AS EUROPE lies in the grip of winter, spare a thought for 脰tzi, the 鈥渋ce man鈥�
found in a glacier in the Alps. Not only has he been dead for 5300 years, he now
has to suffer the indignity of being a tourist attraction.
Stern, the German weekly, recently sent a reporter to the town of
Bolzano to see how 脰 tzi is getting on. He did not have to go as far as the
archaeological museum, where 脰 tzi is resting behind bulletproof glass at 鈭�6
掳C and 98 per cent humidity. At Dollinger鈥檚 Caf茅 he found there was a
brisk trade in chocolate 脰 tzis. Herr Dollinger, the owner, admits that he has
been reproached for the 鈥渕acabre鈥� and 鈥渦nchristian鈥� practice of selling
chocolate cadavers. But why pick on him? Other shops in Bolzano offer 脰 tzi ice
cream, 脰 tzi pizza, 脰 tzi wine and 脰 tzi wurst. Even the museum shop has climbed
onto the bandwagon, with 脰 tzi backpacks and 脰 tzi mousepads.
Yet the town is not completely happy with its new-found fame. Despite getting
at least 200 000 visitors per year, the tourist office complains that people now
only ask one question: 鈥淲here is the ice-man?鈥� Bolzano had a town museum long
before the former Austro-Hungarian Bank building was renovated to hold the
mummy. But no one visits the old museum any more. It has a sign on its door
reading: 鈥溍杢zi is across the street.鈥�
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PERHAPS we are being alarmist, but there is something worrying about the
experience of a colleague who logged on to a website that allows you to play
online chess.
When she registered, she was asked her name, age and so on. Under 鈥淕ender鈥�
she was given three choices: 鈥淢ale鈥�, 鈥淔emale鈥� or 鈥淐omputer鈥�.
OUR prize for the most inept attempt to convey seasonal goodwill goes to the
public relations staff at Lucent Technologies. This winter they decided to save
trees and postage, and send electronic greetings instead of cards.
The result arrived with a hefty electronic thump in Feedback鈥檚 e-mail box.
Attached to a short message was a document in Word format weighing in at a
staggering 1.66 megabytes. After waiting several minutes for it to download, and
a few more minutes for a translation program to decode it for an older version
of Word, all that emerged was a small, unexciting colour picture that occupied
about a quarter of the screen.
Back in the old days, such gigantic files were called 鈥渕ail bombs鈥� and you
only sent them to people you were seriously annoyed with, hoping to clog their
e-mail boxes and crash their computers. A puzzled Feedback wonders what we have
done to annoy Lucent鈥攂efore publishing this, that is.
FAXES from the BBC nowadays contain a section on confidentiality. It includes
the words: 鈥淭his is a private facsimile transmission . . . if you are not the
named recipient you must not read, copy or use the contents.鈥�
Fair enough, you may think. Anything to maintain a bit of privacy. The
trouble is, this message is printed at the bottom of the page. So if the fax
isn鈥檛 for you, you only get to read the instruction after you have already
disobeyed it.
WATCH OUT for that sushi. Tim Birkenhead came across this cautionary tale in
the journal Otolaryngology (vol 59, p 245).
A middle-aged Japanese man went to his doctor complaining of a painful
sensation in his mouth and throat. Inspection revealed numerous small
spindle-shaped structures embedded in the mucosal tissue. The doctor thought
they were some kind of parasite, until detailed examination revealed their true
identity: they were the spermatophores from a squid, which the man had
previously eaten raw as sushi.
Several species of squid are known to produce projectile spermatophores.
Under normal circumstances, the male shoots them into the skin of the female
(how she then utilises the sperm the paper does not reveal).
It is not known which species of squid the man ate. All we can say for sure
is that it wasn鈥檛 a giant squid, whose 20-centimetre-long spermatophores might
have done more than provoke a sore throat.
FAR BE IT from Feedback, whose first loyalty lies with print, to suggest that
multimedia colleagues are sometimes challenged on the subediting front. So
congratulations instead to RMR Design Associates in Henley-on-Thames for
misspelling the names of both its client and its subject in a recent CD-ROM
鈥渧irtual tour鈥� of one of Britain鈥檚 nuclear power stations.
For the record, the station is called Sizewell (not Sizwell) and its owner is
British Energy (not Brirish). Virtual tour; virtual spelling?
READER James Coleman recently purchased a chemistry set made by a company
called NSI and boasting experiments 鈥渄eveloped by top scientists鈥�.
Even at the tender age of 14, Coleman suspects that the warning accompanying
the 13th step of the first experiment borders on the superfluous: 鈥淧erform the
next step over the sink. Do not try it upside down over your head.鈥�
FINALLY, here鈥檚 a sign-of-the-times joke that arrived too late for us to
report before Christmas.
As a little girl climbed onto Santa鈥檚 lap, Santa asked the usual: 鈥淎nd what
would you like for Christmas?鈥�
The child stared at him open-mouthed and horrified for a moment, then gasped:
鈥淒idn鈥檛 you get my e-mail?鈥�