Keeping up the alchemist tradition
ALCHEMY lives! True, its heirs are deeply split. Some moved on to the actual chemistry that grew out of the workshop technologies alchemists developed. Others chose to build on the business model, and can now be found marketing tachyon-enhanced quantum pentawater.
Phil and Jane Hodgson wonder what goes on behind a door on the first floor of the new wing at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Aylesbury, UK. It is labelled “Regeneration Kitchen”
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Paul Moran of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh, UK, prefers to stick with the original concept, whatever the cost. On 20 October he was sentenced to three months in jail for starting a fire in his apartment. TheBelfast Telegraph : “Rather bizarrely you were attempting to make gold from human faeces and waste products. It was an interesting experiment to fulfil the alchemist’s dream, but wasn’t going to succeed.”
Feedback, while regretting the inconvenience to Moran’s neighbours, applauds his dedication to tradition. If only, though, he had paid more attention to traditions further afield, such as the folk wisdom of the English county of Yorkshire, which holds that “where there’s muck, there’s brass”.
Chip off the old Zeppelin block
“I KNOW you had sworn off nominative determinism…” begins Sarah Turnbull, before directing us to the following sentence on the website of the Airship Association at :
“The Airship Association announces the appointment of Australian Ms Anna von Zeppelin as Press Officer of the association.”
“Surely it can’t be a coincidence,” says Sarah. “She must be descended from the inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. But if she was, you would think they’d mention it in the press release.”
They don’t – but a quick search confirms that Sarah’s suspicion is right. Anna is Count von Zeppelin’s great-granddaughter.
Payment in billions made easier
BANK of America has redesigned its monthly credit card billing statements, John Hinkey informs us. One change is an increase in the maximum number of digits in the sum to be paid. “Previously they had five whole digits plus two after the decimal, allowing up to $99,999.99 as a payment,” says John. “But now they have 11 places before the decimal. Wow! What customers have that kind of credit limit and can conceivably write a check for $99,999,999,999.99?”
But then another possibility occurs. “Is Bank of America just being prepared for future inflation here in the US?” John wonders.
HOW was this column named? Tom Sutton writes: “I have always wondered what ‘feed’ ‘back’ derives from, especially in its literal form?”
As we understand it, it dates from the time when much popular music was made on guitars wired to amplifiers that used valves (or, transatlantically, “tubes”), which glowed a reassuring red as they warmed up and got ready to rock and roll. If the instrument and its electrical pickup were held in front of the loudspeakers, the signal would feed back into the guitar and thus into the amplifier once again, producing an effect exploited creatively by performers such as James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (1942-1970).
The effect can still be heard, less pleasingly, when the roving microphone at a conference passes in front of the loudspeakers; it can probably be emulated digitally within otherwise feedback-free audio recording software… and we suddenly feel very old.
Of course, it also meant readers feeding back views on stories from New Scientist and around the world.
Since those salad days the term “feedback” has been purloined by that newfangled World Wide Web thing to mean a facility for people to make comments on a website. That’s why we launched a competition to rename the column a few years ago – but we were entirely unable to choose from the hundreds of possibilities it threw up.
UNUSUAL unit of the week: Nathaniel Hellerstein reports that synthetic diamond maker describes its work as follows on its website. “When synthetic diamond is created using high pressure, high temperature synthesis, over 55,000 atmospheres of pressure are delivered – equivalent to stacking approximately 5000 saloon cars on a jar of peanut butter.”
EARLIER this month, the Australian airline Qantas decided to ground all flights due to industrial action. Alan Stevenson of Melbourne, Australia, says that Sky News commented: “Qantas planes currently in the air will complete their flights before grounding.” For the passengers, this must have come as quite a relief.
FINALLY, a US colleague reports that on the side of the Waste Management company truck collecting his rubbish is the boast: “Our landfills provide over 17,000 acres of wildlife habitat.”
“Yes, but what kind of wildlife?” was our colleague’s doubtful response. After all, rats and gulls aren’t exactly endangered species.