WHEN Graham Ranson was searching for ways to improve reception on his smartphone, he was puzzled to find 鈥渢he Pinaki mobile broadband booster chip鈥� on offer from Orbital Radio Research ().
This gadget is the 鈥渨orld鈥檚 first table top echo friendly black hole broadband signal sucker鈥� and the 鈥渨orld鈥檚 first passive chip which can boost radio signal instantly鈥�.
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鈥淐an they be serious?鈥� Graham asked us.
We worked long and hard to try and understand the description of a 鈥渘ew way to trap energy鈥� and get 鈥渋nstant broadband everywhere鈥� by 鈥渟ucking huge amounts of scattered signal鈥� with a 鈥渘ano sized microwave signal absorber cum black hole single chip passive enhancer to boost the radio frequency signal to enhance the bandwidth鈥�.
Eventually, we gave up 鈥� and remembered something a harassed patent examiner once told us: 鈥淲e dread being asked to evaluate inventions that look like science fiction,鈥� he confided. 鈥淭he weirder the idea, the less chance we have finding any previous patents that would show it to be old, and the less chance we have of using established facts to prove it could never be made to work. What we really want to say to the inventor is, go away and build a prototype to prove it works. But patent law won鈥檛 let us do anything that sensible.鈥�
Fortunately, the rest of us are not shackled in that way, so we can say to Orbital Radio Research: 鈥淪how us a nano-sized device that sticks to a cellphone and makes it work better and faster.鈥�
This leaves just one problem: if it is nano-sized we won鈥檛 be able to see it, so we will be none the wiser.
Incomprehensible language of finance
THE language of high finance can also be difficult to understand. Idly browsing a free newspaper aimed at London鈥檚 financial folk, Feedback was startled to see, under the heading 鈥淔orex analyst picks鈥�, the following message from 鈥渟trategist鈥� Ilya Spivak: 鈥淚 have entered short Australian dollar-dollar at $1.0349.鈥�
What is he talking about? We are not sure, but we think he is offering to buy Australian dollars for the amount of US dollars quoted. Or perhaps he is offering to sell.
But why is he doing this? This decision came, apparently, 鈥渁fter the pair produced a bearish Dark Cloud Cover candlestick pattern below resistance at the top of a rising channel that has guided prices higher since October鈥�.
There is more, which we will spare you. We grant that Spivak might reasonably find a discussion of the regulation of the Sonic Hedgehog gene, for example, equally mystifying. But at least the geneticists would provide references, offering some hope of discovering at least what sort of thing 鈥淗edgehog regulating factor鈥� is. Spivak gives us no help in learning what sort of thing Dark Cloud Cover is, be it bearish or bullish.
We have our suspicions about the kind of thinking induced by staring at price charts too long. We are inescapably reminded of a study that involved a chimpanzee flinging its breakfast at the stock price pages of The Wall Street Journal. Notionally buying and selling the stocks hit by the food, it outperformed the New York Stock Exchange index and, indeed, more loquacious traders.
Unfortunately the only reference we can currently find to this experimental protocol is鈥� by Feedback (17 March 2007). Can readers help us out of our self-citation loop?
AN ADVERTISEMENT on the back cover of the May 2011 issue of consumer magazine Which? advises: 鈥淢ake sure you get it in writing.鈥� Tom Marlow adds 鈥渙r not鈥� to this, since the ad continues:鈥� Get unlimited legal advice from the qualified lawyers at Which? 鈥� by email and phone.鈥�
How many digital frames in a foot?
LAST week we discussed gestures that no longer represent the idea they are intended to convey (7 May). Martin Gardner notes that this can apply to words as well.
He gives the example of 鈥渇ootage鈥�, widely used to refer to film, as in 鈥淣ew footage of security forces鈥� crackdown in Syria鈥�.
Martin wonders how many digital frames there are to the foot.
FINALLY, David Harris points to the same phenomenon in relation to images. He gives two examples of road signs that are stuck in the past.
One of them concerns railway crossings in the UK that are marked with a , complete with puffs of smoke, although there probably hasn鈥檛 been a steam train on the mainline tracks for several decades.
The other example he gives is found on signs indicating nearby beauty spots, which include a depiction of a long-defunct type of box camera. We couldn鈥檛 find confirmation of this 鈥� but we did note that signs indicating an area where cameras are used to enforce traffic regulations in the UK, such as speed limits, show an ancient-looking .
You can see both these examples in the collection of UK road signs at .