A FRIEND working for the European Commission in Brussels had her Monday
morning brightened up by this circular in the internal mail.
鈥淓U internal market ministers concluded four years of debate last week by
agreeing legislation which defines honey as a 鈥榥atural sweet substance鈥� produced
by Apis mellifera bees.鈥�
鈥淢ellifera鈥� means honey-making, so what the ministers took four years to
decide is that honey is made by honey-making bees. Similar accords are expected,
after an appropriate amount of time, to clarify the role of milk-yielding cows,
wool-providing sheep and pork-producing pigs.
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鈥淢y God, I love this place!鈥� says our friend.
CREDIT where it鈥檚 due. David Spergel and Paul Steinhardt, the authors of a
recent paper in Physical Review Letters entitled 鈥淥bservational
Evidence for Self-Interacting Cold Dark Matter鈥�, needed time, space and the
right kind of environment to pool their ideas and kick-start their collective
thoughts.
An acknowledgement in their paper explains how this was provided: 鈥淲e are
grateful to the West Anglia Great Northern Railway whose train delay provided
the opportunity for initial discussions.鈥�
AN EXAMPLE of the awesome power of this column. On 29 July we published an
item about the flower beds in front of the London headquarters of the Department
of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. All the dwarf conifers in the
beds had been allowed to die.
Someone at the DETR must be a Feedback reader. Since we published the piece,
the dead plants have all been removed and replaced by live ones. And the last
time we passed, a DETR person was busily watering them.
EARLIER this year, Britain鈥檚 Consumers鈥� Association, publisher of
Which? magazine, tested hands-free headsets for cellphones and found that
the lead channelled radiation to the head. The Department of Trade and Industry,
which recently raised nearly 拢25 billion by selling licences for five new
mobile services, commissioned its own report. This says headsets 鈥渞educe
别虫辫辞蝉耻谤别鈥�.
The CA thinks the different conclusion comes from different methods of
measurement. The CA hung the connecting wire vertically, as if coming up from a
phone on a belt or in a pocket, while the government鈥檚 testers put the phones
higher (www.sartest.com). So the induction coupling between phone aerial
and headset wire was different.
鈥淧eople don鈥檛 wear phones on their shoulders,鈥� says the CA鈥檚 Antonia
Chitty.
The DTI鈥檚 so-called 鈥渆-minister鈥� Patricia Hewitt released the department鈥檚
report with a reassuring statement, but no press conference or briefing with
experts. The result was muddled reports throughout the international media
giving conflicting evidence and opinion.
The DTI said there was no briefing because the minister was 鈥渂usy鈥�. By a
stroke of good fortune, New 杏吧原创鈥檚 Barry Fox was on a TV programme
for international news network CNBC with Hewitt. He asked her why she had been
too busy for a briefing when there is obviously so much confusion.
鈥淭here is no confusion,鈥� Hewitt insisted, to the surprise of all in the
studio.
So now you know who to ask if you鈥檙e wondering whether or not it is safe to
use a mobile headset.
WE LIKED this statement of the far-from-obvious from NASA. A press
release last week enthused about the plan to send two large scientific rovers to
Mars rather than the original plan for just one.
It is, however, hard to work out the exact significance of this doubling up.
NASA assures us in the third paragraph of the release: 鈥淭he rovers will be exact
duplicates, but that鈥檚 where the similarities end.鈥�
ENGLISH people, as the world knows, can be polite to a fault, and nowhere
more so than in Huddersfield, where reader William Day spotted this notice on a
shop door: 鈥淭his door is closed. We apologise for any inconvenience鈥�.
Perhaps all closed doors should carry this notice to avoid upsetting those
for whom it isn鈥檛 already perfectly obvious. It would make a change from those
shops and cafes which carry a permanent 鈥淥pen鈥� sign, irrespective of whether
this is the case or not.
HERE is the title of a paper by Lili Zheng, Gabriela Sekerkova, Kelly
Vranich, Lewis G. Tilney, Enrico Mugnaini and James R. Bartles in a recent issue
of Cell: 鈥淭he Deaf Jerker Mouse Has a Mutation in the Gene Encoding the
Espin Actin-Bundling Proteins of Hair Cell Stereocilia and Lacks Espins.鈥�
Who are we to disagree?
FINALLY, we learn that every bottle of Olde Buzzard pale ale produced by the
Olde Buzzards Bay Brewery in Massachusetts has an attractive front label showing
a map of the state coastline, including the avian bay for which the brew is
named.
We are glad to report, however, that on the back of the bottle aspiring
seafarers are warned: 鈥淐hart on front not for navigational purposes.鈥�