THE 鈥渇ace鈥� on Mars seems to have disappeared, which must come as a great relief to NASA. In 1993 we reported that Mike Malin, principal investigator on NASA鈥檚 Mars Observer camera, complained that he was spending a quarter of his valuable time responding to conspiracy theorists. Publication of high-resolution photos of what turned out to be a very ordinary hill obviously helped free up his time. But where have those conspiracy theorists gone?
Onward and outward to Saturn鈥檚 moon Iapetus is where. Dez Barbara directs us to , where one Richard Hoagland asks 鈥渨hat could possibly explain the existence of extremely ancient (judging from the abundance of real craters scattered in between) ruins鈥︹�� Eh? 鈥淲hat if Iapetus is not a natural satellite at all鈥ut a 900-mile-wide spacecraft鈥n artificial 鈥榤oon鈥�?!鈥� That鈥檒l be the same Hoagland who put so much effort into selling books about the face on Mars.
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Iapetus is indeed interesting, puzzling, mysterious even. There is much for scientists to get their teeth into. But what will happen when we know as much about Iapetus as we do about Mars? Feedback is waiting, not too impatiently, for the first sighting of an ancient civilisation on a comet.
AS SCIENTISTS should, Jay Pasachoff tries to build on existing work. Feedback foolishly featured polyontologias 鈥� phrases that are simultaneously true in several senses 鈥� and asked for more. Nigel Steel responded by pointing out that a personal favourite among several positron emission tomography scans of your domestic companion animal was triply a pet scan (3 September). Pasachoff proceeds to appliqu茅 the scan onto fabric, and pet it, giving, if you鈥檙e feeling lenient, a fourth meaning.
Alternatively Kev Crocombe would pick his favourite scan of a statue of his domestic companion animal sculpted from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). He signs off 鈥淵ours in sad pedantry鈥�. Naturally, we would not dream of extending this to some of the other submissions we鈥檝e received.
鈥淧atrick de Freitas tells us that in Salt Lake City, Utah, water department trucks go around proclaiming they are 鈥減artial zero emission鈥� vehicles鈥�
Meanwhile, Ronan O鈥橲ullivan has found a triontologia in the wild: well sort of 鈥� it鈥檚 in an advert. It is a picture of 鈥渁 young man under a bedsheet with a cheeky grin and a mobile phone鈥� with the caption 鈥渉e鈥檚 covered鈥� 鈥� presuming, that is, that his being under the cover with cellphone cover is enabling him to supply a cover story. Much though we appreciate the labour that readers have put into contriving examples, only wild-type polyontologias from now on, please.
FEEDBACK now approaches stories about signs in Braille with some trepidation, as we鈥檝e learned they can easily offend. But we think we鈥檙e right to be a little concerned about the usefulness of the signs for the restrooms at the National Botanical Gardens in Washington DC, which a colleague found on .
The doors to these toilets are, apparently, unmarked: they are indicated by signs hanging from the ceiling. Along with standard text, these are helpfully written in Braille, the male version of which, as far as we can tell, reads 鈥�.m.e.n鈥�. Not that many pedants among the intended audience will be complaining, since the sign is roughly 3 metres off the ground, and the 鈥淏raille鈥� is painted flat on it.
LEGAL judgments are rarely an ingredient of Feedback鈥檚 textual diet. But we are grateful to Tamara Quinn for forwarding the finding in the case of Alan Sales versus Jonathan Stromberg, Geraldine Knight and CIR International Limited. The dispute was over the design of 鈥渋mploded water personal harmonisers鈥�, which deputy high-court judge Roger Wyand QC dryly describes as 鈥渄ecorative articles which can be hung around the neck and which contain water鈥reated by a process that involves centrifuging. Evidently it imparts certain beneficial properties to the water鈥�.
The plaintiff, Sales, said he had sent the defendants at least one sketch for new versions of this handy device adorned with attractive spirals. They had promised not to use his designs without permission, but on receiving them wrote back that 鈥渢hese very same twin and triple spirals were used by Neolithic people鈥ot patentable or protectable鈥hey belong to mankind鈥�. After three days of high-court hearings, the judge found that the defendants had breached Sales鈥檚 design rights for the double spiral design, but not the triple.
As Quinn notes, 鈥淏usiness must be booming for the purveyors of water imbued with miraculous properties hitherto unrecognised by the scientific community, if they have started suing each other.鈥�
FINALLY, James Brand informs us that the A1 road, which runs between London and Edinburgh, is a good source of redundant road signs. On 3 September we reported signs exhorting drivers to 鈥渇ollow the existing signs to Wetherby鈥�. A bit further south, Brand spotted a sign reading 鈥淪ign not in use鈥�.
Does this mean, he asks, that he shouldn鈥檛 have read it? And surely once it had informed him that it was not in use, it was.