ODDLY ENOUGH, quite a number of readers persist in reading emotion into
factual signs—as in “this door is alarmed” (22 September). Following the
medical tradition that two cases a syndrome make, and that everyone feels much
better when you repeat their symptoms back to them in cod-Greek, we bring you
“semiopathy”. You can translate this as “sign-sensitivity” or “sign-suffering”,
depending on whether you like the experience.
Continuing in the vein of emotional architecture, Colin McLeod reports from
Dundee that church towers occasionally bear the warning “Caution—the bells
are upset”. Apparently a trained campanologist could explain why they left the
bells finely balanced, “set up” on their pivots. The risk is real: a visitor
casually tugging on a rope could not only be deafened, but also, if they
neglected to let go, hoisted smartly heavenward. But we agree with McLeod that
“the image of a belfry full of tearful and bad-tempered bells is particularly
Բ”.
THE BBC has pioneered digital radio as a way of delivering better sound
quality over the airwaves. The British government has now rewarded the
corporation with permission to spend public money on five new digital radio
services. But there are no new frequencies. Spoilsport engineers warn that more
services and no new frequencies mean fewer bits per programme, so sound quality
will be compromised.
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But the BBC’s spin doctors are thinking about other things. “October and
November have ones and zeros in their dates, so we’ve called them digimonths,”
says the head of internal communication in a note to staff. “Look out for
invites to events, especially on digidays.” We have yet to hear what exciting
events took place on 01.10.01.
TELECOMS COMPANY BT is going green, claiming it will save 730 tonnes of paper
a year. How? By not listing every call on the bills sent to 21 million
subscribers. “This is just one of the ways we are listening and responding to
our customers,” says Angus Porter, managing director of BT’s consumer division.
“We look forward to hearing what people think.”
It is now 10 years since BT did something really green by putting all
Britain’s phone numbers on a single CD-ROM, to save the paper needed to print
153 different paper phone directories. But the Phone Disc cost over £2000,
and you needed a new one every year. So very few people bought it. The price
went down to £400, and then it sank without trace.
Feedback recently found the Phone Disc mentioned in the small print at the
back of a paper phone directory. We called the inquiry number, and extracted the
information that you can buy the Phone Disc CD-ROM by mail order for around
£40. But if BT really wants to be green, why not promote Phone Disc
properly? Damian Peachey of BT’s consumer division says, “People still expect a
phone book to drop on their doormat.”
Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that BT charges 40p each
time you phone directory enquiries to get a number that is not in the local
paper directory? “There is an element of that,” admits Peachey.
A LITTLE TALE of how stories change in the retelling. Back on 10 June last
year, New Scientist reported Marc Levoy’s finding that the eyes of
Michelangelo’s statue of David diverge
(p 9).
We called this a “squint”—on
the authority of Moorfields Eye Hospital, and to avoid the off-putting
alternative term “exotropia”. The effect “would be a typical Michelangelo
trick,” Levoy told us. We sharpened that up to “It’s a typical Michelangelo
trick,” and left the distinction to qualified grammarians.
News agency Reuters picked the story up, and presumably sharpened it a little
more. By the time it appeared in The Guardian newspaper, “The trick of
perspective—which has taken 500 years to rumble” had become “a typical
stroke of Michelangelo genius . . . Levoy suspects it went unnoticed for so long
because David’s more obvious attribute—his genitalia—blinded
successive generations to the ‘flaw’.”
“Needless to say,” Levoy says, “I never said any such thing [about David’s
genitalia].” That, we think, is the price of your story reaching an audience
beyond the safe precision of the specialist journals. Be thankful it’s not been
Hollywoodised.
SOFTWARE companies’ lawyers are notorious for sneaking nasty things into the
“boilerplate” text of the licences that allow you to use their products. After
all, who actually reads them before clicking “accept”?
At least one reader of the weekly trade paper Infoworld did, when he
bought a copy of Microsoft FrontPage 2002. Under Section 1, Grant of License,
they found buried in a paragraph on “restrictions” the warning: “You may not use
the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC,
Expedia, or their products or services, infringe any intellectual property or
other rights of these parties, violate any state, federal or international law,
or promote racism, hatred or pornography.”
This clause apparently isn’t present in all versions of the license, but it
still leaves a curious Feedback wondering what the sequence of warnings says
about Microsoft’s priorities. Is it more worried about being disparaged than
about violations of state or federal laws or the assorted other evils the
licence tries to ban?
ON A BOTTLE of Silicea Herbal Remedy: ‘If seal is broken or missing, do not
use.’ Trouble is, it’s written on the seal
THIS IS quite possibly the ultimate product warning: “This device is capable
of killing you without warning”. And it’s true of Canada-based company Jetsam
Tech’s “KISS rebreather”, a variety of scuba-diving gear that absorbs carbon
dioxide from exhaled air. The reason, George Sassoon reports from the Isle of
Mull, is that there is no fast-acting, reliable sensor for CO2 levels,
so if you don’t want to die you have to change the rebreather well before it
runs out of oomph.
In response, Feedback is issuing an untypically serious appeal. Can our
resourceful readers come up with a technical fix that will allow Jetsam Tech to
put a somewhat less brutal warning on future models?