PEOPLE who squirt large dollops of tomato ketchup over their fry-ups could be
showing sound good sense. A study at the University of North Carolina has
revealed that the pigment that gives tomatoes their red colour, lycopene, can
reduce the risk of heart attack.
The news comes hard on the heels of an earlier study at Harvard Medical
School, which found that eating more than two tomato products a week, as opposed
to none, reduced the risk of prostate cancer by up to 34 per cent.
Tomato ketchup, which has a high concentration of lycopene, is the best
source, along with tomato soup, tomato pur茅e and pizzas with a tomato
topping. Rejoice, fast food eaters everywhere.
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TWO BRITISH government departments鈥攖he Department for Culture, Media
and Sport, and the Department of Trade and Industry鈥攈ave jointly published
a consultation document, 鈥淥pening up the Information Superhighway鈥�.
To explain the importance of this new world of instant electronic
communication, the two ministries held a briefing. Feedback only just got there
on time鈥攂ecause the invite had been sent out only the day before in an
old-fashioned brown paper envelope.
鈥淵ou were lucky,鈥� said the BBC鈥檚 correspondent, who had heard about the
briefing on the grapevine. 鈥淢ine hasn鈥檛 arrived yet.鈥�
NEVER MIND quantum computers. The esoteric workings of quantum physics are
already being brought to bear on domestic appliances.
According to Innovations, the mail-order catalogue of futuristic
gizmos, a company called Quantum Life has harnessed what it calls 鈥渜uantum
resource technology鈥� to make your home cleaner and more comfortable.
How does it do it? The problem is that electrical appliances and equipment
apparently suffer from an 鈥渦nderlying disorderliness鈥� caused by the 鈥渞andom
motion of electrons鈥�. Quantum Life鈥檚 HomeFree unit solves the problem by
鈥渘eutralising disorderly electrons, creating `cleaner鈥� electricity鈥�.
The result? 鈥淎 more harmonious feeling in the home, more efficiency in the
performance of appliances and a calming effect on children and pets.鈥�
Who would have thought it?
贬翱奥鈥橲 this for a desperate attempt to make a rather tedious piece of science
sound interesting? A couple of weeks ago, an article about radioactive decay on
the US Department of Energy鈥檚 press site was introduced with the headline:
鈥淎 Proton Shaped Like Elvis?鈥�
ONE OF the naughtiest spoof news reports currently circulating on the
Internet concerns the notoriously difficult music of German composer Arnold
Schoenberg and his pupil Anton Webern.
Supposedly emanating from the Associated Press, the report claims that:
鈥淩ecent admissions by an ex-Nazi official living in Argentina have confirmed
what some musicologists have suspected for years: that early 20th-century German
composer Anton Webern and his colleagues devised the so-called `serial鈥�
technique of music to encrypt messages to Nazi spies living in the US and
叠谤颈迟补颈苍.鈥�
According to the report, Webern used music to convey Werner Heisenberg鈥檚
discoveries to 鈥淕erman spy鈥� Klaus Fuchs, who was working on the Manhattan atom
bomb project in New Mexico.
鈥淧hysicist Edward Teller, who kept a 9-foot Steinway piano in his apartment
at the Los Alamos laboratory, was the unwit-ting deliverer of Heisenberg鈥檚 data
to Fuchs, who eagerly attended parties thrown by Teller, an enthusiastic booster
of Webern鈥檚 music,鈥� the report claims.
鈥淎rnold Schoenberg, the older musician who first devised the serial technique
at the request of the Weimar government of Germany, composed in America to
deliver bomb data stolen by Fuchs back to the Nazis, who worked feverishly to
design their own atomic weapons.鈥�
One big giveaway in this nonsense, which continues for several pages, is the
detail about Fuchs. Far from being a Nazi spy, Fuchs was a communist sympathiser
who passed British and American atomic secrets to Hitler鈥檚 mortal enemy, the
Soviet Union.
What鈥檚 more, it hardly needs to be said that the report is grossly defamatory
to the memories of the composers mentioned. Those who thought that they had
finally found out what 12-tone music was all about will be most
disappointed.
WANT to find the quickest way to get around Britain by train? Railtrack鈥檚
website (http://www.railtrack.co.uk/travel/) claims to be able provide
the answer. But while the service is usually very helpful, it occasionally
suggests bizarre wild goose chases in response to simple queries.
For example, Andrew Knight鈥檚 request for the timetable information for the
normally simple three-hour journey from Bristol to Manchester on a Sunday
evening yielded a route with five changes and a total journey time of 10 hours
56 minutes.
Similarly, Bernd Eggen was surprised to find that Railtrack鈥檚 suggestion for
the journey between the Sussex towns of Lewes and nearby Buxted involved four
changes, one of them with a wait for the next train of seven hours and one
minute.
The Internet service does, however, carry a disclaimer: 鈥淭here may be other
services between these stations.鈥� Are they referring to buses? Or just
walking?
FINALLY, here鈥檚 an excerpt from the latest edition of Digital鈥檚
Inform magazine:
鈥淎 petabyte data bank could store printed data which would, if piled
vertically, reach 3250 kilometres high, the height of a fairly tall mountain in
the Swiss Alps.鈥�
Fairly tall indeed.