READER John Buchanan tells of a friend who recently bought a cordless DECT phone system from Phillips, which includes several handsets linked to a single base station.
The instructions told him that when the phone was in use a small telephone-shaped icon would flash in the corner of the LCD screen on the handset. So when he wanted to make a call on the extension handset he checked the icon to make sure it wasn’t flashing. But when he tried to dial out, all he got was a message telling him his phone was in use. He tried again but to no avail. On walking through to the main phone he discovered that his wife was using it – and that its icon was flashing.
Thinking something was wrong with his phone, he telephoned customer services, only to be told that this was how it was supposed to work. “The icon only flashes on the phone that’s in use,” the customer services person said.
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That left him wondering exactly what the phone’s designers thought the icon was for. “Firstly I don’t need an icon to tell me I’m using the phone. I already know that,” he said. “And secondly I can’t see the icon anyway as the phone is stuck against my ear.”
THE Feedback discovery-of-the-week award goes to the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, which according to the university newspaper uncovered a fossil plesiosaur “estimated to be 70 billion years old”. That’s five times older than the whole universe, so we are eagerly awaiting an analysis.
THE reason scientists are appointed to commissions to study difficult moral and social issues is that people believe they can put any personal prejudices aside and look at things dispassionately. Right?
Don’t be so sure. A team of psychologists from Yale University recently gave the Implicit Association Test, which measures overt and hidden bias, to 389 specialists at a meeting in Quebec City, Canada, of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. What they discovered was “significant pro-thin, anti-fat implicit bias”. In other words, these experts – the majority were physicians – often see their obese patients as lazy, stupid and worthless, whereas they regard thinner people as motivated, smart and valuable. The only glimmer of consolation is that the specialists were not as biased as the general public.
Should we hope for improvements as a new generation of young doctors moves into their ranks, more and more of them women? Unfortunately not. “Women expressed a significantly stronger bias than men,” and younger people showed “greater bias” as well. Older men, especially those with obese friends, were most likely to be empathetic.
MORE from the department of superfluous precision. Reader Bob Harrison from Sydney, Australia, recently renewed his sub to his internet service provider Netspace. He received this response telling him how much time he had already paid for: “Prepaid hours now: 102.374444444444444444444444444 44444449”.
Meanwhile, reader Jim Grozier recently took a trip on the Grenoble téléférique. The price printed on his ticket, which he has sent us, was “4.40000009537 euros”. He tells us that he didn’t have any small change with him, but magnanimously they let him off the odd 0.00000009537 euros.
And Chris Smart has written to tell us about a field being advertised for sale near his house. The advertising board proudly declares its area to be “about 21.97 acres”. But that’s only a rough estimate.
KETTLE FOODS proudly proclaim on the packaging of their Kettle Chips that: “Each batch of potatoes is individually checked, sliced directly into a simmering vessel of pure sunflower oil, [and] carefully stirred by hand.”
Tom Boyd, who noticed this, wonders if it isn’t a bit hard on Kettle’s employees, and is surprised the health and safety people haven’t done anything about it.
FINALLY, a reminder about the Feedback annual competition.
For this year’s competition, you are invited to invent a new scientific word that we need and define it in an appropriately pompous way.
You may submit up to three entries per person by letter, fax or email. Thanks to the generosity of its makers, 10 lucky winners will each receive a bottle of Labrot & Graham’s award-winning Woodford Reserve bourbon whiskey, and thanks to Cambridge University Press, they will also receive a copy of Climate: Into the 21st Century, the outstanding overview of our weather edited by William Burroughs.
The winning entries will be chosen on the basis of their wit and originality. All entries must reach us by Monday 8 December.
The winners will be announced in the 20/27 December issue. The editor’s decision is final.
Here are the complete instructions accompanying reader David Bewick’s Sony headphones: “Wear the earpiece marked (R) in your right ear and the one marked (L) in your left ear”
