YOU too can be the proud owner of an Obox Personal Oxygen Generator. It 鈥減rovides up to 150 per cent of the body鈥檚 normal oxygen requirement via a headset鈥�, and 鈥渟upplies negatively charged ions to replicate clean forest air鈥�.
Why do we need to spend 拢150 on one of these things? According to the website , on which the Obox generator is for sale, 鈥淚n this ever changing world oxygen is dramatically decreasing鈥︹��
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Yes, folks, it鈥檚 that old chestnut again 鈥� the same one we exposed on 3 September 2005 in relation to a skin cream called Neaclear that supposedly contains 鈥渓iquid oxygen鈥�. Let鈥檚 say it again: this world may be 鈥渆ver changing鈥�, but one thing about it that doesn鈥檛 change is its oxygen content, which has remained stable at around 21 per cent for at least 3 million years.
What鈥檚 more, the vast majority of us get all the oxygen we need by a technique known as breathing. This doesn鈥檛 cost us anything at all.
INSPIRED by our investigation into streets with no name (11 February), and having long been intrigued by the existence near his house of a street named Avenue Road, Richard Davis undertook a bit of stochastic blue-sky research. This soon uncovered the even more interestingly named Street Lane Road, serendipitously located in the village with the longest name in England: North Leverton with Habblesthorpe, in Nottinghamshire.
Davis was so pleased with this discovery in his native county that he decided give Street Lane Road a personal inspection 鈥� but when he reached it, he found that its surface was not at all good. The further he drove, the worse it got 鈥� to the point where his car got firmly stuck in deep mud.
鈥溾�漈he new way to shop for men鈥pen 24/7, free shipping,鈥� proclaims an online ad. Amy Anderson was disappointed to find it pointed to a site selling men鈥檚 clothing鈥�
He was obliged to call the RAC rescue service for assistance, but when the RAC patrol van arrived it too quickly became stuck. With darkness coming on, Davis and the RAC man managed to push the van back to firmer ground, but had to leave Davis鈥檚 car overnight and recruit a farmer with a tractor to rescue it the next day.
The moral to this story would seem to be that research into repetitive nomenclature is best left to the virtual world. So we were concerned when David Sykes wrote to tell us about Green Lane Avenue, Street 鈥� the last being the name of the town in the west of England where Green Lane Avenue is to be found. Our advice to Sykes? Don鈥檛 go there.
AS BIRD flu continues to wing its way around the globe, the optimists who suggest you can cure it with fermented cabbage 鈥� whether spicy Korean kimchi or European sauerkraut (Feedback, 26 November 2005) 鈥� have delivered yet another boon to pandemic-prone humanity. LG Electronics of South Korea now sells an air conditioner with a filter containing Leuconostoc citreum, the bacterium mainly responsible for fermenting kimchi. LG says its machine will not fill the room with that unmistakable kimchi aroma, but will nevertheless kill the bird flu virus.
Unfortunately, people actually catch flu from droplets sneezed no more than 2 or 3 metres away, or by touching things that have been sneezed on or 鈥� especially if the source was a bird 鈥� pooped on. So even if kimchi did kill the bird flu virus, air conditioners spiked with it are unlikely to make a great deal of difference.
MEANWHILE in Africa, the latest continent to be invaded by the bird flu virus, an unexpected means of catching bird flu threatens voodoo priests who sacrifice chickens during rituals by ripping the birds鈥� throats out 鈥� with their teeth. According to Reuters, officials from the Benin agriculture ministry hope that spreading the word about bird flu may help save the lives of voodoo devotees. It鈥檚 just one of the ways in which cherished habits may have to change if a flu pandemic is to be avoided.
NEEDING examples of 鈥淢ercian art鈥� 鈥� most of which is found in the form of carvings and sculpture in Anglo-Saxon churches 鈥� David Mills typed 鈥淢ercian Church Art鈥� into Google. He says the search engine suggested he may have meant Martian Church Art. Those missionaries get everywhere鈥�
FINALLY, web searches reveal a common comparison used to illustrate the volume of the Pacific Ocean: namely, that it is equal to the volume of the moon. Its appearance on such respectable sites as lends it credibility. But it seemed odd enough to prompt a colleague to blow the dust off his calculator and ancient geometry book and do some actual calculations.
The Pacific has an area of 180 million square kilometres and an average depth of 4.27 kilometres, giving a volume of roughly 770 million cubic kilometres. The moon鈥檚 radius is 1738 kilometres, and plugging that figure into the standard formula for the volume of a sphere gives a lunar volume of roughly 22 billion cubic kilometres. That鈥檚 well over an order of magnitude more voluminous than the Pacific, and it took longer to find the formula and the calculator than to perform the calculations. Has nobody tried this before?