DRACULA dust. âDoes this class as fruitloopery or just insanity?â wonders Bob Sunman. By âthisâ he means the opportunity to purchase a sample of dust from Bran Castle in the Romanian province of Transylvania, home to Vlad the Impaler, inspiration for Count Dracula. To be more precise, the dust is said at (where else?) to come from the foot of the stairs at the castleâs main entrance, so there is, the vendors claim, âa 99.9 per cent chance that Dracula stepped on this landâ.
Having just reread the book by Bram Stoker, Feedback recalls that in at least 20 per cent of his castle exits, the Count preferred to climb down the walls, avoiding the stairs entirely.
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But maybe weâre nitpicking here. Leaving aside such pedantry, the dust is possibly a bargain at $22 for 5 grams, including delivery. But who is entitled to order it? âThe recipients are made,â the website says, âof sturdy plastic resembling glass so that anyone can get 100 per cent visibilityâŚâ That either rules us out as buyers, or it suggests that the Dracula dust people havenât fully mastered the English language.
âJohn Williams saw this offer in a catalogue: âScandinavian slippers â buy one get one freeâ. Do monopods get a discount?â
Chronic fire extinguisher revisited
TALKING of which, Feedback readers have been applying their minds to the possible origins of the claim made at a spa in Takayama, Japan, that a dip in the waters is good for âgimlet woundâ, âconvalescence convalescenceâ, âchronic woman diseaseâ and âchronic fire extinguisher diseaseâ (30 October).
Like us, they focus mainly on the last condition. Tom Lewis thinks it originated as âinflammationâ, and William Bains agrees. He expands with the hypothesis that a translation program may have used logic along something like these lines: âinflammationâ equals ânot flammationâ equals ânot fireâ equals âfire extinguisherâ. William says this is arguably more logical than our use of âinflammableâ to mean âcapable of burningâ.
Bryn Glover reaches a sort of opposite conclusion, suggesting a number of cycles through an automatic translation system leading from âasbestosisâ to âfire extinguisherâ, via âfire blanketâ.
Meanwhile, David Mackie points out that written Japanese uses, among other things, pictographs from Chinese. âChronic fire extinguisher diseaseâ, he suspects, derives from a misreading of the Chinese characters for âsho-kaâ, which phonetically could be either âfire extinguisherâ or âdigestive organâ. The translator probably meant âchronic bowel diseaseâ, he reasons. And Jim Ryan, who gives the pronunciation as âshoukakiâ, informs us that while the characters for âfire extinguisherâ literally read âdisappear-fire-deviceâ, those for âdigestive organâ read âdisappear-become-deviceâ which is sort of what it does to food.
THE US government was a pioneer in attempts to curb smoking, but now it is producing its own cigarettes â to fill a void left by a brand that has disappeared from the market.
Not long after the publication in 1964 of Smoking and Health: Report of the advisory committee to the Surgeon General, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology began tests aimed at dealing with another cigarette-related health hazard: that of causing fires if left to smoulder on mattresses and armchairs.
In its tests, NIST always used the cigarette brand that burned hottest. But hot-burning cigarettes. For just $239, it will sell furniture-makers 10 packs of its âStandard Cigarette for Ignition Resistance Testingâ so they can find out how fire-resistant their products are.
Oddly, NIST also makes another cigarette, the âCigarette Ignition Strength Standardâ, for sale to tobacco companies. It burns cool, and cigarette-makers have to test their products against it to ensure that their cigarettes are unlikely to start fires when left on furniture. One way or another, NIST has the market covered.
TWO readers, Steve Verdier and Ed Onslow, tell us with equal puzzlement of a dish featured on menus in the UKâs Wetherspoon pubs. They found the item in question, sweet potato, chickpea and spinach curry with poppadoms, described as âan award-winning dish, in a coconut sauce, with yellow basmati rice, naan bread, mango chutney and poppadums [sic]. This meal is suitable for vegansâ, they read, âif ordered with extra poppadumsâ.
âIn what way is this unsuitable for vegans without the extra poppadoms?â Steve asks. âWas the award made for discovering how a sufficiently large number of poppadoms can convert residual meat or dairy protein into vegetables?â
FINALLY, still on the subject of curries, Sarah Tallon reports receiving an email from Amazon telling her: âWeâve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars and More Dynamite Devices by William Gurstelle have also purchased Curry Easy by Madhur Jaffrey. For this reason, you might like to know that Curry Easy is now availableâŚâ
âJust how are curries related to exploâŚâ says Sarah, as enlightenment dawns.