IS THE number of “science projects” in your fridge about to increase? The says that’s a euphemism for the ancient cheeses and so on that have evolved their own advanced biological communities.
Some people have none of these, religiously tossing out anything past its “sell by” date. Others pick off most of the visible mould and tuck in, or sniff, or cautiously taste.
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Last month the UK government to drop or hide “sell by” dates. According to the UK’s (WRAP), British consumers needlessly dump 5.3 million tonnes of food every year, and this move is supposed to reduce that. Anecdotal evidence from one colleague supports this. Her mother “has a pathological fear of food and actually enjoys trashing it”, the “sell by” date providing a convenient excuse.
“Best before” or “use by” dates remain required by law: the former when it just won’t be quite so wonderful, as with jam that has gone a bit crunchy, and “use by” when it could kill you.
But surely, a colleague protests, this whole date business is unworkable nanny-state claptrap. People should just be taught how to sniff meat, float eggs, and perform other folkloric tests to see if the ageing contents of their fridges are edible.
If it were that easy, we suspect wouldn’t kill 500 people and hospitalise another 20,000 a year in the UK.
“The sniff test is a myth,” says Andrew Wadge, the chief scientist at the UK Food Standards Agency at . He points out that you can’t smell botulism or salmonella.
Turning 40 yards into 20 yards
THE offer Paul Rosenbaum received from Nature’s Finest Nutrition company told him: “Recent studies show that using nutritional supplements can maximise workouts, allowing exercisers to run the 40-yard dash in only 20 yards.”
Paul is wondering if this ability to shorten distances can be applied in other spheres, such as interplanetary spacecraft, since current distances between planetary bodies severely limit the possibilities of space travel.
The film star and the sci fi headset
THE organisers of the giant IFA electronics show held annually in Berlin, Germany, introduced a new online press registration system for this year’s event. Even some of the organising team admitted they did not understand how to submit an application.
“To Roger Plenty’s surprise, The Independent‘s article about giant crabs in the Antarctic stated: “A team led by Dr Craig Smith… found the crabs using a remotely operated submersible”
The net result was that every journalist at the show was walking around with a “personal, non-transferable” user-printed badge that showed the same ID picture of the same unnamed lady. And because the badges had often been printed on home printers with less than perfect paper, the barcode readers at the show gates and booths had difficulty reading them.
Last year at IFA, Sony launched a rival to iTunes with the name Qriocity which few people could spell or pronounce. The highlight this year was a 3D video headset that looks like a sci-fi brain machine.
The headset plugs into the mains and balances on the wearer’s nose with a strap round the head to immerse the viewer in 3D sight and sound. Feedback tried a pair and wholeheartedly agrees with the “unrepentantly uncomfortable” verdict of one online review site.
The irony is that this strange device clearly grew out of the lab prototype that actor Tom Hanks mocked when he was booked by Sony to praise the company at an electronics show in the US in 2009.
“Oh look, they’re so cool and hip – you mean they are going to get even better than they are now?” Hanks teased Sony’s boss Howard Stringer when he tried on the headset.
Maybe Sony should have listened to Hanks – and if they want to they still can, as the “Hanks headset” video clip is still scoring hits on YouTube at .
10,000 years of polar exploration
MOST people believe that Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole 100 years ago this year. But not Extreme World Races, David Rootes has discovered. According to the EWR website at , by becoming one of the EWR’s “polar elite”, you could have the chance to “win a place and join the EWR team as a driver in support of the 100th Centenary race to the South Pole”.
So Scott and Amundsen actually reached the pole 10,000 years ago. Not many people know that.
FINALLY, “School Bus Turning” and “60” say two road-signs, one above the other, in the photo Bob Salthouse sends us from Southern Queensland, Australia.
We can only respond to their combined message by wishing the bus a very happy birthday!