REMEMBER when the joke was that on the internet, no one knows you鈥檙e a dog? Perhaps that should now be changed to: no one knows for sure if you鈥檙e a raving loon. We keep stumbling upon and puzzling over web pages like 鈥� which reports that the US government secretly holds the fossilised remains of a flying saucer that crashed 150 million years ago, complete with the decomposed remains of its alien pilots.
That might make an interesting science fiction tale, but it鈥檚 written as a news story, and it鈥檚 not on a tongue-in-cheek website like . It鈥檚 on a site called American Chronicle, which publishes a blend of news and the writings of unpaid columnists. Is it a hoax, the product of someone with too much time on their hands, the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist, sheer madness, or a meta-conspiracy to distract us all from the vital 鈥淔ace on Mars鈥� question?
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How can we tell? Not having too much time on our hands, we leave this as an exercise for the reader.
鈥淎 brochure for a research symposium at the University of Maryland states: 鈥淧lease note: We鈥檝e gone paperless.鈥� Mike Adams was left wondering what he was holding鈥�
UNPACKING his new printer, Rob Bogue encountered a packet bearing a warning beginning with the familiar 鈥淢ay contain鈥︹�� No, not traces of nuts. It was: 鈥減roducts from Switzerland鈥�. Feedback is as puzzled as Rob over how to take this news: 鈥淗ow would I know 鈥� and what should I do?鈥� he asks.
鈥淭HE average termite eats 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,鈥� according to a TV ad for insect-control services seen by Jim Shilliday. He was impressed, and points out that since no termite could ever eat more than 24/7, it follows that no termites eat less, as this would reduce the average.
He says this could be good news, because if all termites eat all the time, they can have no time left over for sex 鈥� in which case there will be no need to call in the insect control services.
LAWYERS, Feedback suspects, have been at work on the web page , where it is written: 鈥淓ye protection and gloves should be worn during lamp changing or handling鈥� Placing [the lamps] in a suitable container protecting them from accidental mechanical breakage or scratching, will avoid glass fracture and possible ejected fragments.鈥� Jan Rockett is sceptical of the need for this advice. He asks: 鈥淲hen one of their own house bulbs goes, do they rush for the goggles?鈥� And they don鈥檛 even remind us not to stick our fingers in the socket.
FURTHER exploration of the legal niceties of eco-friendly lighting took Jan Rockett to the terms and conditions on , a site set up by Northcliffe, owners of London鈥檚 Daily Mail and many other newspapers. Apparently they鈥檙e going to solicit user comments, and it looks like they鈥檝e got lawyers too.
The site declares: 鈥淏y submitting any material to us, you: automatically grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable licence to use, reproduce, modify, edit, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such material (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content.鈥� So your words are utterly and completely all theirs.
Professional contributors to printed publications 鈥� including this one 鈥� expect this sort of thing, but we鈥檝e never come across it before in a blog.
The stinger for would-be green switchers may, however, be the next bit: you also 鈥渨aive all your moral rights in such materials鈥�. In English, that means they can change your writing in any way they want and use it without credit, and you have no comeback. Or, as they may prefer to say, they can 鈥渞ecycle鈥� it in their newspapers.
SPAM filters have a drawback in that you can never be sure they aren鈥檛 blocking real messages. Fergal Dalton鈥檚 workplace recently started using the Ironport anti-spam software, which sends a daily report of all the email it has blocked 鈥� so he can spend time double-checking the list. He was quite pleased when he discovered that the spam filter had started blocking its own daily reports, and he鈥檚 fully confident that it鈥檚 doing all the double-checking for him before it rejects itself.
FINALLY 鈥� if not at the end of civilisation itself 鈥� we thank R. J. Driscoll for providing Feedback鈥檚 award for probably true but quite sickening research paper title of the week. In 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the test of the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear bomb, the journal Physics-Uspekhi (vol 48, p 1187) published G. A. Goncharov鈥檚 opus: 鈥淭he extraordinarily beautiful physical principle of the thermonuclear charge design鈥�.