THE IDEA of a fruit-flavoured hamburger gives Feedback instant feelings of
nausea. So the news that the US is hooked on cherry hamburgers comes as
something of a shock.
Even more shocking, researchers at Michigan State University have announced
that this culinary abomination might be good for you. According to a paper
published last month by the American Chemical Society, adding cherries to
hamburger meat retards spoilage and reduces the formation of suspected
carcinogenic compounds known as HAAs (heterocyclic aromatic amines).
Previous research had already shown that combining cherry tissue with ground
beef produced a burger that was lower in fat, yet juicier and more tender than
pure beef burgers.
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Cherry burgers are increasingly popular in the US, and are provided on school
lunch menus in 16 states.
Feedback has only one comment, though: yuk!
CRUISE ships are notorious for their sexually uninhibited atmosphere. Even
so, we assume that an errant spellchecker was responsible for this statement in
the brochure for the cruise ship Island Breeze: 鈥淎 typical day at sea might
start with a genital stretch-and-tone session on the sun deck.鈥�
GOOD to hear of plans placed before the House of Commons Information
Committee last month to modernise the house鈥檚 antiquated message system. Until
now, British MPs have relied on men in white ties and gloves who wait outside
the Commons debating chamber ready to run around the building with messages on
bits of paper. In future, MPs will have pagers instead.
We sympathise with Peter Jennings, the Commons Sergeant-at-Arms, whose
comment on this innovation was: 鈥淚t would be nice if we could bring ourselves
into the twentieth century before it closes.鈥�
IF YOU see a queue of people holding boxes in the Petworld department of DIY
store Focus, stay away.
The store鈥檚 Christmas catalogue had this guarantee in it: 鈥淎t Petworld, every
care is taken to ensure that all our pets are healthy. All our pets are
guaranteed for a period of 48 hours. Should any pet unfortunately die within 48
hours of purchase, please return it with your receipt and we will replace it.
(Subject to normal conditions and sensible handling).鈥�
Now you know what might be inside those boxes.
EXACTLY what route does Ryanair Flight FR203 take for the short hop from
London to Dublin?
The airline鈥檚 website had this to say about the plane鈥檚 journey: 鈥淔lt. No.
203; Depart Stansted 0700; Arrive Dublin 1810.鈥�
FROM NORWAY, reader Nils Erik Grande reports that he was studying a bottle of
liquid ginseng extract in his local supermarket. It was a small plastic bottle
with two labels on the front and back describing the product and its uses.
There was, however, a third label which had no more to say than: 鈥淧lease
remove label before placing in microwave oven.鈥�
Grande is puzzled. Somebody had put this label on the bottle for the sole
purpose of telling him to remove it before doing something he would never have
considered doing in the first place.
THE ANNUAL Christmas party hosted by the National Academy of Sciences in
Washington DC took place this year as President Clinton faced impeachment and
bombs began to fall on Iraq. But no one talked politics. Given the sorry state
of affairs on Earth, it was a welcome distraction to think about the wonders of
space.
The Chromatics, an a cappella group whose members are NASA astrophysicists,
engineers, and computer programmers, wowed the crowd with their witty lyrics
about radio photons and Doppler shifting. Possibly the best song was their
High Energy Groove: 鈥淧oint your X-ray specs to the Sun鈥檚 location/you鈥檒l
notice along with it鈥檚 slow rotation/ you鈥檒l see active loops and plasma arcs/in
a solar dance producing X-ray sparks/The X-ray Sun isn鈥檛 serene and smooth/It鈥檚
a dynamic and changing high energy groove.鈥�
This was followed by a song extolling the virtues of the Hubble Space
Telescope to the tune of Cyndi Lauper鈥檚 She-Bop, a song that originally
celebrated the joys of masturbation. Our reporter on the scene was initially
surprised that anyone should associate this activity with Hubble鈥� but then
realised, of course, that both have been linked to blindness in the past.
MANUFACTURERS frequently come under fire for products which fail to live up
to their advertising claims. John Dennis wonders whether the manual for his
Taiwan-made mouse was perhaps over-estimating its abilities: 鈥淩ight now, your
computer job are no more a boring and tremendous typing process. Alternatively,
an easy and friendly method to communicate with your personal computer does just
present in you sight.鈥�
Equally impressive, Dennis felt, is the claim made for a joystick adapter by
the same maker, which 鈥渁llows you to swap around two different kinds of
joysticks without having to tumble behind your computer鈥�.
READER Gino Benham has a friend who was recently strolling through the city
of Brisbane when he noticed an advertisement saying: 鈥淓ars pierced while you
飞补颈迟.鈥�
This made him wonder just what the alternatives were.