鈥淐AUTION鈥�, reads the sign that Sofia Graves photographed at an information office in Pincher Creek, a small town in Alberta, Canada. 鈥淭his sign has sharp edges. Do not touch the edges of this sign.鈥� Sofia remarks that she has seen 鈥渕any pointless and contradictory signs 鈥� but none whose existence created danger鈥�.
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Investigating, we find that the these same words, with the addition of a second phrase, in small type: 鈥淎lso, the bridge is out ahead.鈥�
So can we thank a highway engineer fed up with warning signs being ignored? Or one hoping for a mention in Feedback? Finding only copies of a single image does makes us wonder whether it might instead be a cleverly manipulated photo.
We also find companies of the sign to be attached to office cubicles for humorous purposes. Inspecting the pixels, we suspect the sign Sofia photographed is a home-made version of these.
The email Paul Maclean received from Material Recycling World magazine was headed 鈥淩ubbish news you can trust鈥�. Paul鈥檚 email security system classified it as 鈥渏unk mail鈥�
INFORMED of these doubts, Sofia responded with another photo, taken in an antique shop in London. 鈥淓dwardian CD/DVD storage unit,鈥� it proudly announces. 鈥淭his could change the history books,鈥� she observes.
(For readers resident in republics, that would be the history of the reign of Edward VII, 1901-1910.)
鈥淣OW 78p鈥� reads the label on the lump of cheese with apricot pieces that Tim Adlam is holding in the photo he sends from his local Tesco supermarket. At that price, we immediately suspect the 鈥渂est before鈥� date is imminent. But it鈥檚 stranger than that. The sticker continues: 鈥淒o not use.鈥� Why? 鈥淧roduct does not exist.鈥�
We started imagining how this might have come about, but our brain informed us firmly that anything we might know about shelf-stacking and stock control was going to remain a repressed memory.
So we鈥檙e left wondering about the label from a consumer鈥檚 point of view. Is non-existent food the next big thing in weight loss? If Tim had scanned the barcode, would the entire supermarket chain have undergone a 鈥渂lue screen鈥� crash?
Or could this paradoxical product be the secret key to tunnelling into the real reality, the one outside supermarket-world? We can but hope.
MEANWHILE, Mike Martin sends a photo of a sign on the Camperdown campus of the University of Sydney, Australia, which very neatly and elegantly announces: 鈥淪ign under repair.鈥�
There was no clue what repairs were required, and a few days later it vanished, possibly into a logical maelstrom.
AND while we鈥檙e obsessing about signs again, David Ivory notes that he has seen several signs near where he lives in Warwickshire, UK, saying 鈥淪trictly Private鈥�. He wonders if any readers have been lucky enough to find a 鈥淔airly Private鈥� or 鈥淢oderately Private鈥� sign in their travels.
IT IS amazing what magnets can do. Philip Hanser recently ran across an advert for a 鈥溾��, which sells for a mere $59.95.
鈥淲hy would anyone want to accelerate their ageing?鈥� you may wonder. But the ageing referred to here is that of wine, which is universally considered A Good Thing.
So how does it work? The advert claims that 鈥淓xtremely powerful Neodymium magnets in the Vintage Express realign particles in beverages. So wine in a glass shows noticeable improvement in just a few minutes.鈥�
This sounded like familiar fruitloopery, but then we remembered a report in these very pages on 鈥淗ow to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage鈥� using not magnets but electric fields (20/27 December 2008, p 58). Has any reader tried either of these?
FINALLY, let us record the ways in which certain newspapers misunderstood the announcement on 6 February of a newly found largest prime number.
鈥淎lthough of little significance,鈥� UK paper the Daily Mail 鈥渉ave long fascinated amateur and professionals and the discovery of a new one is a badge of honour in mathematical circles鈥�. Er, no. Richard Mallett was just one of those who pointed out that prime numbers are central to the entire and much-vaunted internet economy, through their role in encryption and hence online payments.
And Pui Wah Carter writes of his son Peter鈥檚 response to the UK Independent 苍别飞蝉辫补辫别谤鈥檚 that 鈥淓ven the most powerful computers struggle to work out the factors of a large prime number鈥�.
Peter thinks he could work out the factors of any given prime number, even without the help of a computer. (For any readers who bunked off school that day: the definition of a prime number is that its only factors are itself and 1.)