STANDING on the shoulders of giants may feel like a fairground ride, since the number of giants keeps shifting. William Wakefield wrote a letter (10 December 2011, p 32) to congratulate 91av for starting a feature dealing with the multiverse on page 42 (26 November 2011). This he construed as a reference to the number’s starring role in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, in which it played the “answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything”.
Unsurprisingly, this was not 42’s first starring role. David Purchase points us to this proclamation by the king in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865): “Rule forty-two: All persons more than a mile high must leave the court.” And in Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark (1876) the Baker “had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed”.
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Two or more can play that game, David. We refer you to the (anonymous, Babylon, circa 640 BC): “little children… mocked [Elisha], and said unto him, go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare [mauled] forty and two children of them.”
Does anyone have a searchable edition of the Indian Vedas to hand, which may have been written as early as 1500 BC?
A sign outside Bob Humphrey’s local butcher’s shop proclaims “Hand-raised pork pies”. Bob is relieved that someone is making the effort to conserve the wild pork pie population
A COLLEAGUE tells how his home’s intruder alarm kept detecting suspicious motion and sounding off while he was out. The doors and windows were tightly locked with no one inside; there was no trapped cat or bird either.
After several dashes home to switch off the alarm he called in the company that had installed it and complained about poor design and workmanship.
“Did you enjoy the party?” asked the engineer when he arrived and started inspecting the house.
There, in one of the rooms, was a souvenir silvery helium balloon clinging to the ceiling. Any draft or convection current from the central heating moved the light-reflecting orb just enough to fool the alarm into doing its job just as it was supposed to do.
READERS have taken Feedback to task for our puzzlement at the obvious pride that Eizo takes in its computer monitor consuming “Zero watts when turned off” (18 February).
Nicholas Sawyer made measurements and was “shocked to discover that my computer monitor consumes between 20 and 30 watts when the switch on the monitor itself is off, but it is connected to a switched-on power point.”
It is true that in many devices the thing that looks like a power switch is in fact a sort of one-key keyboard, behind which is a tiny computer whose task is to watch for you pressing that key in order to activate the device – consuming energy as it does so.
Christopher Jessop proposes that “OFF really means OFF” should be mandated in all electrical safety codes, worldwide.
“Powered up but not ON,” he points out – “that’s STANDBY mode.”
Your local doctor is sponsored by…
VISITING the in Chichester, West Sussex, UK, Alan Wells was disturbed to find that it now bears advertising from “sponsors”. This jars somewhat with the ethos of the UK’s National Health Service, but it was the identity of the sponsors that most alarmed Alan. At the time of writing, at least, they were a firm of solicitors and a funeral director.
Alan was inspired to check other local doctors’ websites. He discovered and nursing homes for the elderly: we hope these activities don’t cross over too much.
READER Chris Daniel says he thought of Feedback when he came across a banner advert for that said “25 per cent of our customers save up to £400”.
Chris wonders whether this means that 75 per cent of customers save more than £400, or if it means that 75 per cent don’t save anything at all.
The former is unlikely, he decided, otherwise they would trumpet it. So it must be the latter – in which case they seem very proud to announce that most of their customers don’t benefit from their service.
Chris commends them for their honesty.
FINALLY, the instructions that came with the replacement solar light batteries that Jim Lawless bought told him: “To charge batteries, install in your solar lights and place lights in full direct sunlight for 36 – 48 hours.”
Jim is wondering whether to go to the Arctic in June or to the Antarctic in December in order to make this possible.