IS IT JUST us, or are the plugs for remedies for the gullible getting more complicated? John Noble alerts us to a remarkable offering at promoting a substance (or is it a homeopathic non-substance?) called Aulterra.
Hereâs a sample: âDNA unwinds when the hydrogen bonds that hold the helix together are broken by noxious stimuli. As it recovers, it spontaneously rewinds. However, when in an environment of harmonic electromagnetic fields, the unwinding and rewinding become oscillatory in natureâŠWhen this oscillatory pattern is a constant, quantum coherence occurs. Aulterra induces this quantum behaviour in DNA. âQuantumâ as defined in Taberâs Cyclopedia Medical Dictionary is âa unit of radiant energyâ. Therefore this quantum behaviour produces radiant energy. âRadiantâ is defined as âemitting beams of lightââŠJesus said âYe are the Light of the WorldââŠAulterra takes the possibility of living in the Light to new and profound realities.â
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Whoa! From hydrogen bonds to quantum coherence to Jesus. How much else can they fit in? Ah, yes: âIn 1988, Lockheed Martin conducted another study to determine if Aulterra could neutralise radioactive elements. After six months, Aulterra successfully reduced the gamma radiation of the control substance by 80 per cent.â Really? Surely the Men in Black should have seized all samples long ago and whisked them away to Area 51.
COSMOLOGY has rarely seen such stinging prose. âIn a recent paper on wormholes,â writes Stanford Universityâs Leonard Susskind in a physics preprint at , âthe author of that paper demonstrated that he didnât know what he was talking about.â
Harsh words indeed from one of the grand architects of string theory. And thereâs more. The author of the paper, Susskind goes on mercilessly, âstupidly assumedâ various properties of the wormhole, failing to ask questions that âany competent physicist would have askedâ.
Ouch! But what is the paper Susskind so witheringly dismisses, and who wrote it? Reference 1 in the footnotes of the diatribe reveals that the culprit is âWormholes and time travel? Not likelyâ, a physics preprint at . And the author of that paper is â Leonard Susskind.
We presume this is humorous self-deprecation on his part, and not an innovative approach to doubling his citations.
SEARCHING for campsites in Germany, Candida Frith-Macdonald came across . She suggests that English speakers with a few minutes to kill on a dull day could do worse than visit and click on the little flag that gives you the site in English. Or at least, she corrects herself, âsomething loosely approximating Englishâ.
After all, how often are you offered a holiday including activities such as âPancake shoesâ and âSausage crickets at the campfireâ, in surroundings âdetermined by natural wood and extreme substancesâ?
Most of the site reads as if its creation involved generous amounts of extreme substances, but Frith-Macdonald suspects that a web translation service such as Google or Babelfish is responsible. Our world, she suggests, will be a sadder and duller place when translation programs improve enough to eliminate this sort of thing.
COASTERISE, verb (US coasterize): the word used in her office, Erica Bower informed us, for the process of turning a blank recordable CD into an object useful only for resting drinks on. We were amused, and out of interest did a Google search to see if the term was also used elsewhere. It is indeed, so much so that if it hasnât already been pencilled in for the next versions of Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, it will be any time now. Isnât language wonderful?
âFrom the department of double negative negatives: Manjir Mamanta-Laguhtonâs bottle of LâOreal Elvive conditioner proudly proclaims âup to -95 per cent less breakage from brushingââ
IF YOU ever need to know exactly how badly a pile of manure stinks, all you have to do is contact Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences in University Park, Pennsylvania, and ask for its âodour evaluation serviceâ.
âArmed with maps, compasses and a working knowledge of odour emission and dispersion, an assessor will visit a proposed site and offer an opinion of the siteâs suitability in relation to the potential for odour conflict,â says Bob Mikesell, the collegeâs educator in dairy and animal science. âThe assessor will evaluate separation distances from neighbours, prevailing wind direction, topography, surrounding vegetation, community sociology, surrounding land-use patterns and manure application areas.â
But there is one piece of equipment that seems to be missing from all this. Will the odour assessor possess a nose? If not, how will they detect the pong?
FINALLY, weâre not quite sure what this is an example of, but it amused Claude James, who teaches English at Picardy University in Amiens, France. In his class, fourth-year engineering students were producing career rĂ©sumĂ©s in English. One of them summoned him. Under âLanguage skillsâ he had got as far as writing âI amâŠâ
âPlease,â he asked James. âHow do you say âbilingueâ?â
