Far sighted
THOSE helpful spooks at the CIA have put more than 12 million declassified documents online for the first time, allowing amateur sleuths and conspiracy theorists to sift through a treasure trove relating to everything from tunnels dug under the Berlin Wall to second-hand reports of Soviet UFO sightings.
One report in particular caught our eye, an account of “an experimental probe of the planet Jupiter”. In 1973, psychics Harold Sherman and Ingo Swann took a mental jaunt to the gas giant, narrowly beating the Pioneer 10 spacecraft that was already en route.
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The astral-nauts described the (non-existent) surface of Jupiter in detail, including fiery vents, sand dunes, mountains, volcanic peaks and crystal-strewn valleys.
Swann also predicted that there were several very dark planets between Mars and Jupiter, with life forms “lesser or equivalent to ours”. Perhaps he meant ?
“”You can take our official twitter, but you’ll never take our free time!” US National Park Service employees launch an alternate account following Trump’s gag order on the department”
Big if true
MEANWHILE, a cover page from 1984 reports that some psychics, when pricked with acupuncture needles, could “magnify the size of cells to the size of cherries”, though thankfully only in the mind’s eye. Doing so allowed the psychics to “watch the material exchange” in and out of the cell. Thrillingly, there was a belief that all humans could perform this magnification feat, which would have saved the world’s health services a fair bit of money on microscopes and biopsies, and would have made .
Science silenced?
PRESIDENT Trump is issuing memoranda and signing executive orders at such a pace that we suspect making comment on his activities in a weekly magazine will be about as successful as playing snooker on a waterbed. But it behoves us to discuss Trump’s attempts to gag employees at federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department for Agriculture, none of whom are now permitted to discuss scientific matters openly with the public.
A few National Park Service employees and some others have rebuked the ban, angrily tweeting facts about climate change through alternative accounts. So to recap on the state of the States in 2017: you can have alternative facts from official sources, or official facts from alternative sources. Clear?
Life cycle
PREVIOUSLY John Ripley hypothesised that the missing socks of the universe could be accounted for by their metamorphosis into coat hangers, which seem to multiply unchecked in our wardrobes (4 February).
“I’m afraid you are wrong,” writes Alan Dix, “as science fiction writer Avram Davidson declared in 1958 that it is paper clips that transmute into coat hangers, which then transmute into bicycles.”
This seems like a profitable form of husbandry, thinks Feedback, especially as in our experience, bicycles left unsecured in the street are liable to vanish, and return in due time as large mattresses.
Engineering your luck
MEANWHILE, Dave Hulme has a clever way to avoid incurring the wrath of your roadside assistance company if you find yourself drifting to the wrong shoulder of the bell curve of breakdown frequency (21 January). “Simply join several motoring organisations and rotate through them for breakdown assistance.”
Dave thinks that the cost of multiple memberships would certainly be offset by the low price of a reliably unreliable car.
Taken for a spin
FROM lemons to hot rods: Feedback’s attention is drawn to a study from Stephen Brown at New York University and his colleagues, who find that “hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk. Conversely, managers who own practical but unexciting cars take on less investment risk.” But critically, those with a taste for white-knuckle rides – both on the trading floor and off – did not deliver better returns for the increased risk.
So if you’re in the market for a trader, best stick with someone who likes life in the slow lane.
Porcelain miniature
TEARFUND is a charity that allows patrons to twin their toilet with a distant latrine, providing sanitation to some of the world’s poorest people. Andy Bebington reports that he was given a certificate to hang in his commode, which cites the location of the toilet’s twin in degrees south and east to eight decimal places.
“I calculate that this locates the loo with a precision of 0.4 mm square,” says Andy. “No one tells me how the Burundians are supposed to use such a teeny toilet.” Well, it is the smallest room in the house.
Gesundheit
FINALLY, we cannot resist printing Howard Vernon’s letter, in which he writes, “I wonder if you have ever heard of names that sound like the occupation of the person – what I call onomatopoeian nominative determinism?” He suggests an allergist that he chanced across, called Dr A. Chiu.