THE old adage that children should be seen and not heard has taken on a whole new meaning. Tiny tots of seven are now demanding mobile phones, and British parents are concerned because the government report on cellphone radiation risks by William Stewart advised a 鈥減recautionary approach鈥�, especially for children.
Colin Blakemore, newly appointed chief executive of the Medical Research Council, was on the BBC鈥檚 Breakfast TV programme recently, giving parents practical advice on the issue. 鈥淐ellphones emit when you are talking, so get children to listen instead,鈥� he advised.
We checked with the UK鈥檚 National Radiological Protection Board, and by golly, Blakemore is right. A little-known system called DTX (discontinuous transmission) saves battery power in digital cellphones by drastically cutting the power of the signal the phone transmits when the user stops talking 鈥� from 240 milliwatts to 28.8 milliwatts.
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It conjures up the intriguing prospect of two children, both thoroughly drilled by safety-conscious parents, trying to conduct a cellphone conversation without either of them daring to speak.
PROMPTED by reader Stuart Neilson鈥檚 quest for a Grinding grinding disc (9 August), we asked if other readers could supply examples of what we grandly called homomorphonymy. Geoff Palmer has obliged by telling us that when he rented a Ford Ka recently, the agent kept referring to it as a Ford 鈥淜.A.鈥� He assumes that this was to pre-empt recursive conversations like:
鈥淚鈥檇 like to rent a car please.鈥�
鈥淵es, what sort would you like?鈥�
鈥淚鈥檇 like a Ka please.鈥�
鈥淵es, that鈥檚 what you just said. But what sort would you like鈥�?鈥�
GRAEME Parmenter, however, has the opposite problem. He recounts that while living in Reading (which, of course, rhymes with 鈥渨edding鈥�) he was perplexed by a sign advertising the 鈥淭he Reading School of Reading鈥�. He鈥檚 still not sure what the name of the school is, or what it teaches.
AFTER London鈥檚 underground rail network was paralysed by a power cut two weeks ago, we began to wonder how the trains kept running during the 1987 hurricane when there were widespread power cuts across southern England. As it turns out, in those backward days the network had its own power station, at Lots Road in Fulham. Now, however, the trains draw their juice from the national grid, just like the rest of the country.
After 97 years of continuous operation, the old power station was turned off in October 2002. And doesn鈥檛 London Underground鈥檚 press release at the time make fascinating reading? Headed 鈥淔arewell Lots Road, the future is with the grid鈥�, the statement goes on to quote the transport minister John Spellar: 鈥淟ots Road has served London well, but now is the time to move on. Transferring to the national grid will mean a more reliable and environmentally friendly power supply for the Tube.鈥�
Unfortunately, moving on was precisely what the hundreds of thousands of people stuck in tunnels and stranded at darkened stations couldn鈥檛 do.
READER Richard Dearden is a contractor at the NASA Ames Research Center. He recently received an email from the centre鈥檚 security section informing him that his fingerprints had expired and he needed to submit a new set. He was left wondering why they bothered collecting them in the first place.
A HERCULEAN task awaits Hilmar Lehmann, head of the Insects World exhibition in Steinhude, Germany. Lehmann has just been officially notified that his museum is to be classified as a zoo under new European Union legislation. The trouble is, this new status comes with one very knotty string attached.
Because he exhibits more than five species of wild animal 鈥� more than 100, in fact 鈥� he is now obliged to keep a detailed record of how many insects live at his museum. These include teeming colonies of ants, butterflies, cockroaches, crickets and centipedes.
On receipt of the news, Lehman swiftly filed a plea to log only the number of ant species, rather than the number of ants themselves.
AND another truncated email subject line. While working for a telecoms company, reader Ken Westgate received an email with the subject line reading 鈥淣ew Customer Services Dire鈥�, a statement which he feared might be only too true. It turned out the full subject line was 鈥淣ew Customer Services Director Appointed鈥�.
ON WEDNESDAY 27 August, when Mars was making its closest approach to Earth, the Channel 10 TV news service in Adelaide, South Australia, told viewers to 鈥済o outside and look at Mars tonight. We won鈥檛 be seeing it again for 248 years.鈥�
FINALLY, thanks to Magnus Burbanks for drawing our attention to a headline on the BBC news website on 2 September stating: 鈥淪elf parking car hits the shops.鈥�
The Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney has a functional Harding safety lifeboat, used for training as well as display. Beside it, a sign says: 鈥淭he lifeboat will right itself even after turning through 360 degrees鈥�