THEY have almost got it right at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. In a
bid to include minorities and people with disabilities in university life, the
human resources department recently acquired a new Braille poster for the blind,
which has been put on display outside its main office. Unfortunately, no one
knows what it says because it has been put inside a display case with a glass
front.
Still, top marks for trying.
LUCKY readers of the autumn 2000 issue of American Entomologist were treated
to a paper by Joseph Coelho entitled 鈥淚nsects in rock and roll music鈥�. We
haven鈥檛 seen a copy ourselves, but we鈥檝e discovered that Coelho also has a
website which gives an exhaustive listing of songs containing references to
bugs, such as Alice Cooper鈥檚 Halo of Flies and Alien Sex Fiend鈥檚 Mine鈥檚 full of
Maggots, not to mention the entire oeuvre of Adam and the Ants. If that鈥檚 the
kind of thing you鈥檙e into, go to
www. culver.edu/Hompages/Faculty/Jcoelho/bugmusic.htm
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THE 120-hectare horticultural marvel that is the Royal Botanic Gardens at
Kew, London, had a card pushed through its office door recently advertising the
services of a local landscape gardener. It didn鈥檛 quite go as far as saying 鈥渘o
job too big鈥�.
wordsmith.org, the website devoted to 鈥渢he music and magic of words鈥�, runs an
E-mail Address of the Month award. Subscribers with interesting e-mail addresses
send them in to the site, and the ones judged the best are published.
The winner in January was: mylettersareonfire@hotmail.com.
Of previous winners, we especially liked:
滨鈥檓飞辞谤办颈苍驳蔼丑辞尘别丑辞苍别蝉迟.蹿谤别别蝉别谤惫别.肠辞.耻办 iamaloser@winning.com
a-a-a-choo@allergist.com killmenow@positive-thinking.com
cyuincourt@aol.com
dot@dotat.at:
Visit the faq section of the site if you would like to see more.
BELL SYMPATICO of Canada is offering a CD-ROM containing 鈥渇ree easy-to-use
software鈥� for Internet access. But all is not as easy as it seems. The packaging
of the CD typically bears the instruction: 鈥淧lease remember your software serial
number: 637069889994190767鈥�.
Got that?
THE Notional Missile Defence Initiative (Feedback, 20 January) writes to
apologise to readers who sent e-mails contributing notions on how to construct a
missile defence system. 鈥淎 one-character error in a one-line computer script at an
Internet service provider sent all your messages to South
Africa鈥攆ortunately, and very strangely, to someone known to NMD,鈥� the NMD
message says. 鈥淵ou鈥檒l get an answer as soon as the person there returns from
their travels and sends your message back. Or you can now visit www.nmd.org.uk.鈥�
The message continues: 鈥淥f course, the hundred-million-line computer programs
on which the competing National Missile Defence scheme would rely will contain
no errors at all. Oh no.鈥�
AND here is a nice piece of redundant information from a packet of Tesco
instant hot oat cereal: 鈥淏reakfast has been shown by many leading nutritionists
to be one of the most important meals of the day.鈥�
Could the other most important meals of the day be lunch and dinner?
THREE WEEKS ago (20 January) we reported on the Britney Spears guide to
semiconductor physics. But Britney is not the only person to blur the boundary
between physics and music. Go to www.mchawking.com to find out more about 鈥淢C鈥�
Stephen Hawking鈥檚 side project as a gangsta rapper and hear some examples of his
crucial beatz.
FINALLY, the time has come to announce the winners of New 杏吧原创鈥檚
Christmas competition 鈥淲hat鈥檚 that widget鈥�, a test of your skill at identifying
five old objects (23/30 December 2000). A steady flow of entries from around the
world produced a splendidly swollen postbag and a fine collection of exotic
stamps. But our expert bluffers at the Science Museum are clearly so good at
invention that only four readers identified all the objects correctly.
With 10 copies of Inventing the Modern World to give away, courtesy of the
publisher Dorling Kindersley, we have decided our four outright winners should
receive an extra prize鈥攖he two volumes of New 杏吧原创鈥檚 very own The
Last Word. The remaining prizes go to the first six entries with four correct
answers drawn from a hat.
Of all the objects the glass cylinder with suspicious-looking pointy wooden
spikes caused the most trouble. It was in fact an early X-ray shield (鈥淚nvisible
power鈥�)鈥攂ut don鈥檛 kick yourselves, no one here got the right answer
either. The correct answers are: 1 (b) Invisible power. 2 (b) Bathtime in Paris.
3 (a) Down the tubes. 4 (c) Sky rockets. 5 (c) Speed of thought.
Congratulations to our winners: Brian Wall of Newport, Isle of Wight, Guy
King of Hounslow, Alastair Ainslie of Wye and J. Robert Crofoot of Endicott, New
York.
And well done to our runners-up鈥� Tony Nelson-Smith of Swansea, Tony
Rainbolt of Indianapolis, Bryan Kilgallin of O鈥機onnor, ACT, David Levitt of St
Brelade, Jersey, Lynton Richardson-Jones and family of Gibraltar and Alan
Griffin of Banbury.