Cheese brains
A PARTY of French scientists, perhaps incredulous that anyone could turn their nose up at a ripe Camembert, have published a .
In a poll of , and at least half said the intolerance ran in the family. This suggests a genetic mutation has driven a wedge between them and the cheeseboard (which in France boasts almost than 1600 varieties, the press release notes).
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The researchers placed 15 halloumi-haters and an equal number of controls inside an MRI scanner, so any feelings of disgust could be mapped in the brain. Predictably, the part of the brain involved in hunger failed to light up when the cheese-haters could see and smell various cheeses, but surprisingly the reward centre did light up.
The scientists suggest this indicates the reward centre has complementary neurons to register aversion. Feedback wonders if these unpatriotic citizens are just denying their true feelings on fromage.
“We’re into extra time. People in the sports industry are “most likely to want their social media accounts to remain active when they die”“
Conserve politics
FROM cheese to crackers: Feedback has noted that the debate over Brexit has become oddly centred on food, from calls for innovation in jams to arguments over the supply of Marmite.
For the sake of completeness, we are compelled to note that the UK environment secretary Andrea Leadsom, appearing at a trade show in Paris, highlighted the selling of “jam and biscuits” as the cornerstone of her department’s Brexit preparations, with plans also to export tea to Japan.
Readers will recall that Leadsom famously had to ask if climate change was real when she started her previous role as energy minister (16 July). Feedback wonders if her grasp of geography is any better.
Loose leafs
RESEARCH carried out for a law firm has investigated people’s attitudes to their digital afterlife, asking them what legacy they had planned for their social media accounts.
The survey for Blacks Solicitors found that those working in scientific disciplines were most likely to want a goodbye message sent out on social media after their death.
What would those requiems say, Feedback wonders. Your suggestions please for final status updates from the great and the good.
Final update
DINING in a restaurant, Chris Shorrock noticed that the table salt was labelled as “Atlantic” in origin. Closer inspection of the label, however, showed that it had been imported by a Parisian company from South Africa where it was packed, which in turn imported the salt from India, its point of extraction. “There was no information on how the Indians produced the Atlantic salt,” says Chris.
Appropriately, the company responsible is Les Menus Du Monde. Chris is especially puzzled as he was near Perpignan on the French Mediterranean coast at the time, “where salt is still produced in the nearby salt pans”.
Salt seller
AN ANSWER of sorts may lie in an email from John Corne, who sends a photo of some “Himalayan Pink Sea Salt” he discovered on sale in Newbury, UK.
“I realise that global warming is causing sea levels to rise,” says John, “but last time I checked, the Himalayas looked quite safe from the Indian Ocean.”
Marine mountain
RECENTLY our colleagues broke the news that humans may have a maximum lifespan of 115 years, with only exceptional individuals keeping the meter running any longer (8 October, p 10).
Martyn Ellis finds Halifax Bank in a more optimistic mood. Their online form for entering personal details allows you to set a birth year of 1866. Nice to know that someone is catering to our sesquicentennials.
Long term yields
TO THE satin-draped registry of celebrity deaths in 2016, we can now add the doomed ExoMars Schiaparelli lander, which made a sizeable dent in the European Space Agency’s budget, then a much larger one in the surface of the Red Planet. The probe is now commemorated in what may be the saddest disambiguation page on Wikipedia, where readers searching for “Schiaparelli crater” will find a note asking if they want to know about the ancient Martian geological feature, or the .
Strike two
HAVE you ever bought a pair of socks, only to be frustrated when one develops a hole or goes missing? Boy, do we have the start-up for you. SOLOSOCKS, based in Denmark, promises a life of foible-free footwear with a line of socks that are “all different but designed to match”.
In the belief anyone with a hole in one sock will be compelled to throw away its sibling, the firm markets itself as “a sustainable solution to sock waste”.
Pairing off
SOLOSOCKS may be some kind of Danish Dadaist satire on consumerist society, yet there’s no shortage of colourful abstract patterned single socks on offer through their website.
Naturally, these are only sold in packs containing an odd number of socks. But Feedback wonders, why not simply buy several pairs of plain black socks and throw one away?