FOR reasons best known to herself, Laura Emery was browsing for DNA on eBay. To her alarm, she came across the Lifetech DNA Activator CD. One lucky bidder obtained, for $14.95, the power to 鈥渁ctivate 100 per cent of your 2-strand DNA, plus 10 additional strands!鈥� Boring old conventional medicine would regard even the first part as dangerous 鈥� after all, you want to be careful where you express toenail genes, for example. But on top of that, as Laura notes: 鈥淏limey, I鈥檓 doing a genetics degree but no one told me there are 10 additional 鈥榚theric鈥� DNA strands available to each human!鈥�
But Laura, quite obviously etheric DNA 鈥渆xists in higher harmonics of frequency that you can鈥檛 see with the naked eye鈥� 鈥� where 鈥渢he beings who called themselves 鈥榞ods'鈥� hid it.
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Meanwhile, Alex Wise came across the same product and an interesting exchange on in which DNA Activation proprietor Toby Alexander responds to a dissatisfied client seeking a full refund: 鈥淭he self contained individual recognizes that at all times the freedom of interpretation exists, and thus a 鈥榥egative鈥� experience and its associated dis-harmonic energies of 鈥榰pset鈥� feelings can only exist as a personal interpretation of events.鈥� But isn鈥檛 this simply an admission that it did, in fact, not work as advertised for her?
New phones! Extra! Fewer features!
CELLPHONE companies want us all to trade in our perfectly good, solid mobiles for flimsy replacements that play music, take photographs, record sound and shoot videos. The object, of course, is to make more money for the networks, because they can charge far more for delivering pictures than words.
鈥淎llergy advice: contains milk. Supermarket chain Tesco takes no chances with the reading comprehension of purchasers of its own-brand organic milk鈥�
But there is at least one downside to the new do-it-all phones, apart from the fact that they use so much juice they are always going flat. Journalists at a recent movie preview in London鈥檚 West End had to dump their camera phones in a big bag before they were allowed in, in case they took unauthorised snaps of the screening and the guests. Doubtless the same thing will soon be happening at music concerts, where burly bouncers have been pouncing on cameras and sound recorders for years. You鈥檒l get your phone back after the film or concert, of course 鈥� but how long will it take you to identify and retrieve it?
Our cynical bet is that in a few years鈥� time the cellphone companies will start charging a premium for the kind of plain old mobile phones that some of us still have now 鈥� the ones that you can take anywhere because they are just phones, pure and simple.
IS IT the fate of the internet to collapse into an infinite spam-complaint loop? Should the real world worry? We ask because Jim Berry has forwarded us an email from a spam-blocking robot.
Feedback鈥檚 team of crack geeks pored over the usually hidden message 鈥渉eaders鈥� that say what computers it has been through, and it appears to be a response to a message from his spam-blocking robot.
Which means that Berry is lucky to have seen it 鈥� and not to have had his robot curtly reject it and loop it back to the other robot. If this went on, the internet could collapse. But what if it didn鈥檛?
We would logically have infinite quantities of information being shunted around. And there are theorists 鈥� a minority, to be sure 鈥� who propose that information is as much a fundamental constituent of the universe as energy and matter. So its unconstrained multiplication could cause a problem. Feedback pictures one opening an email inbox rapidly approaching infinity and exclaiming, 鈥淭hey mocked, but I was rig鈥︹�� before evaporating.
Fortunately for existence, or unfortunately for those theoreticians, Berry鈥檚 message sailed through our spam-blocking robot. This time.
FOR only 479 of your American dollars, you can buy the 鈥淯ltimate Home Weather Station鈥� from . And, as Keith Fitzhuggett observes, the 鈥淧enultimate Home Weather Station鈥� will set you back $649, with its additional indoor temperature and humidity sensors. But with the sequence reversal that this tends to suggest, surely they could show tomorrow鈥檚 weather report today?
SINCE train departure displays on UK station platforms started running on Microsoft Windows, Julian Gray has grown accustomed to being told that he is low on memory 鈥� which he already knows in the early morning. Recently he was presented with the information that 鈥渁 driver or service has failed鈥� underneath an announcement that the 07:44 train from York to Leeds was departing on time from Platform 9. So that must have been a virtual driver鈥�
FINALLY, more fun with percentages: Kingspan Insulation remind us at that 鈥淛ust 1% moisture by volume in man-made mineral fibre can reduce thermal performance by between 75% and 105%鈥�. But, as David Pearson points out, insulation with an efficiency of less than minus 5 per cent would be a virtually free heat pump.
Feedback rapidly runs out of pointing fingers when trying to work out which way the heat would be pumped, though. Would it make your home colder in winter?