Feedback competition: design a new body
THE year is drawing to a close and, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, even the time for leaf peeping will soon be over 鈥� which means that the moment has arrived to announce the annual Feedback end-of-year competition.
This year鈥檚 theme revolves around current advances in biotechnology. 鈥淒esigner bodies鈥� are becoming more and more possible, so how would you modify the human body if you were not restricted in any way?
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You may send in up to three suggestions by email, post or fax; the ones judged the most witty and original will win. All replies must reach us by Monday 5 December and the results will be published in New 杏吧原创鈥榮 end-of-year issue (24 December/31 December). The editor鈥檚 decision, as always, is final.
Thanks to the generosity of the Royal Society, 10 lucky winners will each receive copies of all six books short-listed for the Royal Society鈥檚 Aventis Prize for Science Books 2005. They are:
The 2005 prize winner: Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another by Philip Ball (William Heinemann)
The Ancestor鈥檚 Tale by Richard Dawkins (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older by Douwe Draaisma (Cambridge University Press)
Matters of Substance: Drugs 鈥� and why everyone鈥檚 a user by Griffith Edwards (Penguin/Allen Lane)
The Earth: An intimate history by Richard Fortey (HarperCollins)
The Human Mind by Robert Winston (Bantam Press/Transworld Publishers)
These books were all reviewed by Jon Turney (7 May, p 48). Our thanks go to Akram Najjar for the competition idea.
THANKS, too, to the many readers who have pointed out that our piece on Dick Chopp, the vasectomy expert, and his fellow members of The Urology Team in Austin, Texas, contained a serious omission (29 October). We failed to mention that the team鈥檚 specialist in the field of penile prosthetics for sexual dysfunction is Stephen Hardeman.
Quadruple nominative determinism
AND as we seem to be on that subject yet again, we may as well mention that Henry Marsh claims to have come across a case of quadruple nominative determinism. We would actually put it somewhere between triple and quadruple 鈥� but that is still pretty impressive. Marsh is referring to the book The Imperial Animal by Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox.
Lastly on this topic, Alex Gough has discovered that the chair of anaesthesiology and pain management at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois, is William J. Tranquilli.
READING about NASA鈥檚 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the SpaceDaily.com website, Stewart Turner was intrigued to learn that it is carrying the biggest camera ever sent to another planet. So advanced, in fact, is this camera that according to , 鈥淔rom Mars orbit, this monster camera can see things as small as a dishwasher.鈥� Turner thinks this is all very awe-inspiring, but he will be most surprised if it finds one.
A POPULAR column found in many US newspapers is 鈥淕lad You Asked鈥�, by Jeff Elder. In a recent column, Elder reports that the most poisonous animal on Earth is a small frog: 鈥淭he two-inch-long golden poison frog shoots darts that knock monkeys out of the trees of Colombia鈥檚 rainforests. They鈥檙e dead before they hit the ground.鈥�
鈥淥n a First Alert smoke detector packet, Michael Grounds found the words: 鈥淎pproximately 31 per cent of households have less than one working smoke alarm. According to fire experts, this is not nearly enough鈥濃��
鈥淕osh,鈥� everyone who reads this will think. But Mike Kory went a step further and sent us one of those questions that you haven鈥檛 thought of yourself but seem terribly obvious once someone like Kory thinks of them. What he wants to know is, 鈥淲hat does a 2-inch-long frog do with a dead monkey?鈥�
HERE is another example of the unmistakable imprint of the over-anxious corporate lawyer. The user manual of Dermot McAuley鈥檚 Nikon D70 digital camera told him: 鈥淲hen operating the diopter adjustment control with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally.鈥�
Duh. But just how much the lawyers really care is shown by another warning aimed, it would seem, at only one segment of Nikon鈥檚 market. In a 鈥淣otice for customers in the state of California鈥� we read: 鈥淲arning: handling the cord on this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.鈥�
And if you don鈥檛 live in California, don鈥檛 bother?
FINALLY, here is something slightly different. Peter Taylor wants to know what you call it when, on 28 October on US National Public Radio, a reporter called Libby Lewis brought the news about a likely indictment of the government official called Lewis Libby.
We are not at all sure 鈥� but at least it isn鈥檛 nominative determinism.