LONDON鈥橲 Heathrow airport has a large and obviously expensive 鈥淰isit Scotland鈥� booth for promoting Scottish tourism and business. The centrepiece is a computer keyboard and big LCD screen.
Killing time recently because of delayed flights, Feedback tried using the computer. But the welcome message, 鈥淐lick Here to Start鈥�, looked odd 鈥� because it was upside down. Was this a clever way to attract attention, perhaps? And the cursor control worked the wrong way round, too: down for up, left for right and so on. A game-like challenge, perhaps?
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But once we had perfected our inverted screen navigation technique, it became clear that the welcome message wasn鈥檛 a gimmick. All the information pages were upside down as well.
鈥淧erhaps it鈥檚 aimed at the Australian market,鈥� speculated a Scottish businessman who was also puzzling over the screen.
Feedback happened to have the opportunity to check the booth and its computer the next day, and again four days later. The screen display was still upside down. We wondered how often someone from Visit Scotland checks out its promotion booth at Heathrow.
Cut-throat tachyon competition
GOBBLEDEGOOK has just got more wonderful. Feedback has recently noted the marketing of the deliciously sciency-sounding 鈥淭achyonisation鈥� process that converts the 鈥渟ubtle organising energy fields鈥� into the exact frequencies needed to maintain and restore perfect balance to a life form鈥� (9 June). But, as you would expect of advanced quantum physics, there is a whole family of tachyon claims, and we think we detect a repulsive force between them.
鈥淗as supermarket ASDA achieved quantum superposition of states in melons? Galen Ives wants to know this after purchasing a watermelon bearing the legend 鈥淧roduce of more than one country鈥濃��
Those earlier reports related to the tachyonisation products, processes and workshops of one David Wagner. Now Roger Shannon has alerted us to , which promotes omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (fish oil, to everyone except biochemists and purveyors of wonderful remedies) which has been 鈥� you鈥檝e guessed 鈥� tachyonised, using the process promoted by one Gene Latimer. 鈥淣ot only are you getting the profound benefits of the DHA,鈥� he announces, 鈥渂ut you are also energising the brain鈥檚 subtle organising energy fields.鈥�
Digging further into the description at that first alerted us to David Wagner鈥檚 work, we find a discussion of 鈥淭he 鈥楾rue and the False鈥� Tachyonised Products鈥�. Can鈥檛 we all just get on? Feedback recommends stoic acceptance that all these products and processes exist in a superposition of parallel universes, not unlike ASDA鈥檚 melons (see box).
SOMETIMES our readers startle us by asking a blindingly obvious question that for some reason has never occurred to us. For example, Alistair Lavers tells us of a brand of shampoo on the market called Alchemy, which comes in two formulations. One states that it is 鈥渇or everyone鈥�, while another is 鈥渇or sensitive scalps only鈥�.
Lavers鈥檚 question is: 鈥淲hat is the point of having a shampoo specifically for people with sensitive scalps if you already have one that everyone can use?鈥�
WEIRDEST patent of the week is US patent 6,055,910, the 鈥渢oy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly鈥� filed by Michael Zanakis and Philip Femano. The abstract says it all:
鈥淎 toy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly, whose missile is composed of a soft head and a tail extending therefrom formed by a piston. The piston is telescoped into the barrel of a launcher having a closed end on which is mounted an electrically activated igniter, the air space between the end of the piston and the closed end of the barrel defining a combustion chamber. Joined to the barrel, and communicating with the chamber therein, is a gas intake tube having a normally closed inlet valve.
鈥淭o operate the assembly, the operator places the inlet tube with its valve open adjacent [to] his anal region, from which a colonic gas is discharged. The piston is then withdrawn to a degree producing a negative pressure to inhale the gas into the combustion chamber to intermix with the air therein to create a combustible mixture. The igniter is then activated to explode the mixture in the chamber and fire the missile into space.鈥�
This, incidentally, is not just a patent application. The patent has been issued, so anyone who wants to make this device will have to get a licence from Zanakis and Femano to do so.
FINALLY, we were puzzled at first when Sue Anderson wrote to tell us: 鈥淢y son and I were surprised to find that even yew trees have access to the internet these days.鈥� But when we checked , all became clear. As its headline proclaims, this site is a 鈥淒iscussion Forum for Ancient Yews鈥�.