FEEDBACK has long been intrigued by laundry balls. On the one hand, these variously shaped objects that you put in the washing machine to save detergent and energy may well work – after all, slapping your clothes against rocks in a cold stream works, apparently, if you have the persistence.
On the other hand, the marketing claims made for them are often such a load of you-know-what that many purchasers must be being hoodwinked, even if the balls do work. So we have to file these claims in the same philosophical tub as those things that people confidently assert are true and that are in fact true, but only by coincidence – which doesn’t count as knowledge.
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These thoughts are prompted by a follow-up to last year’s claim from that their balls “activate” water molecules, producing electrolytic oxygen and hydrogen ions, which led us to worry about washday explosions (5 May 2007).
Now Gillian Hurworth sends pictures of the packaging of Ecoballs, which claims they “make the molecule of water smaller” and “as a result this gives the water good hydrating properties and permeability” – a claim you can see for yourself via .
Feedback is concerned that, if true, this claim would be far more serious than the one made by Lakeland. So we can only offer the following warning. Be careful not to overdose on Ecoballs, people! Make those water molecules too small and let them get too close together and the results could, we fear, be thermonuclear.
MEN are often accused of thinking with a part of their anatomy other than their brain. Simple observation of some men’s behaviour at parties – and sometimes morning-after introspection by said men – tends to support this. However, while Feedback hesitates to invoke Occam’s razor in this sensitive context – indeed, Feedback is now typing with legs crossed – it has to be done: “Do not introduce entities without necessity,” Occam said. Surely the brain should take full responsibility.
Not necessarily, according to the marvel of digital databases of the human genome. “To obtain gene expression information for large-scale data analysis,” J. Guo and colleagues write in ), “expression data of 760 unigenes in 17 human tissues (liver, lung, testis, brain, ovary, uterus, colon, stomach, heart, eye, kidney, spleen, gall bladder, breast, thymus, prostate and pancreas) were retrieved…” A “unigene”, we are told, is a set of one or more DNA sequences that produce effectively the same protein. “This expression data,” the authors continue, “was subjected to clustering analysis… Results: Among the 17 tissues, the highest similarity in gene expression patterns was between human brain and testis.”
So now we know.
BOOK publishers need to present an image of being up-to-the-minute. In the online age, this need is even more pressing – though authors drumming their fingers and waiting for emails with revisions a year after they submitted the manuscript may disagree. This uncertainty about timescales may have something to do with the message that Nik Whitehead received from the website of publisher McGraw-Hill: “Dear user, the system is currently unavailable. Please try again in -143 minutes.”
“ in the online version of the medical journal BMJ is headed “The first 100 per cent of the full text of this article appears below”. Richard Hill wonders where the other 100 per cent went”
When Whitehead clicked the “refresh” button, the message indeed refreshed: “Please try again in -151 minutes. We apologise for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.” He is now “trying to wait patiently”, he says, “and backwards”.
A NOTE accompanying the insurance documents Liz Bell received from the UK’s Automobile Association for her impending drive across France stated: “If you would like this information in an appropriate alternative format, such as Braille or cassette, please call us…” Bell is surprised by the idea that someone about to embark on a long-distance drive might need this service.
IS , the international space exploration organisation, gearing itself up to welcome time travellers? When Tobias Holdbrook wanted to join, the options he could choose for his date of birth went all the way up to 31 December 2013.
FINALLY, NASA has sent an “Inflatable Universe” to a colleague in the 91av features department. Shaped like a beach ball, its surface is inscribed with patterns that depict “the oldest light in the universe” as revealed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. To see the patterns properly you have to blow up the ball, but NASA obliges with instructions on how to do this, starting with: “1. For best results, inflate by blowing into valve with mouth only.”
We would rather not speculate on which other parts of the anatomy might be employed for this.