Gearing up for happiness
Transitions sometimes start with a period of frustration. People can adapt to new ways 鈥� but the old ways are familiar, which make them feel comfortable in comparison with the new. Transmissions, too, sometimes start with a period of frustration. Tim Stevens reports in about how one automobile manufacturer is solving a problem some of its customers have in transitioning from a petrol-powered car to an electric vehicle (EV).
The news headline says it all: 鈥淭oyota has built an EV with a fake transmission, and we鈥檝e driven it 鈥� Five minutes behind the wheel, and you鈥檒l be a believer.鈥�
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This is for customers who love the ancient experience of driving with a gearstick. Toyota鈥檚 new car has a joystick and a clutch pedal. Neither is connected to the car鈥檚 actual transmission. Stevens writes: 鈥渟omething strange happens: An engine fires up. It鈥檚 a pretend one, exhaust humming only through the car鈥檚 sound system. Still, it sounds compelling enough. Step on the throttle pedal, and that pretend engine gains revs, screaming up to its limiter with simulated aggression. To be clear: Literally nothing is happening in the car at this point other than the sound changing pitch. Oddly, though, something was happening in me: I was smiling. For no logical reason, I suddenly was having a lot more fun.鈥�
Feedback marvels at this new techno-twist on the old philosophical drive to answer the question 鈥淲hat is reality?鈥�
A stink about beer
Beer enthusiast Bernd-Juergen Fischer of Berlin is peeved. He tells Feedback: 鈥淵our paragraph on beer foam aroma sceptics [21 October] set my head spinning: 鈥榠f there are any鈥�! And this in a journal out of Britain, where the greatest care is being taken by tappers to remove even the last vestige of foam off the beer before a-spilling it onto the table! When I complained to a publican about it, he responded: 鈥業f you want a tasty beer, you can always go to the continent.鈥�
鈥淢y wife then explained to me what every child in the Anglo-Saxon world seems to know: 鈥楾he Brits like only what they dislike: take broccoli. Or the EU: when they began to like it, they left it.鈥� This explains also why you had to leave such in-depth beer-foam research to the Japanese: There ain鈥檛 any in GB.鈥�
Bernd-Juergen might persuade publicans by giving them copies of a Mexican study, 鈥溾��. It suggests how to 鈥渕ake the foam more attractive to the consumer鈥�.
Medical amusement
An old saying, iffily attributed to Voltaire, explains that 鈥渢he art of medicine consists mostly of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease鈥�.
Feedback invites any reader who is a practising, licensed physician to say whether 鈥� in your professional experience 鈥� that is substantially true. Send your note, accompanied perhaps by a few words of personal professional recollection, to 鈥淢edical Amusement鈥�, c/o Feedback. Please, for context, identify your own branch of medicine (family doctor, surgeon, cardiologist, neurologist, otolaryngologist, whatever).
Future for ducks
The future arrives faster than one expects. Or slower, depending on one鈥檚 expectation.
Consider the recent study called 鈥溾��. One hundred years ago, this paper, had it existed, might have been regarded as science fiction.
Desislava Abadjieva, its lead author, is based at the department of immunoneuroendocrinology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences鈥� Institute of Biology and Immunology of Reproduction.
Immunoneuroendocrinology! A 1992 spoke to the then future of a pursuit that, at the time, was little known. It said: 鈥淭he numerous interactions between the immune and neuroendocrine systems are being studied in a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field called 鈥榠mmunoneuroendocrinology鈥�.鈥�
During the 31 years since, the entire scientific community, worldwide, has published only about 40 papers that even mention the word immunoneuroendocrinology.
As to the future for Muscovy ducks, a new Brazilian report on its face implies bad news. It is called 鈥溾��. The details, though, give a helter-skelter view of what might happen.
What is currently bad news for the ducks could lead to catastrophically worse news, instead, for the monkeys. The report is a stark warning to any brown capuchin monkey who might find a way to read it 鈥� and a source of at least some hope for readers who are Muscovy ducks. It explains that, by preying on the ducks, the monkeys might bring on 鈥渞etaliation鈥� by the humans who traditionally raise and devour those ducks.
This is nature again displaying the give and take that Stephen Sondheim celebrated in a song in his play . 鈥淭he history of the world, my sweet,鈥� explains the title character as they cook up how to cook up some pies made of human meat, 鈥渋s who gets eaten and who gets to eat.鈥�
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽.
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