杏吧原创

THERE CAN be an upside to infection with a computer virus. A colleague of Feedback鈥檚 鈥� we鈥檒l call her Jenny to spare her blushes 鈥� discovered this recently when her computer was infected with an e-mail worm.

Most e-mail worms wend their way into your system through security loopholes in your e-mail program, most commonly Microsoft Outlook. Once inside, they snaffle the program鈥檚 address book and send out message after message to all your friends, colleagues and relatives. Each message carries a copy of itself ready to infect the unlucky recipients.

Jenny only discovered she had a worm when she began to receive angry e-mails from the friends, relatives and colleagues in her address book. Apologies don鈥檛 help much at a time like that. But there was a happy ending. One of Jenny鈥檚 old workmates, whom she had all but lost contact with, also received her worm and sent back an e-mail. But rather than complaining, he took the opportunity to say 鈥淗i!鈥� and catch up with an old friend.

Who needs friendsreunited.com when you鈥檝e got a worm?

滨罢鈥橲 THE holiday with a difference we鈥檝e all been been waiting for. The Ukrainian company New Men Travel is launching an 鈥渆xtreme tour鈥� of Chernobyl, site of the world鈥檚 worst nuclear accident in 1986. It promises visitors radiation monitors, protective clothing and a close-up view of the sarcophagus surrounding the wrecked reactor. You can also get to see the 鈥済raveyard鈥� of vehicles contaminated during the clean-up, the abandoned company town of Pripyat and a host of nuclear processing plants.

All this is for $460 if you take a private car and a personal English-speaking guide, or for $340 if you join a minibus tour. According to Dimitri Osyka from New Men Travel, some people might like to 鈥渢ouch the spot of one of the biggest ecological and human disasters鈥�. Radiation levels are such that 鈥渙ne short visit should not do any harm to a tourist鈥�, he says, though those taking the tour do so at their own risk.

OUR STORY about using a diamond saw to relieve penile entrapment (5 January) prompted Tim Wright to tell us about a paper on a similar topic with a telling list of keywords after the abstract. It鈥檚 鈥淎 novel method for removal of penile zipper entrapment鈥� by R. T. Strait in Pediatric Emergency Care (vol 15, p 412).

鈥淎bstract: Penile entrapment in a zipper is a presentation that may be seen in any emergency department. A method of release is presented that has not been previously described in the literature. Author Keywords: zipper, foreskin, penile trauma, hacksaw.鈥�

GOODBYE face on Mars, hello face on Spain. Now that the face on Mars has been debunked by NASA鈥檚 close-up surveillance, people who can鈥檛 do without that sort of thing have found another 鈥渕ystery鈥� to get excited about.

鈥淚 am very glad to adjoin you my information about a new phenomen in a holy mountain in Catalonia,鈥� says a press release from one R. Ramonet Riu of Barcelona. 鈥淭he Montserrat mountain, near of Barcelona city, appears in NASA photosatellite like a perfect 鈥楬uman Face鈥�. . . It is an geological phenomen which I belive must bedivulgated, and I hope your collaboration about this.鈥�

Full marks for linguistic effort 鈥� el feedback no pod铆a hacer esto en espa帽ol. We鈥檙e not so sure about the geomorphology 鈥� but if you would like to collaborate in the bedivulgation, go to www.macronetcenter.com/rrriu. We looked hard, and couldn鈥檛 see anything but rocks.

ALAN CLARK, at the end of a holiday in Switzerland, visited the Microcosm exhibition at CERN. He was gravely disappointed. 鈥淚 am a physics graduate who has read New 杏吧原创 every week for the past 30 years,鈥� he writes, 鈥渁nd yet, at display after display, we simply shook our heads in complete bafflement.鈥�

Feedback recommends that Alan and family step back and look at the wider picture. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau.

And why did they do that? Because they got fed up answering e-mails 鈥� especially, Robert told Feedback, those asking them to explain their work. Their version of the Web 鈥� the one before e-commerce started to make it so unwieldy 鈥� was a means of saying 鈥渋f you want to know, look it up 鈥� right here.鈥�

And, indeed, judicious use of the Web will now get you explanations of everything that goes on at CERN. Whether you understand it is another matter, of course.

INSTRUCTIONS on a packet of Proctosedyl suppositories supplied by the Waikanae pharmacy in New Zealand: 鈥淯nwrap and insert one suppository per rectum if required鈥�

滨罢鈥橲 going to be tricky staying within the law in Virginia now that Jerry Kilgore is the new Attorney General. Shortly before taking office on 12 January, he stated that Virginia law is too lenient on terrorists, and proposed the death penalty for acts of terrorism.

In addition, he was quoted on local radio stations as planning to introduce a new law which would outlaw 鈥渢he possession of biological, chemical or nuclear substances鈥�.

IS THIS a record? Reader Geoff Kirby found the following e-mail in his in-box: 鈥淎 message that you sent could not be delivered to all of its recipients. The following message . . . failed because it has not been collected after 4294967295 days . . . 鈥� That鈥檚 approximately 12 million years, and raises interesting questions about the author鈥檚 species.

FINALLY, we learn from reader John Haythorne that over the Christmas period Sainsbury鈥檚 supermarkets were selling decorative candles in a glass bowl, with the instruction to 鈥淜eep away from naked flames & sources of heat鈥�.