MISTS and mellow fruitfulness are the marks of this season in northern latitudes, so clear the mists from your mind and start feeling fruitful because the time has come to announce the Feedback end-of-year competition.
Our theme this year is time travel. When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was about to go into operation, some physicists speculated that it might attract visitors from the future (New 杏吧原创, 9 February, p 32, and Feedback, 5 April). For our competition, we ask you to imagine three such visitors arriving, each bringing glad tidings and bearing a gift from the future. What would the gifts be?
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Ten lucky winners will each receive a copy of Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel by Michio Kaku. They will also receive a selection of New 杏吧原创 goodies 鈥� including books from the Last Word series and a pen-drive.
You may enter the competition online. You can also enter by email 鈥� with 鈥淐ompetition鈥� in the subject field, please 鈥� or by fax or post.
The competition closes on Monday 1 December and no entries will be accepted after that date. The results will be published in the 20/27 December issue of New 杏吧原创. The editor鈥檚 decision is final. Happy imaginings!
鈥淭he letter from the Zest for Life gym received by Phil Price warns him: 鈥淵our membership is due to expire on 09/09/2090.鈥� That makes 82 years of zestful living before renewal becomes necessary鈥�
EXCITING news reaches New 杏吧原创 in a message promoting 鈥渁 three day event called 鈥楨volve Your Brain鈥� 鈥� The Science of Changing Your Mind鈥�. It is taking place this very weekend (14 to 16 November) at King鈥檚 College, London. And who would not want to discover, after millennia of fruitless enquiry, 鈥渢he relationship between thought and the physical body鈥� and 鈥淗ow disease is created鈥�?
The message offers to send us a resum茅 of the credentials of the speaker, one Joe Dispenza. Thanks, but we鈥檒l take a look for ourselves. At we discover a website promoting the film What the Bleep Do We Know? 鈥� reviewed in New 杏吧原创 with the conclusion that it 鈥渟hort-changes the public with drivel鈥� (16 April 2005, p 55). The site also seems to be trying to co-opt to its cause 鈥� whatever that may be 鈥� the work of Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who has spoken inspiringly about her recovery after she suffered a very severe stroke (19 April, p 42).
Dispenza, the site tells us, 鈥渞eceived his Doctor of Chiropractic degree at Live University in Atlanta, Georgia, US鈥�. He promotes his self-help books on the back of his appearance in the film, whose credits lead us to its origins with the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, and the circle of one J. Z. Knight, who says she 鈥渃hannels鈥� a 35,000-year-old mystic named Ramtha, and so on.
The event, the message says, 鈥渋s full of scienfific [sic] research for the attendees to draw their own conclusions from鈥�. A bargain at 拢199. More on the intriguing field of 鈥渟cienfific research鈥� may well appear here shortly.
HARD-TO-BELIEVE product claim of the week: the bottle of mineral water Leo Condron saw for sale in New Zealand told him: 鈥淗ydrate Faster: micro water 鈥� a reduced size of hydrogen clusters more rapidly hydrates the body-cells.鈥�
JUST another phishing scam, Feedback first thought on receiving an email entitled 鈥淏ank of America Internet Banking Security Alert鈥�. But for some uncanny reason we glanced at the hidden address behind this message that was trying to get hold of our most intimate bank details.
We were somewhat surprised to find the scam apparently hosted at . That鈥檚 the home of Boston Paranormal Investigators, formed 鈥渢o promote research into all aspects of the paranormal 鈥� hauntings, UFOs, parapsychology, and any other topics that fit under this 鈥榰mbrella'鈥�.
Scammers often hide their scams on compromised servers: it seems these scammers just happened to hack into the world of the paranormal. A little famous-search-engine-ing indicates that Boston Paranormal is a harmless-seeming bunch of would-be ghostbusters. Did they irritate some phantom phisherfolk into setting up a scam on their website in retaliation? Unlikely.
FINALLY, when Daphne Watkins wanted to open a savings account with the UK Post Office, she received a letter from Richard Norman, director of savings and investments, telling her that 鈥渁 number of changes鈥� had been made and 鈥淭hese changes are based on customer feedback鈥�.
The first change mentioned in the letter was: 鈥淔or cheques paid in at a Post Office you will be able to withdraw the proceeds two days earlier.鈥�
Denis Watkins, who told us about this, comments: 鈥淗ow good to know that the Post Office is responding to the wishes of its customers鈥� 鈥� and that it is doing its bit to un-crunch credit.