Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Holy breadsticks
IDLY studying a packet of Sainsbury鈥檚 grissini breadsticks, Chris McManus noted with approval that they were 鈥淭orinesi grissini鈥�, so presumably from Turin. But the small print on the back says 鈥淧roduced in Italy (incl. Vatican City)鈥�.
鈥淒oesn鈥檛 that suddenly transform both the Vatican and these humble breadsticks?鈥� Chris observes. 鈥淲ho would have thought that bakers toil at the back of St Peter鈥檚, hand-rolling grissini?鈥� Then: 鈥淎re these, perhaps, Holy Grissini?鈥�
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Sainsbury鈥檚 uses the slogan 鈥淭aste the Difference鈥�. Surely, Chris, we should be able to tell whether the grissini are holy.
Surely some mistake? A press release from the University of Alberta announces: 鈥淯 Alberta teams with citizen researchers 370 light years from Earth鈥�
Instant phone response
OUR mention of a colleague receiving a phone call helpfully labelled as originating from 鈥淢arketing Fraud鈥� (18 May) prompts Steve Swift to tell how he puzzled a caller by picking up the phone and instantly telling her she had the wrong number.
It turned out that she had called him before, seeking a nearby shop whose telephone number differs from Steve鈥檚 only in swapping two digits. Steve saved her number, labelled 鈥淲rong Number鈥�, to his phone鈥檚 memory 鈥� so when she called again he was immediately able to put her right.
However, our colleague insists he doesn鈥檛 know how to program his landline phone to associate names with numbers. So the 鈥淢arketing Fraud鈥� label must have come from the caller or some intermediate service 鈥� unless, our colleague suggests, 鈥渟omebody at the phone company was messing with them鈥�.
Appealing to the gullible
READER Tony Green has another idea on why callers might identify themselves as 鈥淢arketing Fraud鈥�. Might this be yet more support for the theory put forward by Cormac Hurley in his paper 鈥淲hy do Nigerian scammers say they are from Nigeria?鈥� 鈥� namely that would-be fraudsters want to hear only from the truly, deeply gullible (13 April, and 21 July 2012)?
Blinding with 鈥渄igibabble鈥�
BLINDING with pseudoscience is a sure-fire way to get a few confused souls to part with their cash, as most Feedback columns attest. Chris Mullard alerts us to a sub-genre which we shall call 鈥渄igibabble鈥�.
The site purveys products that purport to boost a car鈥檚 performance by dealing with electromagnetic interference to engine control units (ECUs). 鈥淵our engine ECU functions in a similar way to how a home computer downloads data from the Internet,鈥� the site . 鈥淣oise and error correction protocols can drop speed to as little as 300 cycles per second.鈥�
Eh? It鈥檚 not clear what鈥檚 inside the 鈥減oured stone concrete material鈥� encasing a Shakti Electromagnetic Stabilizer, though hints at crystals. It鈥檚 a snip at $230, we鈥檙e sure.
Chris Two Metres calls
SMARTPHONES are wonderful things. Rowland Coles shortens people鈥檚 names and uses surname initials when he stores a number on his, adding 鈥渕鈥� for mobile and 鈥渉鈥� for home number. Stupid phones also allow that 鈥� but only a smart one announces the caller鈥檚 shortened name in an authoritative voice that reminds him of a Path茅 newsreel film.
One friend with a second mobile number, tagged 鈥淐hris 2m鈥�, gets announced as 鈥淐hris Two Metres鈥�, and the name has stuck in the outside world. Keith Wells鈥檚 entry, 鈥淜W home鈥�, comes booming out as 鈥淜ilowatt Home鈥�. Have any other readers encountered hardware that tries this hard to understand?
Hot air from water
THERE鈥橲 a mug born every minute, as the British saying has it. But we鈥檙e not sure whether the proprietors of were the mugs or the muggers.
Their website has disappeared since Andy Bebbington鈥檚 eye was caught by their offer of kits that would use power from your car鈥檚 battery to generate hydrogen and oxygen from water, then feed a mixture of the two gases into the air intake.
Andy鈥檚 brother Perry writes: 鈥淎s far as I can see this is an elaborate perpetual-motion machine. The only thing it can do is increase fuel consumption.鈥� The website , but had a suspicious lack of the spurious science we expect from scammers.
The business appeared to be based in a residence in an unprepossessing area of London. Did the owners think better of their trade, or is there another tale here?
Skeuomorph conundrum
FINALLY. Feedback has long been fascinated with anachronistic representations for technology, such as a picture of a bookshelf in an ebooks app. These, we discovered, may be called skeuomorphs (9 September 2011).
So what, Serge Rosenberg wants to know, is the name of the class of object shown in the photo he sends. It is an old-fashioned phone that faithfully reproduces the landline handset icon found on the buttons you jab at to 鈥減ick up鈥� or 鈥減ut down鈥� a call on a cellphone. So what do you call something real that is based on a skeuomorph? Might it be an antiskeuomorph? Or should we just call it 鈥淎rt鈥�?