WILL THIS magazine soon be featuring lurid centre spreads of
unclothed persons? The question is prompted by Duncan Jennings鈥檚 recent
experience in a newsagent.
鈥淒o you have a copy of New 杏吧原创, please?鈥� he asked.
鈥淗ang on a minute,鈥� the shopkeeper replied, rummaging in a box under the
counter. 鈥淣o, sorry, mate, we don鈥檛 seem to have that one. I can do you a copy
of Big Ones, though.鈥�
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鈥淲hat? I don鈥檛 want that, I want New 杏吧原创,鈥� said Jennings.
鈥淥h, right,鈥� said the shopkeeper. 鈥淪orry. I thought you said Nude
厂肠颈别苍迟颈蝉迟.鈥�
Feedback鈥檚 mind boggles at the prospect.
ROCK GROUPS and pop stars are always looking for a new stage
gimmick. The Who were famous for smashing their instruments. When Arthur Brown
sang Fire, he was lowered onto the stage by a crane with flames leaping
from a burning hat. Jimi Hendrix would sometimes pour lighter fluid on his
guitar and set light to it. U2 used a cellphone to call the Pope live from the
stage.
New ideas are running dry. But any performer looking for a new stunt could
try reading Talks with Bandsmen, by Algernon Rose. The book was first
published in 1895 and dealt with brass bands, their instruments and the people
who played them. It was recently republished, and on page 126 you can find out
how 19th-century bandsmen spent years arguing over what controls the tone of a
brass instrument.
To prove that such instruments need not necessarily be made of brass, Besson
and Co made a cornet out of paper and bugles out of gutta-percha and plaster.
Some Italians made them from glass. Others tried earthenware and marble. Then
the Belgians got in on the act and, true to the country鈥檚 culinary traditions,
Messrs Mahillon of Brussels made instruments for a whole band from cheese. These
apparently played just like their brass equivalents.
Feedback looks forward to the time when Oasis, by way of a grand finale, stop
playing and eat all their instruments on stage.
WHAT IS the difference between astronomy and astrophysics? Many a
research grant hangs on the answer, so perhaps funding bodies should consult
John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Australia. 鈥淲hen I am asked
what I do and I answer `I am an astronomer鈥�,鈥� he says, 鈥減eople say `How
interesting鈥� and ask me questions about astronomy. It seems to interest
everyone. But if I say `I am an astrophysicist,鈥� people say `How interesting鈥�
and change the subject. That鈥檚 the difference.鈥�
A RECENT issue of the British Medical Journal tells us
that archaeologists and pathologists have discovered what is believed to be the
earliest identified case of aspergillosis, a fungal infection of the lung, in a
mummy dating from 1450 BC. The report includes a photomicrograph, and also a
note from the editor that submissions of this kind of article should include the
signed consent to publication from the patient concerned.
Feedback assumes as a matter of course that the authors complied with the
editor鈥檚 request, but is at a loss to know how they did it. Perhaps they
consulted the local council in the West Country village where Alan Watson used
to live. He tells us that there was a plan to widen the local main road, which
would involve removing a strip from the local churchyard. The council put a
notice in the newspaper stating that according to the law, they could not do
this without obtaining 鈥渢he written consent of the present occupants of the
驳谤补惫别蝉鈥�.
AH, THOSE good old days of space exploration, when there was money
to splash around on anything the developers fancied, and rockets had not yet got
into the habit of blowing up in mid-air鈥�
NASA, in a fit of nostalgia for the glorious past, has taken to naming new
projects after the pioneers of yesteryear. The latest example is 鈥淐lipper
Graham鈥�, the former DC-XA experimental rocket, a single-stage rocket designed to
reach orbit, then land vertically when it returns to Earth.
The name honours the recently deceased Lt General Daniel O. Graham who, in
the words of NASA鈥檚 administrator Dan Goldin, 鈥渃hampioned the promise of fully
reusable single-stage-to-orbit vehicles at a time when the majority of the space
community were sceptics. We鈥檙e doing this in commemoration of his vision in
opening the space frontier.鈥�
What NASA doesn鈥檛 mention is another programme that Graham championed, in the
early 1980s. The 鈥淗igh Frontier鈥� proposal suggested spending billions on an
orbiting antimissile defence system. It was the conceptual ancestor of the
ill-fated Star Wars programme, which really did spend billions鈥攐n paper
studies of an orbiting antimissile defence system.
BACK IN the Sixties, so we are told, people who took LSD when they
went to love-ins and the like sometimes experienced 鈥渇lashbacks鈥� of the drug鈥檚
effects weeks, months or even years later. Something of the kind seems to be
occurring at the offices of the highly-reputable magazine Nature.
Journalists who follow the magazine were puzzled by the titles of the
articles flagged up in the press release for a recent issue. The first, a
discussion of research into osteoporosis, was called 鈥淎 Momentary Lapse Of
Osteocalcin鈥�. Next came 鈥淪queeze On, You Crazy Diamond鈥�, about carbon
allotropes. Then there was 鈥淎 Quasarful Of Secrets鈥�, followed by 鈥淲elcome To The
Machine鈥�, 鈥淯ncomfortably Hahn鈥� and 鈥淪ee Sepia Play鈥�.
By now, even the most braindead Sixties person was beginning to cotton on.
The cover title, 鈥淭he Division Bell鈥�, finally clinched it. All the articles in
the magazine had been given titles echoing songs or albums by that most
psychedelic of rock bands, Pink Floyd.
We don鈥檛 know what Nature鈥檚 press officer has been taking recently,
but whatever it is, can we have some?
NEVER AGAIN, we said on 22 June. The subject of nominative determinism, we
announced, was definitely closed. We would not publish any more examples of the
phenomenon.
But then we noticed that the director of drugs testing at the Atlanta
Olympics was called Barry Sample.