A SIMPLE magnetic chip slipped into a trouser pocket is all it takes to boost blood flow to the genital area, improve oxygen and nutrient supply to the region, and bump up levels of sex hormones. At least, that鈥檚 the claim made for the Sex-Mag in the latest glossy brochure from Home Shopping Selections.
Feedback wonders if this is the same magnetic material that other advertisers claim will descale hot-water pipes. If so, when you feel like a rest from sexual stimulation, you could clean out your central heating system by taking your trousers off and hanging them over a radiator.
JUST how much good does it do you to lose weight? This is something medical research would dearly love to know, but a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, found it鈥檚 not so easy to determine.
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They wanted to show just how much reduction in mortality people achieve by shedding kilograms, but realised that many of the people they surveyed who lost more than 9 kilos were seriously ill. Their illness was the reason they had lost weight, so it certainly did not lengthen their lives.
So they narrowed their study 鈥� published in Annals of Internal Medicine 鈥� to people who lost weight intentionally, and, hooray, those people did show a 24 per cent lower mortality rate.
But the study 鈥� of 6391 overweight American adults 鈥� also found something science could not explain: mortality rates dropped in people who reported intending to lose weight, even if they did not actually lose any.
The authors write that perhaps this is because would-be dieters are more likely to wear seat belts, or drink moderately, or they may see doctors more often. But they don鈥檛 really know.
Feedback can only conclude that the road to health is paved with good intentions.
IN THESE days of computer billing, it鈥檚 not unusual to receive a phone bill for a small amount of money. It鈥檚 probably not even that unusual for phone bills to be sent out to people who have died. Even so, it seems strange that US phone company Sprint recently managed to send a bill for 12 cents to David Towles, who died in 1997, and correctly addressed it to Towles鈥檚 new residence, the Hillside Cemetery, Evergreen Section, Auburn, Massachusetts 01501.
Sprint was unable to explain how the bill had come to be addressed to the correct section of the cemetery plot, or how Towles had apparently managed to make a call from beyond the grave 鈥� one call had been placed on 16 February this year, five years after his death. But perhaps dying is like being arrested and you鈥檙e allowed to make one phone call, suggests reader Bodhipaksa, who spotted this snippet in The Boston Globe.
INTEL thinks its new Centrino chip will be a 鈥渢ipping point鈥� that changes the course of history, like the transistor radio, home computer or mobile phone. Centrino鈥檚 single chipset is battery-powered and combines a computer with a high-frequency radio receiver and transmitter, so that people can access the Internet and work as they wander.
At a grand launch in London, Intel鈥檚 vice-president Mooly Eden dramatically cut through some connecting phone wires with a meat cleaver to illustrate how a Centrino computer just goes on working. An advantage of this, he explained, is that doctors and nurses can walk round a hospital with a portable computer, sending and receiving medical records.
Afterwards Feedback asked him how this meshed with the normal hospital policy of insisting that everyone turn off all radio devices, in case they interfere with sensitive medical equipment such as heart monitors or morphine drip feeds.
鈥淧eople tell you to turn off because they are afraid, afraid of the unknown,鈥� responded Eden. But he went on to add: 鈥淪afe-usage models will evolve鈥�.
We rather hope we don鈥檛 find ourselves on a life-support system while the safe-usage models are still evolving.
WHEN reader Geoffrey Howley bought a tube of Bell鈥檚 Antiseptic Cream last year, it came with an interesting warning: 鈥淎void contact with eyes, ears, brain and surrounding membrane. Do not use in body cavities or as an enema.鈥�
Howley wonders whether anyone who is attracted to the idea of drilling holes in their skull and smearing cream on their brain while giving themselves an antiseptic cream enema would be capable of understanding this warning anyway.
FROM Her Majesty鈥檚 Customs and Excise VAT Notes No 4 2002:
鈥淏usinesses which accept large payments in cash to become subject to anti-money laundering regulations.鈥�
John Pemberton, who spotted this, asks: when money and anti-money meet do they annihilate each other in a blinding flash of pure energy and thereby cause inflation?
THE Philishave Beard Trimmer has five itemised features that are so important they take up one whole side of the box it comes in. The fifth is 鈥淥n-off switch for quick activation鈥�