Going forward
Feedback is always grateful to readers who take the time to write in, but this week we give our particularly heartfelt thanks to Robert Pleming. Much to our delight, he discovered a competition run in this very column back in 1993, wherein we challenged readers to imagine what the world would look like in 2020 鈥� 27 years thence.
As with all imaginings of the future, the clipping he has sent in is deeply redolent of its time. It imagines a 2020 where the National Enquirer is still obsessed with the allegedly late Elvis Presley, Euro-Disney is a hot new attraction and the scientific status of global warming remains uncertain.
In other ways, though, it is scarily on the money. Take this entry, for example, meant to capture the goings-on of April 2020: 鈥淭he virtual office arrives. Office staff no longer have to leave the home to work. Donning a virtual reality suit, they can attend their office, interact with their colleagues and retain social contact.鈥�
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We don鈥檛 know about you, but that reflects Feedback鈥檚 April to a tee. Apart from the virtual reality suit, of course. We鈥檝e spent most of the year so far in our pyjamas.
All of the predictions can be found on the New 杏吧原创 website in the issues of 18 and /25 September 1993, and they make for terrific reading. If any readers with similarly long memories dig up other predictions that Feedback once made for the future, do please bring them to our attention.
Motion sickness
Every year, as regular Feedback readers will be aware, the Annals of Improbable Research magazine awards the IgNobel prizes as a wry counterpoint to the annual Nobel bonanza in Stockholm.
In 2005, the IgNobel prize for fluid dynamics was awarded to Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal for 鈥� and we quote the contemporary New 杏吧原创 article on the topic 鈥� 鈥渁 theoretical analysis of penguin poop propulsion鈥�. The work in question, however, didn鈥檛 delve sufficiently deeply into the subject for the tastes of two other researchers. Earlier this month, Hiroyuki Tajima and Fumiya Fujisawa uploaded a to the arXiv preprint server in which they point out that Meyer-Rochow and Gal neglected to consider the arcing trajectory of a penguin鈥檚 motions, satisfying themselves exclusively with the horizontal component of said motions鈥�, well, motion.
Redoing the calculations, while also taking into account Bernoulli鈥檚 theorem and viscosity corrections via the Hagen-Poiseuille equation, they come up with a penguin rectal pressure of 28.2 kilopascals. This is 40 per cent greater than previously measured. Translating this into human terms, the researchers calculate that a person with the same rectal pressure could projectile poop a distance of 3.13 metres. 鈥淗e/she should not use usual rest rooms,鈥� they point out. We would say not.
Love in a cold climate
Staying with penguins 鈥� bit nippy in here, isn鈥檛 it? 鈥� Twitter teaches us this week that the on display to represent the former and existing relationships between its current penguin occupants.
The image鈥檚 scale and complexity remind us why we never stuck with graph theory. It resembles nothing more than the allegedly helpful family trees to be found in the opening pages of great Russian novels, laying out which of the two Vladimir Trofimoviches is the wealthy cousin of the Duchess Alexandra and which is the violent deserter hell-bent on revenge for the devaluation of the rouble.
Nick names
A few weeks ago, Feedback raised a sceptical eyebrow as to the alleged existence of a police station on the aptly named 鈥淟etsby Avenue鈥�. Rab Scott writes in to silence our doubts with a screenshot of Sheffield鈥檚 South Yorkshire Police Operations Complex (postcode S9 1XX, for them that鈥檚 counting), located between Europa Link and 鈥� of course 鈥� Letsby Avenue. It鈥檚 a fair cop, Rab, thank you for the clarification.
A debt of gratitude is also owed to Stuart Arnold, who informs us that the Cambridgeshire town in which he grew up once had a police station on Pig Lane. 鈥淭he situation didn鈥檛 last for long however,鈥� says Stuart, 鈥渁s the spoilsports renamed the part of Pig Lane where the police station was 鈥楤road Leas'鈥�.
Going backward
Having opened the floodgates to your frustrations about misused language, it is only fair that we bail the floodwater out again in your general direction. The phrase getting on multiple people鈥檚 goats this week is 鈥済oing forward鈥�. Chris Rundle succinctly describes it as 鈥渁 ridiculously overemployed alternative to 鈥榠n the future'鈥�. Meanwhile, 鈥渋t has not escaped my notice that 鈥榝orward鈥� is the only direction one can go in a temporal sense鈥�, says Alan Laird. 鈥淕oing sideways or up or down just hurts my head!鈥�
We feel your collective pain, goat-havers of the Feedback community. We promise that going forward 鈥� or, rather, over the inevitably contiguous increments of monodirectional time currently bearing down on us 鈥� this phrase shall not appear in any of our content verticals. Thanks to all of you for reaching out.
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