Basic science
YOU may have heard about the ongoing issue of ocean acidification (perhaps even from our erstwhile colleagues). But UKIP MEP Roger Helmer isn鈥檛 having any of this 鈥渋gnorance鈥.
The politician set the world to rights on Twitter, declaring that the oceans 鈥渃annot be MORE acidic, 鈥. As the East Midlands representative sees things, the oceans are in fact alkaline, and thus getting less alkaline rather than more acidic.
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Helmer stuck to his alternative view, despite gentle insistence from Bob Ward at the Grantham Institute on Climate Change that 鈥渢he oceans really are getting more acidic鈥.
鈥淕arry Sturley spies a sign at Macclesfield Cemetery: 鈥淕arden of Remembrance temporally closed for refurbishment.鈥 But it remains open for spiritual matters, one presumes鈥
Neutral party
PERHAPS what is needed to save the world鈥檚 oceans is some alkaline water to buffer the change.
Step forward 鈥渂lk. premium alkaline water鈥, a soot-coloured thirst quencher that promises trace fulvic minerals (that鈥檚 dirt to you and me) and the thrilling gamble of 鈥減H 8.0+鈥. At 拢4.40 a litre though, it鈥檚 going to be quite a costly .
Clean sweep
ALSO finding herself in a pickle is Natasha Corrett, author of the bestselling Honestly 91色情片y cookbook that champions the benefits of an 鈥渁lkaline diet鈥. This involves eating foods to calibrate the pH of your body, a goal that is both meaningless and impossible.
Corrett previously told the Daily Mail ; cancer creates disease in the body through acidity鈥, but backpedalled when the incredulous journalist asked if this meant her alkaline diet could prevent cancer (it can鈥檛).
Unfortunately, reality has caught up with the pH practitioners. The inspiration behind this fad, Robert O. Young, currently faces jail time for practising medicine without a licence, after he tried to treat a young woman with breast cancer using intravenously injected solutions of sodium bicarbonate, or .
In a perfect world, that would be enough to spell the end of the alkaline food fruitloopery. Yet having witnessed the rise and fall of many esoteric and sometimes dangerous food fads, from coffee enemas to 鈥渧ibrational ingredients鈥, Feedback knows it鈥檚 only a matter of time before the glossy food gurus find some new nonsense to serve up.
Known unknowns
THE post-truth era entrenched itself last week, as the White House press secretary Sean Spicer used his first briefing to excoriate the media for accurately reporting the middling crowd numbers at Donald Trump鈥檚 inauguration ceremony, and issued a number of unverified claims that painted a much rosier picture of the event.
An aide later appeared on NBC News to explain that Spicer鈥檚 pronouncements were not falsehoods, but 鈥alternative facts鈥.
Trump even requested the National Park Service to provide photographic evidence that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama鈥檚, but this alternative fact proved difficult to, er, prove.
Department of metaphysics
READERS may recall that George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove also questioned the existence of facts, admonishing journalist Ron Suskind for being party to what he called the 鈥渞eality-based community鈥 who 鈥渂elieve that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality鈥.
Rove felt this was 鈥渘ot the way the world really works anymore. We鈥檙e an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.鈥
The question remains whether we鈥檒l be forced to live in President Trump鈥檚 reality, or he in ours.
Frisky business
FROM alternative facts to alternative measurements: writing on the website of conservative think tank The Heartland Institute, Isaac Orr announces that oil pipelines are 鈥渟afer than safe sex鈥.
For those who don鈥檛 see the connection (other than the contents of both might be described as crude), Orr expands on his hypothesis. Despite the occasional oil spill, 99.999 per cent of piped oil reaches its destination, whereas the effectiveness of condoms is 98 per cent. Feedback thinks that in both cases though, it only takes a tiny leak to spell disaster.
Zeno鈥檚 breakfast
SHEILA BURCH discovers that Sainsbury鈥檚 organic instant porridge sachets advise customers that 鈥渙f the ingredients that are organic, 99% are organic鈥.
Which would mean that 99 per cent of the remainder was organic. And 99 per cent of that鈥 Feedback wonders if the instant porridge contains any organic content at all?
Cupboard critters
MORE missing socks (14 January). John Ripley says that the mystery of where they go was solved back in the 1980s, when he correlated his sock drawer with his wardrobe and noticed an inverse relationship. He concludes that 鈥渟ocks are the larval form of the coat hanger鈥.
A big shot
FINALLY, Chris Smith notes that Westminster Abbey has appointed the Reverend Anthony Ball in a new senior role, making him Canon Ball. 鈥淲e just have to hope that he doesn鈥檛 get fired,鈥 says .