Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Weight of evidence of error
MUPHRY鈥橲 Law holds, as regular readers may recall, that whenever one criticises editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written. It appears to have the power to propagate errors to texts adjacent in space and time (29 March). So it is with some trepidation that we turn to Peter Henderson鈥檚 report of , a newspaper, on 22 October, discussing overfishing.
Unsurprisingly to readers of this column, taking larger fish, including predators, allows small fry to thrive. The piece says of the big fish that 鈥淭heir volume 鈥� by weight 鈥� has fallen by 67 per cent in the past century鈥�.
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Peter supposes that 鈥渋t makes a change from the oft-heard 鈥榲olume of calls鈥� and 鈥榓mount of people'鈥�.
鈥淧rivate company launches Antares Rocket to ISS,鈥� Fox News announced on 27 October. A while later, as problems emerged: 鈥淯nmanned NASA cargo rocket explodes on launchpad.鈥� They clearly know who to praise and who to blame
Reviewers鈥� proofread fail
THE Independent newspaper is not the only organisation to have got rid of many of its subeditors or copy-editors 鈥� the people whose job includes, or included, ensuring that writers鈥� work is original, but not more original than reality. A subeditor colleague forwards on about discussing the sociability of fish.
It includes this: 鈥淎lthough association preferences documented in our study theoretically could be a consequence of either mating or shoaling preferences in the different female groups investigated (should we cite the crappy X paper here?), shoaling preferences are unlikely drivers鈥︹��
Feedback has redacted the name of the author of the paper that went uncited, until such time as we can retro-review it.
Comet closer than we think
INEXORABLY, The Independent raises its head again. Craig Borland mentions a story that, if true, would suggest that the difficulty of putting the Philae lander onto a comet was overstated. On 15 November, the paper that 鈥渟cientists were quick to expound the overall success of the mission lander鈥� on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 311 miles away from Earth.鈥� Surely 311 miles (by coincidence, almost exactly 500 kilometres) is within the writer鈥檚 experience? It鈥檚 about twice the length of Wales. Or do horizontal distances not mentally convert to the vertical without training? Feedback has forgotten what it was like not to know.
Plucky little lander plot
PHILAE generated a gratifying amount of interest and publicity for solar system exploration. The plot of the plucky little lander鈥檚 lone battle with the lack of gravity obviously helped.
Newspapers gave constant updates. A truncated example of one Tweet turned out slightly prophetic. Andy Coleman sends a snapshot of the on 12 November, relaying a message from the Daily Mirror newspaper: 鈥淲atch the Rosetta probe landing LIVE with our coverage of its historic miss.鈥� The Agency replied, very officially: 鈥淍Philae2014 right a bit;)鈥� If only鈥�
That rocket鈥檚 red glare
SIMILAR thoughts inspired Malcolm Muckle to send an image from a famous Street View service of the UK鈥檚 M1 motorway near Leicester. It shows a sign indicating that tourists should take the next exit for the National Space Centre. Above this is another sign, reading 鈥淧ark and Ride鈥�.
Interestingly (at least to anyone who shares Feedback鈥檚 fascination with the iconography of road signs) the attractions of the National Space Centre are illustrated by the outline of a V-2 rocket (6 September, p 48).
They took rockets for a walk
THAT image of a V-2 reminds Feedback of the less-savoury side of space research. Feedback has previously noted the odd connection between Thomas Pynchon鈥檚 mammoth 1973 novel and the history of rocketry (1 March). One of the thousands of plot strands is the suggestion that the British authorities deliberately 鈥渨alked鈥� the Vergeltungswaffen 鈥� 鈥渞evenge weapons鈥� 鈥� away from their west London homes and toward those of our ancestors in the east.
Surely this was an example of those universal Pynchon themes, paranoia and conspiratorial thinking? No. We find in Christy Campbell鈥檚 2013 book references to documents in the UK Public Record Office detailing the plan. It included placing fake obituaries into newspapers in north-west London, just in case the Nazis monitored these to find out where the rockets fell, concluded that they had overshot and shortened their missiles鈥� range. It worked.
A baby elephant far, far away
FINALLY, plucky little lander Philae got a cuddly metaphor to help the story along. Lawrence Moulin reports The Guardian newspaper on 6 August describing it as 鈥渉aving the same weight as 鈥榓 newborn elephant'鈥�. The vagaries of retroactive subediting online seem to have removed this from the website: but it is preserved welcoming 鈥渁 new addition to the Guardian weights and measures lexicon鈥�.
Lawrence notes Feedback鈥檚 observation that the elephant is already a universal unit (2 June 2012). He envisages a standard elephant kept carefully in Paris. The practice of keeping standard masses in a vacuum may, though, have to be rethought.