Clearing the air
PICKING up bad vibrations? While cruising at 30,000 feet, Tom Reeve鈥檚 daughter spotted a curious item in Virgin Atlantic鈥檚 in-flight shopping magazine: a bracelet from watchmaker Philip Stein, designed to protect the wearer from 鈥渦nnatural frequencies鈥�.
鈥淔ortunately, I have my trusty tinfoil hat, which protects me during the day,鈥� says Tom, 鈥渂ut it is rather tricky to keep on at night, so perhaps I will splurge on this piece of fruitloopery.鈥�
Advertisement
Music malady
Feedback would like to investigate Philip Stein鈥檚 claim that exposure to its sleep bracelet increased melatonin production in human cell cultures, yet we find ourselves distracted by a competing theory on 鈥渦nnatural frequencies鈥� uncovered online: a global conspiracy surrounding the musical note A.
Proponents claim that the currently agreed standard for A, 440Hz, generates discord in humans. This property is at odds with Verdi tuning, where A is set to 432Hz, a frequency that is 鈥渕athematically consistent with the universe鈥� and transmits healing energy. The adoption of the 440Hz pitch standard, we are told, must have been directed by a shadowy cabal intent on generating strife through the weaponisation of music.
鈥淎llan Reese is told by a fashion editor on BBC Radio 4: 鈥淲e鈥檙e in this era now where we see trends trickle from the ground up.鈥濃��
Spaghetti function
PASTAFARIANS in the German city of Templin need never miss noodle service again. City officials have agreed to allow the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to add its own signage to official notices advertising the times of other local church services.
Four signs directing citizens to 鈥�Nudelmesse鈥� have been erected around the town, much to the consternation of evangelical pastor Ralf-G眉nther Schein. 鈥淭hese absolutely are not church services,鈥� he grumbled to . 鈥淲hat they do is a circus.鈥�
Pasta persecution
WHAT the Flying Spaghetti Monster giveth, however, he also taketh away: Nebraska inmate Stephen Cavanaugh was denied constitutional protection of his carbohydrate-based faith after a judge ruled that Pastafarianism was more parody than religion. means that the Nebraska State Penitentiary will not have to bow to Cavanaugh鈥檚 demands that he dress as a pirate and wear a colander on his head, as the tenets of his belief prescribe.
Cut offs
PATRICK FENLON asks: 鈥淚s there a term for sentences on web pages that are truncated in an interesting way?鈥� He gives the example from our own website, which at the time read: 鈥淟emur extinctions in Madagascar leave behind doo鈥︹��
Fuel pellets
SOME maladies require the nuclear option. Homeopath Liz Lalor recommends the use of, to treat patients who feel 鈥渢hreatened and destroyed from the inside and from outside themselves鈥�. Naturally, the plutonium must be dramatically increased in power first, in this case by diluting it. Feedback thinks that enriching nuclear fuel at home sounds like a good way to find yourself with more problems than a sugar pill can solve.
30 days of summer
SUMMER beckons for the world鈥檚 northern inhabitants, and the diet industry is kicking up a notch to exploit that brief, lucrative period between anxiety about our beach bodies and resignation to them.
A colleague forwards the official rules to the month-long 鈥溾�� diet, which allows Feedback to eat as much fruit, vegetables and meat as we like, at the expense of a trifling handful of 鈥渦nhealthy鈥� foods, such as all sugars, sweeteners, alcohol, grains, legumes and dairy products. A single slip, we are warned, will invalidate any results we might expect from our month-long diet.
Whole30 also prohibits anything unpronounceable 鈥� farewell bouillabaisse 鈥� as well as any attempt to construct junk food from permitted ingredients. 鈥淎 pancake is still a pancake, regardless of the ingredients,鈥� glower the guidelines.
Doesn鈥檛 this mean that everything is a pancake? No wonder slimming down is so difficult.
Dressing room
ADVENTURES in homonyms: while shopping for new clothes, Gideon K眉hn stumbled into a recently refurbished shop that was still in obvious disarray. 鈥淎s I stood there deciding what to do, two men carried an unclothed mannequin past a handwritten sign with the message 鈥楶lease bare with us while we rearrange the merchandise鈥�.鈥�
A recalcitrant Gideon decided against following the request, and 鈥渓eft the store on tiptoe鈥�.
Pet theory
FEEDBACK previously wondered what accidental glimpses of scientific insight could be found hidden in literary history. John Beasley offers a line of pre-science prescience in Sweet Suffolk Owl by Thomas Vautor, an Elizabethan-Jacobean madrigal that foreshadows the computer age when it declares: 鈥淲ith shrill command the mouse controls.鈥�
Relatively speaking
MEANWHILE, Paul Murray writes to add Richard Wagner鈥檚 1882 opera Parsifal to the list. Paul recounts a piece of dialogue in the first act between the title character and the wise old knight Gurnemanz as they walk to the Grail Temple. 鈥淚 scarcely move but already I seem to have come far,鈥� says Parsifal. Gurnemanz replies: 鈥淗ere time becomes space.鈥� Thus Wagner suggests that space and time are interwoven, says Paul, 30 years before Einstein.