Whirling water forgets its nasty past
ACCORDING to homeopathy, water can “remember” a substance that has been added to it, even when the mixture is diluted to the point that not a single molecule of the stuff remains. But how can we be sure that the same water isn’t also remembering all sorts of other substances it picked up in, say, the toilet it passed through on its way to the sewage farm?
Monika Jürgens is surprised by claims that it is possible to delete undesirable stored information and revitalise water by “whirling” it past crystals, precious stones and gold nuggets. That’s all “according to the science of crystal therapy”, as explained on the website of the German company Elisa Energy Systems. What’s more, for a mere few hundred euros they will sell you the right equipment to do your own water-whirling. To find out more, and to discover many pages of A-grade fruitloopery, go to .
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“Stacy Rush tells us of a flyer from clothing shop Old Navy offering discounts on garments in “100 per cent real faux-fur”. Do they sell faux real fur too?”
BY THEIR ads shall ye know them? Feedback usually applies a very strict filter – a sort of mental AdBlock – to visual web content, to the point that sometimes someone looking over our shoulder at the computer screen will comment on an advertisement and we’re genuinely puzzled: “What ad?” But it seems online ads can have their uses, offering a quick handle on what kind of site we have in front of us.
For example, Pedro Plowman was curious about the 91av story on the (HCCC) issuing a warning about the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) website (31 July, p 5). So he visited , to be confronted by a banner ad for “Fluoride free antioxidant ultrapure alkaline ionized microclustered acid free water” and another offering workshops in shamanism and “energetic healing”. These ads check enough of Feedback’s fruitloop boxes for us to wonder about the seriousness of the site hosting them.
When Feedback visited it on 18 August, the AVN had still not complied with the HCCC’s request, issued on 7 July, that within two weeks it should publish a warning on the site stating that claims made there should not be read as medical advice. Instead, the AVN had issued a response which as a “hate group”.
IT SEEMS nothing is spared the q-word curse, not even dishwashing detergents. “Are you looking for an amazing shine and clean that doesn’t require extra work?” asks household goods company Reckitt Benckiser at . “Finish QuantuMatic is the solution to your needs.”
What could possibly justify the use of the q-word here? Steven Walker, who drew our attention to this, has a theory: perhaps Reckitt Benckiser is playing a cruel Schrödinger-type joke on consumers. Maybe you won’t know if anything is inside the Finish QuantuMatic box until you open it.
FEEDBACK is not actually licensed to practise astronomy. But we were as surprised as Gethin Coles was by the photograph that Australian website 9News used to illustrate a story, headlined “Meteor shower stuns stargazers”, about the Perseids in August ().
It featured a lovely long exposure of a Roman ruin in Bulgaria – nearly half an hour, we’d say, judging by the length of the arcs left by the stars swinging about the north celestial pole. But there was no sign at all of any meteors moving across the sky.
There were more pictures. The second: the same, but a slightly shorter exposure. The third: there’s a streak across the sky, but we think it’s a phone wire. The fourth: yes! A meteor (captured, naturally, using a short exposure). Can you suggest other examples of pictures that don’t show what they purport to?
FAMILY and friends have “always known me for getting lost”, Clare Taylor writes. “Now I know why.” She had foolishly been operating under the belief that north and south are opposite each other. But the photo she sent us of a pavement plaque marking the Lea Valley Walk in her native east London shows otherwise: in it, south is at 12 o’clock, as it were, and north at about 7 o’clock.
We are reminded of Holborn station, the nearest London Underground station to the 91av offices. Until recently its signs for the Piccadilly line had trains from one platform heading “north” while trains in the opposite direction went “west”, evoking visions of an uncomfortably sharp bend.
Warning: televisions are dangerous
FINALLY, in the manual for his new Nikkai television set, Peter Toye came across this: “WARNING – do not watch television programmes or turn your TV set on for your own and others’ safety.”
This seemed so strange that we asked Peter to send us a scan of the manual by way of proof that it really does say that. He did; it does.