KNOWING about nasty genetic traits鈥攐r having your insurer know about
them鈥攎ay not be such a bad idea after all. At least, that鈥檚 what Ian
Taylor, the junior minister for science and technology, tried to tell a House of
Commons select committee when he was discussing how genetic information should
be monitored and regulated.
鈥淵ou may be able to bring your premium down if you stop smoking,鈥� he said.
鈥淥r if you know you have the trait for heart disease, you may go away and change
your behaviour.鈥�
Well, you may do exactly that. But is behaviour so easy to modify? We鈥檝e
known for years, for instance, that being male, over forty-five and overweight
increases the risk of heart disease鈥攇enes notwithstanding. You can鈥檛
change your age or your sex, but you can change your eating and drinking habits.
But how many succeed in doing so? It鈥檚 a question you might ask the next time
the TV cameras roam the benches of MPs in a broadcast from Parliament.
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A NEW ZEALANDER who grows tomatoes hydroponically has discovered a source of
cheap and effective support for his burgeoning summer crop, according to The
Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Grower. He uses discarded bras.
Peter Persson of Golden Bay in the South Island has put a lot of research
into finding uplifting support for his tomatoes. The quality stitching and
elastic materials of bra cups mean that the tomatoes are well held, and the soft
fabrics protect their skins from chapping in windy weather.
Persson has even undertaken a colour evaluation and says that three days in a
white bra followed by two days in a black bra ripens the crop perfectly. His
supplies of redundant bras come mainly from friends and family, but Persson says
that because it has been such a good season he prefers castoffs from larger
donors.
He declines to name the brand which has proved most effective. Such
information would be commercially sensitive, he says.
IN THE Department of Trade and Industry鈥檚 annual report, information on
鈥淪cience, Engineering and Technology鈥� is tucked away at the back of the
book鈥攃hapter 12 of a possible 13. (Only 鈥淢anaging and Developing DTI
Staff鈥� comes after it.)
There, the DTI boldly lists the 鈥渋mportant work鈥� carried out by the Office of
Science and Technology last year: it rustled up 拢1.3 billion for research,
finished the first phase of the Technology Foresight programme, published the
details of how it expects science money will be spent over the next few years
and published a paper wondering if that was the right way to spend it.
The discerning eye, however, will notice that all those things were done in
the first half of the year, before the OST was forced to move to the DTI. So,
what was going on in the second half of the year? Clearly, it wasn鈥檛 鈥渋mportant
飞辞谤办鈥�.
GIVEN the fragile state of the world鈥檚 fish stocks, a British fisherman must
have thought his ship had come in when he netted an 800-kilogram catch out of
Hythe Bay in the Dover Strait. Because the trawl net was too heavy to haul on
board, he towed it home, only then realising what he had actually landed.
According to the Marine Pollution Bulletin, the fisherman鈥檚 prize
catch was a magnetic parachute bomb鈥攁 relic from the Second World War.
When a bomb disposal unit arrived from the naval base at Portsmouth, it was the
unlucky skipper of the fishing boat who had to tow it back out to sea so that it
could be exploded safely.
LONDON Underground鈥檚 computers bear an uncanny resemblance to the trains the
company runs: they鈥檙e always going wrong. A friend of Feedback鈥檚, who lives in
Hallowell Road, in the northwestern outskirts of London (postcode HA6 1DZ),
recently applied for a refund of his ticket price following a particularly
outrageous series of delays on a tube journey. He received back two replies on
the same day, both with a voucher refunding the cost of his ticket.
One, addressed to Hallowell Road, HA6 1D7, stated: 鈥淚 am sorry for the delay
in replying. This resulted from a breakdown of our computer system which has now
been rectified. To accelerate our replies, we are currently granting all claims
regardless of the qualifying criteria . . .鈥�
It seems that the computer that churned out this form letter received a
telling-off from the Plain English Campaign, for the second letter stated: 鈥淚 am
sorry for the delay in replying. This resulted from a breakdown of our computer
system which has now been put right. To speed up our replies, we are currently
granting all claims whether or not they meet the qualifying criteria鈥︹��
A welcome linguistic improvement, undoubtedly. But unfortunately, despite the
computer breakdown being rectified (or put right), this second letter was
addressed to a nonexistent Naudwell Road. It only arrived at Hallowell Road
because this time the postcode was correct.
JUDGING by the correspondence we have received, many readers have followed
closely this column鈥檚 attempts to document the phenomenon of nominative
determinism鈥攖he tendency of authors to gravitate towards areas of research
that fit their surname. Our first example of the genre, new readers might like
to know, was as far back as 5 November 1994, when we noted that a paper on
incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol 49, p 173) had been
written by J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon. Since then we have returned to the theme
many times, most recently on 23 March.
Now Joop van Montfoort of Porlock, Somerset, points out that nominative
determinism excited the interest of no less an authority than Carl Jung. In his
book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung discusses a
paper by Wilhelm Stekel on the subject: 鈥淲e find ourselves in something of a
quandary when it comes to making up our minds about the phenomenon which Stekel
calls the `compulsion of the name鈥�,鈥� Jung writes. 鈥淲hat he means by this is the
sometimes quite gross coincidence between a man鈥檚 name and his peculiarities or
profession. For instance . . . Herr Feist (Mr Stout) is the food minister, Herr
Rosst盲uscher (Mr Horsetrader) is a lawyer, Herr Kalberer (Mr Calver) is an
obstetrician . . . Are these the whimsicalities of chance, or the suggestive
effects of the name, as Stekel seems to suggest, or are they `meaningful
肠辞颈苍肠颈诲别苍肠别蝉鈥�?鈥�
Unfortunately, Jung didn鈥檛 answer his own question, so we have to decide for
ourselves. Meanwhile, let us not forget, as Jung himself points out, that 鈥淗err
Freud (Joy) champions the pleasure principle, Herr Adler (Eagle) the will to
power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth . . .鈥�