No-vax鈥檚 good vibrations
鈥淚f you wish to understand the Universe, think of energy, frequency and vibration.鈥� This quote, attributed to the visionary electrical engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, possibly in his distinctly odd late phase, has long been beloved of those with a vibrantly different understanding of the universe.
Feedback hesitates to use the word 鈥渇ruitloopery鈥�, particularly as we now encounter the quote on the website of , a company whose blameless existence investigating alternative treatments for covid-19 has recently been disturbed by the revelation that . 1 and vaccine refusenik Novak Djokovic.
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鈥淎t QuantBioRes, we work in utilizing unique and novel Resonant Recognition Model (RRM),鈥� we read on the company鈥檚 website. 鈥淭he RRM is a biophysical model based on findings that certain periodicities/frequencies within the distribution of energies of free electrons along the protein are critical for protein biological function and interaction with protein receptors and other targets.鈥�
, we discover that, in the case of covid-19, the crucial frequency is 0.3145. We aren鈥檛 entirely sure what units that is in for those inclined to try it at home. Sadly, clicking what we hoped were links to a battery of exciting tests already performed produces no vibration on the internet鈥檚 surface, so we are left none the wiser as to progress.
These things can take time. In the meantime, we point to the existence of highly effective vaccines, whatever your resonant frequency may be.
Champagne鈥檚 moment
David Myers writes from the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland 鈥� nice work if you can get it 鈥� asking us to sit down as we imbibe the revelation contained in an article from CNN that . We are unsure whether it is the message itself that he expects to give us the vapours, or the fact that the chair of the World Heart Federation advocacy committee that released the report is Beatriz Champagne. No cause for celebration either way.
Pussy galore
Our news report 鈥淎ncient Egyptians used bandages for medicine too鈥� (15 January, p 20) caused ripples in our inbox. For Ian Gammie, it was our assertion that 鈥渦ntil now, Egyptologists hadn鈥檛 found bandages used to dress the wounds of living ancient Egyptians鈥�. As he points out, living ancient Egyptians are hard to come by these days.
Others were more exercised by the mention of a dressing placed over a 鈥減uss-filled wound鈥�. This seems to imply a degree of veneration of the feline form beyond even that familiar from ancient Egypt. Ken Hawkins wonders whether it was discovered using a CAT scan, a line that we will file under 鈥渢imeless鈥�.
Fine words, buttered
Talking of which, Feedback had considered correspondence closed on the age-old conundrum of why toast lands buttered-side down 鈥� except perhaps when its polarity is reversed by being attached to the back of a falling cat. Not so, judging by our post since its reappearance in our Twisteddoodles cartoon on 4 December last year.
鈥淗owdy Dr Feedback,鈥� booms one missive from Heikki Henttonen in Espoo, Finland 鈥� a city where we seem to have quite a following, judging by our postbag 鈥� exhibiting both forthright charm and a suitable (and entirely justified) faith in our academic qualification. 鈥淗ow to make sure that your toast lands butter-side up,鈥� he writes succinctly. 鈥淵ou should butter your toast on both sides.鈥�
Sensible advice. Although we shouldn鈥檛 be at all surprised if a double-buttered slice would never hit the floor, but instead remain suspended slightly above it, permanently rotating, unsure of which way up to land. You might call that a physics-violating perpetual motion machine; we just call it resonance.
The universe against us
The last word on the toast thing 鈥� until the next one 鈥� goes to our mathematics guru Ian Stewart at the University of Warwick, UK. 鈥淎s regards toast landing butter side down, you might be interested in the article , Murphy鈥檚 Law and the fundamental constants鈥� by Robert Matthews in European Journal of Physics 16 (1995) 172-176,鈥� he writes.
We most certainly would, since it contains the results of a model that applies Newton鈥檚 laws of motion with realistic parameters for the height of intelligent bipeds, the height of the tables they use and the nature of their toast to conclude that, if a slice of toast starts sitting butter-side up on a table, it will rotate more than 180 degrees but less than 360 degrees for any reasonable value for the initial speed at which it is nudged off, thus almost always landing buttered-side down.
Further expressing the relations in terms of eight fundamental constants, including the gravitational and electromagnetic fine-structure constants and the Bohr radius, leads to a stark conclusion: in any universe that supports intelligent bipeds, toast will almost always fall buttered-side down. 鈥淭his is the opposite of cosmological fine tuning: there is no way to fine-tune a universe to prevent this outcome,鈥� Ian writes. 鈥淚 call this the Anthropomurphic Principle.鈥� Also timeless.
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