THREE weeks ago we reported that Mike Wellstead (who we wrongly named Mike Westwind) had bought a fixed exercise bike inappropriately named Explorer. This, in turn, reminded him of the Impact driving school. We suggested dubbing these unsuitable names antinyms, and wondered if readers had come across other examples. You certainly had, and here is a small selection of the many you sent us.
When David Carlile was in the village of Plockton in the Scottish Highlands, he spotted the Nessun Dorma guest house, which, besides being the name of a famous aria, is Italian for 鈥渘o one sleeps鈥�.
Lynn Maskell has always found it noteworthy that in the English city of Cambridge there is a construction company called Wrekin.
Advertisement
Ralph Hancock came across two bicycles in London with the model names of Rusty and Puky.
Elly Ooms nominates a fish restaurant in Croydon, Victoria, which goes by the name of Blue Ringed Octopus, one of Australia鈥檚 most venomous creatures.
On the UK Companies House website Mike Lynd found a firm with the unpromising name of Nadir Investments Limited.
The security company that patrolled Jamie Tresidder鈥檚 old school was called Lowe Security.
Mike Simms fondly recalls the Lemmings Health Club on the south side of Dublin, Ireland.
Adrian Oram was doubly amused by Wellstead鈥檚 Impact driving school because he knows of a company promoting skydiving that also has the name of Impact.
Fred Limacher informs us that, for a long time, the air services from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island in Australia were provided by Penguin Airlines and Emu Airlines, both of them named after flightless birds.
Meanwhile, Tom Hering tells us that there is an Ecuadorian airline called Icaro, which means Icarus.
Finally, two readers who prefer to remain anonymous noticed in New 杏吧原创 that Sony has named the proprietary read-only disc format used by its PlayStation Portable the 鈥淯niversal Media Disc鈥� 鈥� which it definitely is not (22 May, p 25).
MARIE Lagerwall works as an indexer for an academic bibliographic resource. Abstracts, she tells us, usually help her understand what the articles they refer to are about so that she can accurately classify the article and choose appropriate index terms. So she was rather thrown by the following, from the Journal of Applied Psychology, vol 89, p 22.
鈥淭he purpose of this study was (a) to provide additional tests of C. E. Lance, Newbolt, et al鈥檚 (2000) situational specificity (vs. method bias) interpretation of exercise effects on assessment centre post-exercise dimension ratings and (b) to provide competitive tests of salient dimension versus general impression models of assessor within-exercise evaluations of candidate performance. Results strongly support the situational specificity hypothesis and the general impression model of assessor cognitive processes in which assessors first form overall evaluations of candidate performance that then drive more specific dimensional ratings.鈥�
SEVERAL readers have written in to ask whether we realised that Google, in giving the answer 0.994698476 when asked to search for MDI/MDIX, is quite right, since MDI/MDIX in Roman numerals is 1501/1509 (Feedback, 29 May). Well, yes, we did realise, but we pass the information on in case there are any readers who didn鈥檛.
Meanwhile, thanks to Neil Golightly for pointing out another helpful Google calculation. How many readers know that one light year is 4.70279985 脳 1013 furlongs? Just type 鈥渓ight year in furlongs鈥� into Google if you don鈥檛 believe us.
AND while we鈥檙e on the subject of thanking people, we are grateful to the huge number of readers who replied to our bewilderment about Pepperami sausages listing 鈥淧ork: 108%鈥� among its ingredients. Turn to the Letters pages in this issue (鈥淧epperami percentages鈥�) for the solution to the mystery.
THE catalogue produced by Easylife (鈥渟olutions for life鈥�) offers low-energy light bulbs which use 鈥�400 per cent less energy鈥�. A solution for life, indeed! Jonathan Harlow, who spotted this, calculates that if he fitted around a dozen in his house, he could run all his domestic appliances off them and then sell surplus power to the national grid.
FINALLY, it鈥檚 good to know that last week鈥檚 World Poultry Congress took place in Turkey. Further possibilities present themselves. Let鈥檚 have a world ecology congress in Greenland, a world lubricants congress in Greece and a world cryogenics congress in Chile.
In the consultants鈥� wing of a large Melbourne hospital, Gordon Miller saw a notice saying: 鈥淪leep Clinic. Ring for attention鈥�. He wondered how long you had to ring for