âPotato-potato-potatoâ trademark
HAVING read that Royal Mail has registered the colour red as a trademark (Feedback, 22 October) and, in a letter to 51¶ŻÂț, that Cadbury in New Zealand has done the same with the colour purple (5 November, p 21), Jonathan Owens couldnât resist telling us that Harley-Davidson applied to have a trademark on the âpotato-potato-potatoâ sound that its motorcycles make.
In the words of US trademark application number 74485223: âThe mark consists of the exhaust sound of [the] applicantâs motorcycles, produced by V-Twin, common crankpin motorcycle engines when the goods are in useâŠThis is often described as âpotato, potato, potatoâ by motorcycle enthusiasts. Harley-Davidson believes that the sound of its engines has been a distinctive attribute of its motorcycles and therefore believes protection is necessary.â
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For reasons weâre not entirely clear about, the application was eventually abandoned. Nevertheless, Owens is thinking of trademarking the sound of a bumblebee in a jam jar and then waiting to see what moped manufacturers do to avoid infringing his trademark.
PHOTOCOPIER supplier Canon has to handle a 25 per cent rise in service calls during the festive season, according to a report on CNET news by Will Sturgeon of . The reason is spelled out by Tim Andrews, a London employee of the company, who says, âWe always fit lots of new glass to copiers after New Year due to ârear-end copyingâ.â
Cracked glass caused by the practice of photocopying backsides during Christmas and New Year office parties has apparently become so common that Canon has had to make the glass on its machines a millimetre thicker. Sturgeon speculates another reason for this may be the supersizing of the western physique.
SEEN by Diane Lloyd-Jones in the âScience and natureâ section of The Australian newspaper: âIn Adelaide, flooding along the river Torrens on the city fringe reached biblical proportions as it swept away the figures of baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, a kangaroo and a whale from the West End Breweryâs Christmas nativity scene.â
It seems notions of the kind of thing you would be likely to encounter in a Bethlehem stable have moved on over the years.
STAFF at the prestigious Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, one of the worldâs leading genome research centres, were disconcerted to receive this email from the maintenance department recently: âHello. Due to a compressor failure, there is currently no air supply to the main Sanger building. We are working on the problem and intend to have the supply reinstated as soon as we can. Thank you. Sparks.â
Sarah Field, who told us about this, makes no mention of corpses of suffocated biotechnologists littering the building, so we assume that miraculously there were no casualties.
ARE there negative placebo effects, Peter Grant asked our sibling column âThe last wordâ on 15 October. Answers appear on the opposite page â and hereâs Ed Saul adding further clarification to the issue. We think.
Of course there are, he says. He agrees with Steven Reitci (opposite) that someone who believes themselves cursed and falls ill is suffering placebo harm. âFor instance,â (look away now if youâre reading this in a theatre), âwhen acting in the famously cursed play Macbeth, where the negative placebo effect may take hold.â
âThe football boots that Russell Rathbone bought for his grandson came in a box announcing: âAverage contents 2âłâ
Then there are placebos that cause actual harm. Saul refers us to a more recent contribution to the literary canon â the episode âMarge in chainsâ of The Simpsons, in which a flu-struck crowd, on being told that any cure the doctor might offer them would be a placebo, set out on a frantic search for a placebo and âupturn a truck full of killer bees and pop them into their mouths, muttering âIâm cured â I mean, Ow!'â
But we must also âtake into account the placebos that donât have any effect at allâ, Saul writes, âthough people think they do.â Now weâre off to find a placebo effective against logical headaches.
FINALLY, it is not just email subject headers and cinema marquees that suffer from truncation (19 November). David Richardâs local Co-op supermarket has on sale a ready-to-roast beef joint called âGet Fresh beef joint with horseradish and mustard toppingâ. Unfortunately, the limited space on the shelf label renders this as âGF beef joint with horseâ.
Meanwhile Alistair Hamilton tells us of his surprise back in October when he found in his inbox a message from what he calls a âreliable sourceâ with a header proclaiming âNEWSFLASH: Moon discovered orbiting tentâ. He wondered if perhaps the tent contained a black hole â but then he discovered that his inbox had clipped âh planetâ from the subject line of this 51¶ŻÂț email.
