鈥�. Feedback fears this may be Art, and disqualified from our series of signs

Great towering measurements

FOR those following Feedback鈥檚 fascination with units, McClain, above, measures Godzilla heights in Empire State Buildings: in SI units, 381 metres. The first Godzilla was 0.13 ESB, the latest is nearly 0.40 ESB. We await figures on the evolution of the building鈥檚 most famous habitu茅, King Kong.

Help number number helpers

LET us count the ways in which writers have groped for illustrative expressions to hold readers鈥� hands on the journey to grasping quantities: height in Empire State Buildings as above, mass in blue whales鈥� Or maybe not, for now we need a metaphorical representation of the number of such units. That would be a metametaphor.

Now they know how many holes鈥�

AMONG the crop of units to which readers have alerted us is the distinctly imperial measure of volume, the Albert Hall. The BBC that a repository would hold 鈥渆nough radioactive waste to fill six Albert Halls鈥�, referring to the London venue.

Richard Bland asks whether the standard reference Hall 鈥渋s the overall volume of the building, or just of the auditorium鈥�. We presume this is the traditional, internal Albert Hall due to Lennon, J: 鈥淚 read the news today, oh boy / 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire鈥� Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.鈥� We further suspect that John Lennon borrowed this from the Surveyor of Roads for the County Borough of Blackburn.

Drink up your infrastructure

ECONOMICS is under-represented in imaginative unit space, and probably more sorely in need than other fields. We therefore welcome Howard Stagg鈥檚 conversion of astounding infrastructure costs into cappuccinos per citizen per month (see 鈥�Letters鈥�). We do foresee some issues with international purchasing parity power, and plan to consult the fondly remembered .

Powerful you have become

RETURNING to the field of non-traditional mythological beings, we move on from Godzilla to present a novel unit of power, the Yoda. Claire McComas alerts us to a complete derivation of this unit as 19.2 kW at . Feedback isn鈥檛 entirely sure about the assumptions behind the mass of the X-wing fighter levitated by the short gnomic hero, but hey.

Human nature intervenes

SOMEONE has couriered a 600-page tome to almost everyone in the New Scientist office. The book鈥檚 introduction makes clear that the author is inspired in part by rejection letters from this office. The conclusion, as far as we can fathom it, is that the answer to problems such as the existence of pain and evil is鈥� 鈥渋nnocence鈥�. It is larded with quotes from Laurens van der Post, late mentor to the heir to the British throne, and from Bono, a singer. The introduction also reminds us, however, that one of the author鈥檚 followers won a million Australian dollars in a libel case from journalists who commented on the ideas that led to the book in hand.

No libel lawsuit should prevent us commenting. We should have a deep think about the risks and benefits of proceeding. But now we feel sleepy鈥�

The wit of nations

THE thud of another book on the Feedback desk wakes us up. This is entitled Global Inequality as a Consequence of Human Diversity. It argues, in a nutshell, that different populations of humans inherently have different IQ scores and thus inequality is biological destiny.

We are saved from delving too far into the origins and funding of the 鈥溾��, which published it, by finding probably the funniest graph of the week.

The plot shows entrants to tertiary education against national IQ scores. We haven鈥檛 seen a better demonstration of the adage 鈥渃orrelation does not show causation鈥� for a while. A more developed educational system might, just, improve performance on IQ tests, yes?

Help counting the metaphors

FINALLY, what should the unit for the tally of unit allusions be? Inspired by the season鈥檚 tsunami of books, we propose extending the use of a now ancient-seeming unit of data.

That unit is the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Above, it takes us 240 words to describe three units. Competitor Wikipedia , in an article entitled 鈥渟ize comparison鈥�, that it contains many times more words than the 44 million found in the 2013 Britannica. We therefore estimate that one unusual unit is represented by 2 microBritannica.