ENHANCED airport security has created some interesting problems for geologists, palaeontologists and other scientists who do fieldwork.
Knowing the tender loving care that baggage handlers customarily lavish on checked luggage, they prefer to carry vital specimens with them in the cabin. According to the vertebrate palaeontology mailing list, one palaeontologist had to persuade security personnel that a 9-kilogram plaster block he was carrying was not a bludgeon he intended to use on the crew or fellow passengers but a fossil skull wrapped in plaster to prevent damage. They eventually agreed to let him on board if he kept it on the floor rather than in the overhead locker.
Another scientist, returning from Antarctica through Miami, was surprised when his backpack set off airport bomb detectors. After a series of tests, and an intense search of the depths of the pack which failed to find anything suspicious, the security crew finally let him board the plane.
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On later reflection, he worked out the problem. Penguins had made a pit stop on the pack, and their nitrate-rich droppings left the same telltale chemical signature as explosives.
WE SAID it would happen, and sure enough it has. 鈥淲e鈥檙e waiting with bated breath,鈥� we stated here on 10 May, 鈥渇or the first request for assistance from a relative of a former Iraqi official who needs to launder a little bit of surplus cash.鈥�
Just a few days later this spam email arrived: 鈥淒ear sir,鈥� it began. 鈥淟et me introduce myself, I am brother to Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister of Iraq before the US-led coalition war against my country. I have been working for my brother for past 15 years. My brother have the sum of $46 million Dollars with me, which to be send to Europe which has been done already. I have decided to find somebody who can help me to secure the money or establish the money in Europe鈥︹��
A COLLEAGUE who found that the floppy drive on his Dell computer could no longer read discs turned to the company鈥檚 support website for help. A page helpfully entitled 鈥淲hy does my 3陆鈥� floppy diskette drive not work?鈥� looked as though it might be useful in identifying the cause of the problem.
Following the instructions, our colleague created a diagnostic disc using another computer. So far so good, until he reached the instruction, 鈥淚nsert the diagnostics diskette into the respective floppy disk drive鈥�.
Quite what that would diagnose, other than the fact that the floppy drive didn鈥檛 work, is not entirely clear.
NOTING that a side effect of Piriton antihistamine tablets can be an allergic reaction such as itching, Feedback reader Immanuel Burton wondered how many other medicines have side effects that include symptoms of the condition they are treating (17 May).
Quite a few, it seems. One reader who has lupus takes a medication to treat the condition which warns that the possible side effects include rashes, changes in hair or skin colour, hair loss, nausea, diarrhoea, loss of appetite, stomach pain and vomiting 鈥� nearly all of them symptoms she is familiar with from lupus itself.
Another reader bought some travel sickness tablets from a well-known high-street chemist and was told the side effects could be vomiting, palpitations and disturbed vision. She decided the side effects sounded worse than the mild nausea she had bought the tablets to prevent.
Then there鈥檚 the reader who notes that steroids taken to relieve the muscle pain of polymyalgia rheumatica include in the possible side effects 鈥渕ay cause muscular pain鈥�.
And lastly there鈥檚 the reader who suffers from colitis, a symptom of which is diarrhoea. The medication he has been prescribed for this condition comes, appropriately, as small brown turd-shaped pills that can have as an unwanted side effect 鈥� yes, you鈥檝e guessed it 鈥� diarrhoea.
READER Tony Compton has brought to our attention the fact that there is a Spanish soccer team called Real Sociedad, which even our negligible Spanish tells us can be translated as 鈥淩oyal Society鈥�.
This, Compton points out, suggests an excellent way of furthering the visibility and popularity of science. We call on London鈥檚 Royal Society to form a team with a view to entering the English Football League at the earliest possible date 鈥� though we do admit to a slight doubt over how many people from the society鈥檚 current membership could play to the required standard.
FINALLY, the promotional literature for the RF-900 motorcycle helmet from Shoei boasts of a revolutionary new feature: a 鈥�3D interior鈥�.
Reader Storm Cunningham now wonders how he managed to get his head into the previous model, the RF-200, which presumably had an interior of just two dimensions.
READER Deborah Sutcliffe was pleased to read in Safeway鈥檚 magazine that the supermarket鈥檚 fresh figs contain a lot of dietary fibre 鈥� 鈥渁nd if you dry the fig it contains twice as much鈥�