ESPERANTO strikes back. Following the claim in New 杏吧原创鈥檚
Letters pages that there are now more fluent Klingon speakers than Esperanto
speakers
(17 March, p 62),
Fox Lorber Films tells us it is releasing
Incubus鈥攖he only feature film ever made in Esperanto鈥攐n video
and DVD at the beginning of May.
Directed by Leslie Stevens, who made the Outer Limits TV series, and
starring William Shatner, who went on to play Star Trek鈥檚 Captain Kirk,
Incubus was made in 1965鈥攁nd promptly disappeared without trace.
The storyline revolves round a man who battles the forces of evil on a strange
island inhabited by demons and spirits. And it鈥檚 all in black and white.
For the benefit of people whose second language is Klingon, not Esperanto,
the film will be given English subtitles.
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WE WERE right in suspecting on 7 April that we hadn鈥檛 heard the last of RAS
(redundant acronym . . .) syndrome. Many thanks to the readers who have since
drawn our attention to ATM machines (automatic teller . . .), ISBN numbers
(international standard book . . .), PCR reaction (polymerase chain . . .) and,
in Britain, the ITN news (independent television . . .). No doubt there will be
yet more.
THE BRITISH government is keen to respond seriously to the public鈥檚 fears
over the removal and retention of organs at post-mortems. In the wake of the
scandal at the Alder Hey children鈥檚 hospital in Liverpool, where organs were
removed from dead children and retained without parents鈥� knowledge or
permission, it has set up a commission to investigate such practices. It鈥檚 just
unfortunate, given a certain recent Hollywood blockbuster, that the Retained
Organs Commission should be based at the Department of Health鈥檚 giant office
block at the Elephant and Castle in south London. The building鈥檚 name: Hannibal
House.
SOFTWARE packages often come with restrictions on who can use them and where
they can be used. Either the lawyers at Gemstone have a remarkable sense of
humour or they鈥檝e been had by somebody. The restriction states: 鈥淟icensee
warrants that it is not domiciled in, a citizen, national or resident of, and is
not under the control of the government of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea,
Syria, Sudan, Elbonia, nor any other country or any distributee to which the
United States has prohibited export . . . 鈥�
Elbonia, of course, is a fictional country featured in Dilbert cartoons.
READER Andrew Wright, who works for a large American bank, recently received
an e-mail asking staff to cut down on unnecessary e-mailing to reduce the burden
on the bank鈥檚 network. Along with everyone else, he received the e-mail twice,
followed soon afterwards by a third apologising for the duplication.
THE MUSIC and audio industries are very excited about their new super-hi-fi
digital disc formats, which record six channels of surround sound with
frequencies that only a bat can appreciate. So Feedback was a little surprised
when, at a recent technical seminar, EMI divulged the secrets of how it is
getting some of the music onto disc.
Engineers at EMI鈥檚 famous Abbey Road studios took an old analogue stereo tape
of Handel鈥檚 Music for the Royal Fireworks that had been recorded there
decades ago. They then played the tape through stereo loudspeakers inside the
same studio and re-recorded the reproduced sound that bounced round the room,
using modern super-hi-fi surround-sound microphones.
EMI鈥檚 engineers have coined a phrase for the odd, echoey effect this gives.
They call it 鈥渇aux鈥� surround, and have been using it to polish up several old
classical recordings. It will be interesting to see how EMI鈥檚 marketing people
describe it on their record sleeves.
ONLINE companies, like the rest of the commercial world, prefer to know who
their customers are. Reader Calum Galleitch recently received a survey form from
Amazon.com asking him about his lifestyle.
Question 14 asked him to select his age from the following options:
14 or under; 15-19; 25-34; 35-44; 45-54; 55+
Galleitch says it is a good thing Amazon sent the form when they did. A
couple of weeks later he would have been unable to answer the question, as he
was about to celebrate his 20th birthday.
SOMEHOW, it seems we missed an interesting little news item in the
British Medical Journal back in 1999 (vol 313, p 274). Our thanks to Sheila
Glidewell for bringing our attention to the piece, which is entitled 鈥淰iagra
makes flowers stand up straight鈥�. It begins: 鈥淰iagra (sildenafil citrate) is
good not only for treating male impotence. Israeli and Australian researchers
have discovered that small concentrations of the drug can also double the shelf
life of cut flowers, making then stand up straight for as long as a week beyond
their natural lifespan.鈥�
GLIDEWELL, who clearly has an eye for such things, also draws our attention
to a sterling piece of research reported this year in the Journal of the
Science of Food and Agriculture. Written by Antonio
Ram铆rez-Jim茅nez, Bel茅n Garc铆a-Villanova and Eduardo
Guerra-Hern谩ndez of the University of Granada, the paper is entitled
鈥淓ffect of toasting time on the browning of sliced bread鈥濃�攁nd that鈥檚
exactly what it is about.
THANK YOU to the Drinking Water Inspectorate for England and Wales for this
illuminating comment on its website: 鈥淧esticides in water are derived almost
entirely from agricultural and non-agricultural uses.鈥�