URBAN legends are particularly satisfying when you can catch them in the larval stage, so to speak. Gossip is beginning appear on the internet about a new telephone scam in the UK. Someone phones to say 鈥淐ongratulations! You could be the lucky winner of a fantastic holiday! Press number nine on your keypad!鈥� and then you get a huge phone bill. In fact, an article in Saga magazine details the story of someone who pressed nine, hung on for 10 minutes and was billed for 拢260. According to Saga, even if you ring off you will still be charged for 5 minutes at 拢20 a minute.
This sounds like a mutation of the old myth about being told to key #90 or #09 and then getting a big bill. So we checked with the UK鈥檚 telecoms regulator, Ofcom. 鈥淭he maximum charge for premium-rate services is 拢1.50 per minute,鈥� they reassured us, 鈥渁nd just pressing nine will not connect you to a premium service. We know of no one who has ever seen a 拢20 per minute premium-rate call.鈥�
Saga has yet to respond to our questions about their article, though they did try to sell us shares. Thanks, but no.
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So we will have to offer our own explanation. It starts with a particularly unpleasant kind of virus, called a dialler virus, that takes over your computer鈥檚 internet connection and routes it through premium-rate lines or numbers that are technically foreign 鈥� or just makes silent calls to overseas sex chat lines.
And how do most victims acquire such a virus? By visiting internet porn sites without proper protection. So some unfortunate people will have extra problems explaining the ensuing stunning phone bill to their partners. For them, the urban legend about pressing nine could come in quite handy.
Apparently, though, dialler viruses are now infecting computers by all sorts of routes. Even innocent surfers can fall victim, so we can now lay the legend to rest without laying waste to marriages.
CONNOISSEURS of gobbledegook will appreciate the following example, forwarded to us by Lew Hunt from . Here, you could, if you were very gullible, buy an 鈥淓 crystal鈥� that will 鈥渢ake a five gallon bottle of water to over two hundred thousand Bovis overnight鈥�.
How鈥檚 that then? 鈥淩esearchers indicate these [crystals] have left spinning electrons, where virtually all chaos has right spinning electrons. The chaos is not accessed or amplified. The result is a coherent field of energy around the body at all times through which all chaos must pass, even your own negative thoughts! Less fatigue and possibly depression.鈥�
Our question for readers is: what language is this in?
AS WELL as enabling us to play time-wasting games, a certain well-known search engine can tell us a lot about how our language is evolving. For example: forget the prescribed spelling, what are people actually writing?
Chris Daniel writes in response to our observation on the number of 鈥淯nviersities鈥� in the world (12 June). How were people misspelling 鈥渁ccommodation鈥�, he wondered? He found 33,600,000 properly spelled instances; 5,020,000 of 鈥渁ccomodation鈥�, and so on through 10 more possibilities, down to 2 for 鈥渁ccoomoodation鈥�. He notes, though, that he often couldn鈥檛 find the word in the displayed pages. 鈥淐ould it be,鈥� he wonders, 鈥渢hat some canny web designers have hidden all possible alternative spellings in their sites, to attract dyslexic surfers?鈥�
But what we want to know is: what will be the first word to be spotted in the act of changing its spelling through such an exercise?
SOME press releases deserve a moment鈥檚 pondering before they鈥檙e zapped to electronic oblivion 鈥� like the one in which the Raytheon Company celebrates 鈥渢he achievement of delivering the 250,000th Paveway(TM) Laser Guided Bomb (LGB) to the US Navy, Air Force and international customers鈥� since 1968. That really is a large number of bombs.
PEOPLE live for a long time in parts of the west of England. In an article about the Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton found in the UK, The Weston and Somerset Mercury had this to say: 鈥淭he Cheddar Man himself is thought to have been buried 9000 years ago, and DNA tests carried out by scientists in 1997 have deduced that his ancestors still live in the village.鈥�
FINALLY, a last reminder: don鈥檛 forget to send in your brilliant gift suggestions to help your fellow readers in this year鈥檚 round of festive present-giving. We鈥檒l sift through your ideas and add the best to www.nomoresocks.newscientist.com.
Just cast your mind back to your favourite presents from birthdays and Christmases past, then visit the website and fill in the form. Every week, we鈥檒l send a bottle of champagne to the sender of our chosen 鈥済ift of the week鈥�.
US film makers are, as reader Andy West observes, notorious for rewriting history. But now it seems publishers there are at it too. He reports receiving an email with the subject 鈥淣ew From Princeton University Press 鈥� Origin of Species鈥�