Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
But can the phone phone?
CHINESE electronics giant Huawei has ambitions to become the world’s top smartphone maker. In June it launched the Ascend P6, touted as the slimmest smartphone ever, in London.
A colleague who went along tells us that an international audience of phone enthusiasts applauded and whooped when it was announced that the device is only 6 millimetres thick. They also got very excited by the “Beauty Level” feature: every time a portrait photo is taken, a slider appears on the screen marked 1 to 10, offering the chance to make the subject look one to 10 years younger by automatically airbrushing their face.
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Our colleague was more taken by a bulky mechanical robotic gadget built from Lego by chipmaker ARM. This had an Ascend P6 and the 4×4×4 version of Rubik’s cube fixed to it. The robot proceeded to use the phone’s camera and processor to solve the cube puzzle in what was claimed to be a record 50 turns, taking under 200 seconds.
It wasn’t until our colleague was leaving that he realised one thing had been missing from all the presentations. “Does it make phone calls?” he asked a Huawei spokeswoman.
“Oh yes, I am sure it can,” she assured him, after a telling pause.
Budgens supermarket sells chickens labelled “100 per cent British”. As a colleague says, “I can’t imagine a chicken that is 53 per cent British”
Spies offer back-up
OUR colleague Jeff Hecht forwards “a clever bit of foolishness making its way round the internet”. It is an email, supposedly from the US National Security Agency, offering to come to the rescue of those whose hard drive has crashed or whose PC has been stolen.
“Hard drive crash?” the email asks. “PC stolen? No problem! Just call the NSA for a back-up of all your files. Just call 1-Got-Your-Stuff…
“Offer void where prohibited by law, but we don’t really care about that part.”
What’s that in blue whales?
PONDERING the power consumption of a supercomputer, Feedback lamented recently that we were unable to convert 17.8 gigawatts into the standard unit used for the sake of readers who do not enjoy an intimate relationship with numbers – the “blue whale” unit (6 July). Reader Alistair McCaskill is happy to fill this lacuna.
It is a that the daily energy requirement of an adult blue whale is 1.5 gigacalories. Sparing you the arithmetic in the spreadsheet that Alistair provides, we can report that 17.8 gigawatts, sustained over 24 hours, converts to the daily energy consumption of about 240,000 blue whales.
“Sadly,” he notes, “that’s somewhere between 20 and 50 times the remaining global population of blue whales.”
Nobel prize for 15-year-olds?
FEEDBACK is as puzzled as Don Roworth by the practice examination paper that a young acquaintance showed him. The test is to help students with the “Core Science” exam at GCSE level – the General Certificate of Secondary Education for 14 to 16-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
One question asks students to suggest ways in which an experimenter could increase the rate of evaporation of water in a beaker. On the sheet of answers Don sends, one of those listed as acceptable is: “decrease the density of the water”.
We, too, wonder how this might be achieved. Don asks whether any student who found a way of doing this would be in line for a Nobel prize for a fundamental advance in physics, rather than a mere school qualification.
Undercutting the puff
AFTER all the spurious claims reported by Feedback, says Ian Cutter, he finds it is refreshing to read what appears on a packet of Strepsil lozenges.
Ian sends us a scan of a packet of orange-flavoured Strepsils purchased in Mentone, Victoria, Australia. At the top it states: “Strepsil lozenges contain an effective combination of two antibacterial agents to help kill the bacteria which can cause sore throats and mouth infections.” Lower down, the packet tells us: “The efficacy of an antibacterial agent in lozenges in reducing the severity or duration of throat infections has not been clinically established.”
“Now that is real truth in advertising,” says Ian.
Dumb instruction
FROM the department of the blindingly obvious: to cope with the UK’s recent heatwave, a friend of Feedback bought a Kingfisher oscillating electric desk fan. Inside the box, she found four plastic bags containing a total of six parts making up the fan, along with a collection of screws. The instructions advised her: “Before using the fan for the first time it is necessary to assemble the appliance…”
Satnav cracks a joke
FINALLY, whenever Jeremy Hodge drives round the M25 motorway that encircles London, his Mercedes satnav lets him know if there is traffic congestion “between Reigate and cubic metres”.
“I think it means the M3 motorway,” he says.