FEEDBACK will not inquire why Roger Key started to read an elderly copy of the Daily Mail newspaper used, he says, for packaging. We are only grateful for the wonderful advert he sends, for seeds of the “Tomazing” tomato, promising both “sweetness without the calories” and “high sugar content”.
More remarkable than the product, though, is its genesis: “a remarkable breeding success story based on traditional methods not genetics”. So on what was it based? Animal sacrifice, giving the seedlings a good talking-to, or what?
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THE IonMax reading light “is perfect for those who need to focus on what they’re doing – it actually helps you to concentrate!” How does it do that, then? Unfortunately Raoul Murfitt was left speechless by – so it’s down to Feedback to work out what’s going on.
The light “features a compact built-in Anion-Generating ioniser in the base of the lamp that generates thousands of anions, which are great for your health and wellbeing.” Er, yes. Anions. They’re not actually that hard to come by. Your average pinch of salt, for example, contains approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1022) anions.
Which suggests to Feedback that “thousands” is the sort of number of anions that would wander off by accident from, say, the first micrometre of ink drying on the cheque for A$139.95 you are paying for the lamp. Then you tear up the cheque, your health and concentration already improved.
“”It is dangerous to cross this bridge when this notice is underwater” – David Purchase swears he really did see this sign on New Zealand’s South Island about 20 years ago”
COMIC Sans, the much-hated typeface, has a use, apparently. Imogen Sykes responds to Feedback’s mention of campaigns against it (24 June), reporting that teachers of young children in the UK are encouraged to print material in a font in which the lower-case “a” is drawn in the same way as children are taught to write it – without that curl at the top – which is the case for Comic Sans.
Helvetica Textbook is a proper typeface also with that feature. Unfortunately it wasn’t installed on Imogen’s machine. We are grateful to her for tracking down two other fonts, Berlin Sans FB and Coronet, that may be installed easily and also have the handwriting-style “a”.
None of this, however, provides any excuse for the University of Southampton examination paper sent in by a reader who would understandably rather remain anonymous. It is printed in a curly-wurly font called Blechh. And it was a physics exam, not the infantile studies or jelly-and-custardology that the appearance of the font would suggest.
THE idea of running things off water has an enduring appeal, it seems. Philip Ball reports that a chemist friend recently saw a “water-powered” calculator on sale – in the shop at London’s Science Museum.
Tracking it down online, he found it also for sale at – with the claim that “The hydrogen required to power a fuel cell has to come from somewhere, and water (H2O) is one possible source. The hydrogen and oxygen in water can be separated from one another through a process called water electrolysis, which you can do with this simple classroom experiment.”
Or perhaps not. Digging a little further, we find confessing that they have no idea how it works, and a user of replying: “It’s just a battery, it looks a little bit different… it is powered by a dissolving hunk of zinc.”
So you pays your money and you chooses your belief system, depending on where you pays it.
THE Gunwharf Quays shopping centre in Portsmouth Harbour in southern England is running radio adverts which, Jon Grove insists, promote the seafront location as a place to take “a couple of deep breaths of pure ozone”. He thinks he’ll stick with his local shops and preserve his alveoli.
THE instruction sheet for the Crate & Barrel shelving unit Taz Daughtrey had just unpacked contained crucial information on how it was to be put together: “Note: people are required to safely assemble this product.”
Something of a disappointment, no doubt, for those who hope to leave the whole thing to natural selection.
FINALLY – or perhaps not – John Hamm, the premier of Nova Scotia, Canada, gave CAN$1.5 million to boatbuilders to encourage them to maintain their traditional activities. The announcement was much appreciated by a member of the state’s legislative assembly, Carolyn Bolivar-Getson, who was reported by the Chester Clipper newspaper as saying that “aside from the economic spin-off, increased boat-building also contributed to the region’s seafaring past”.
Sifford Pearre, who spotted this, concludes that: “A little good you do today can reap great benefits yesterday.” And if readers in Nova Scotia think they saw this story some years ago… that just proves the point, doesn’t it?
