杏吧原创

Blood loss

A COLD-BLOODED heist: The Guardian newspaper was one of many to report that thousands of blood samples belonging to the longest-lived people on Earth had been . Quite what anybody hoped to do with enough nonagenarian blood samples to fill a holy grail was open to question 鈥� until it transpired that the blood had not been stolen at all, simply relocated to a nearby hospital.

The confusion over their whereabouts stems partly from uncertainty about the ownership of the samples, which were collected by a public body that has . A story in itself, but we can鈥檛 help feeling that the author Dan Brown could supply the Sardinian blood heist with a more cinematic finale.

鈥淐raig Suosaari thinks customers who purchase a Karma Octogon Mirror from the Matt Blatt design store might feel short-changed: it only has six sides.鈥�

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

A NEW report from the Bank of America draws from the ideas of Nick Bostrom and Neil deGrasse Tyson, concluding that there鈥檚 a 20 to 50 per cent chance we all live in a simulated virtual world. This illusion would apparently be indistinguishable from reality 鈥� so Feedback is intrigued as to what evidence helped the authors arrive at this exact probability.

Self-doubt is a concerning trait in financial analysts, but at least it allows customers to argue that there鈥檚 a one-in-two chance their outstanding loans .

Grape expectations

ZOOMING through the countryside between Brussels and Paris, Alban de la Soudiere was served a meal that included a dessert comprising 鈥渁 little plastic box with four or five red grapes鈥�. An innocuous snack, until he read the attached warning: 鈥渕ade in a unit where all allergens are used鈥�.

鈥淚f the company had perhaps been forced into such an extreme level of self-protection by EU regulations then maybe Brexit voters were not the most irrational creatures after all, as was hinted by one of your recent editions,鈥� says Alban.

Sun burn

FEEDBACK would be inclined to agree, were it not for the spectacle of Douglas Carswell, the only Member of Parliament of Eurosceptic party UKIP, getting into a bizarre astronomical argument on Twitter.

The politician took issue with an analogy from Paul Nightingale at the University of Sussex, UK, that trade, like gravitational pull, is affected by distance. Carswell insisted that the much more distant sun played a greater role in tidal forces than the moon, on .

The exasperated deputy director of the Science Policy Research Unit could only exclaim, 鈥淒ouglas, this isn鈥檛 a controversial point. It鈥檚 in Newton鈥檚 Principia.鈥�

Happy app

CLEVER as they are, smartphones are not renowned for their sense of humour. However, researchers at the University of Regensburg in Germany have developed a way for smartphones to know when they鈥檙e making you laugh using a 鈥渟mile-detection鈥� system.

This software rates the rib-tickling value of images based on how much of a grin they elicit in the viewer. But while the results were judged to be fairly accurate, some of those using the system 鈥渨ere uncomfortable with the idea of being observed by their smartphone鈥�.

Feedback thinks that this leads to something of a quantum problem for robot comedians: humans will laugh at your jokes, but only when you鈥檙e not watching.

Down the tubes

READERS will sympathise with the view that many TV packages offer few channels of quality content and a whole load of excrement. But a private waste management company in India has taken that idea and decided to run with it.

A project by Samagra pioneered in the slums of Pune has found that the use of toilets and sanitation methods can be increased by bundling these services with TV subscriptions.

Subscribers to the community toilet-block scheme were also rewarded with incentives such as cellphone top-ups and bill payment services, leading to a sevenfold increase in customers. Good news for those willing to spend a penny.

Unvarnished truth

WHILE applying oil to his wooden worktops, Don Wycherley noticed that he had glossed over a statement printed on the tin of furniture polish. The makers claim that their product 鈥渆nhances the natural beauty of your worktop without altering its appearance鈥�.

This may be a triumph of marketing copy, which beguilingly promises nothing in particular, or yet another product that seeks to work on the placebo principle. But Feedback can鈥檛 help smiling at the view that kitchen worktops, like ourselves, should be appreciated for their inner beauty.

Going offline

PREVIOUSLY Feedback discussed the usefulness of a Faraday cage for your cellphone, especially when it came to avoiding accidental purchases at the bar (3 September).

Martin Greenwood writes: 鈥淪urely the more immediate benefit is that you can be sure your phone is unreachable, so you don鈥檛 accidentally receive a call from the boss, telling you to get back to work.鈥�