THE powers that be at Guy Robinsonâs place of work insist that employees tell the office if theyâre âworking from homeâ. Human laziness being what it is â sorry, we meant to say âthe employees being committed to maximising productivity in a forward-looking senseâ â the welter of emails on Monday mornings got shortened to the three letters âWFHâ. Then someone was stuck working at an airport and sent the message âWFAâ.
Then, given the insistence by the virus that is language on mutating whenever possible, the changes poured in and escaped the limitations of the alphabet: âWFTâ working on a train, âWF\__â working from a sunlounger (not being smug or anything) and âWF\_O__/â working from a plane (ditto).
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Guyâs colleagues suggest âWF#â for âworking from prisonâ, but they have not needed to use this, yet. Feedback suggests a few others: âWF=====â for working at a linear accelerator and âWF() â -()â for working in a laser lab (with lenses).
Now the phenomenon just needs a sciency name. It has to be âergotopographyâ, from the Greek words for âworkâ, âplaceâ and âwritingâ. Do readers have more examples â preferably those captured in the wild, as it were?
ââWho needs eyes anyway?â asks David Smith, sending us a photo of a packet of Jean Pierre Cosmetics âEye & Make-up Removerâ cleansing towelettesâ
Weapons of microscopic destruction
METAPHOR and simile are essential tools for those who need to describe science and technology in human-readable form. But the fact that their audience is composed of significant numbers of Feedback readers means that science writers may need to think harder than the average metaphor merchant.
Nanotechnology, for example, is a very big word for very small things. So small that when the Science Daily website asked researcher Ting Xu to explain his technique for making nanothings stand up in a regular pattern, he resorted to simile: âItâs one thing to get dozens of soldiers to stand in perfect formation in an area the size of a classroom, each person equidistant from the other,â Xu said, âbut quite another to get tens of trillions of individuals to do so on the field in a football stadium.â
Julian Moore, who spotted this, did what Feedback readers do and reached for a calculator. âAssuming an American football field of 109.7 metres by 48.8 metres,â he begins, âoccupied by only 10 trillion soldiersâŚâ Omitting the workings-out, we have agreed with him that Xuâs metaphorical soldiers turn out to be a mere 160 micrometres tall.
âPresumably,â Julian concludes, âthese soldiers will need weapons of microscopic destruction.â
Do not remove except when removing
WHEN her local pharmacy was closed, Izzy Hanson had to take her prescription further afield and found herself with a Ventolin Evohaler, a model of asthma inhaler she was unfamiliar with.
Ever cautious in these matters, she thought she should read . Now she rather wishes she hadnât. Halfway down page 2 column 1, she came to step 2 of âCleaning your inhalerâ. This cautions: âDo not remove the metal canister from the plastic casing at any time.â Opposite, in column 2, the section on âHow to store Ventolin Evohalerâ advises: âIf the inhaler gets very cold, take the metal canister out of the plastic case and warm it in your hands for a few minutes before use.â Is that clear?
DENYING him coverage for genetic testing, Allen Lutinsâs insurance agency wrote to inform him: âThe information received indicates that the member does not meet the following criteria: personal history of breast cancer and at least one close male blood relative with breast cancer or epithelial ovarian cancer.â
Sadly, men can indeed get breast cancer. But, Allen asks, has anyone had a male relative diagnosed with ovarian cancer?
from the Institute of Psychiatry at Kingâs College London announces research suggesting that âkeeping the brain active by working later in life reduces the risk of developing Alzheimerâs disease at a younger ageâ.
Feedback is left wondering: if it can do that, why canât it allow you to make extra pension contributions in the past as well? But then you might end up not working laterâŚ
TURKEY breasts, said the advert Alan Rumsey spotted in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, contain only 0.9 per cent saturated fat per 100 grams. So what would the percentage be, he asks, if he ate only 10 grams, or pigged out on 200 grams?
FINALLY, Jill Sakai was impressed by the way news agency UPI sexed up the press release she sent out about an ocean drilling project whose goal is to access the subduction zone earthquake faults that cause the largest magnitude earthquakes and can generate tsunamis. The agencyâs of the story announced âthe first geologic study of underwater seduction zone faults that produce mega-thrust earthquakesâ. Sadly, somebody noticed and the wording has now been changed.