DONâT you get furious when obnoxious adverts keep popping up on a website you have visited? A middle-aged colleague recently encountered one on the site of, would you believe it, The New York Times. Out of the blue, the advert started warning him about sexual inadequacies â and it did so not just with written words but very loudly over his computerâs speakers. Pop-up blockers and complaints to the site produced no result, but the noisy ads disappeared when our colleague edited his user profile. People in their 20s get a much better class of adverts.
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THE prestigious Harvard Business Review is read, naturally enough, by the business worldâs top movers and shakers. Despite this, Doug Spencer notes, the reviewâs subscription staff seems to have a distinctly poor opinion of its clienteleâs alertness and knowledge of the world.
The Payment Details section of the reviewâs online subscription form asks for credit card details and puts an asterisk beside the words âCard Numberâ. For those in doubt about the meaning of these words, an explanation is provided beside another asterisk at the bottom of the form. Here we are told soberly that the card number is: âThe large numbers across the middle of the cardâ.
âA Tesco supermarket display promised Helen Ribchester âHealthy Living Fresh Fishâ, but she checked and they were definitely deadâ
Searching for the meaning of life
SEARCHING for the meaning of life? If a higher power canât help, then thereâs always Google. Last week it transpired that people in India lead the world in searching for ânanotechnologyâ on Google (29 July, p 25). Now we find that the people of Brisbane, Australia, come top in their eagerness to type âmeaning of lifeâ into the search engine. (We also spotted that the city comes top for the word âaliensâ, but the two probably arenât linked).
Hidden inside Google Labs, where the company road-tests new ideas and software, you can find out what the world is searching for. Which cities search the most for âforgivenessâ? Top sinner is Philadelphia, perhaps unsurprisingly followed by Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, Londoners are probably too busy for penitence: they top the world in searches for âlost keysâ. In a city well known for its hellish driving, our readers in the Boston area are busy trying to find a place to put their car. Cambridge, Massachusetts, comes highest for âparking spaceâ.
So who could be searching the most for Osama Bin Laden? Naturally, itâs Washington DC.
INTRIGUED by our report of a dramatic breakthrough by Norman McVea, PhD, which enables him to produce âEnergized 5D Sound CDâsâ imprinted with âLife Energy Amplified fieldsâ (10 June), Phil McSharry did a little digging. First he wondered, as one does, where McVea had acquired his doctorate.
He failed to uncover this, though he did find out that in 1968 one Norman McVea, PhD, undertook âa course of metaphysical studyâ â one related to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard. This is yet another addition to McVeaâs already-crowded journey through the âalternativeâ, from the Esalen Institute via Erhardt Seminar Training to the Oxygen Research Institute.
Then, looking for biographies, McSharry searched for phrases matching the Oxygen Research Instituteâs description of McVeaâs work as âresearch in the fields of neuro-performance⊠youthing, longevity and higher states of consciousnessâ. No trace of such a doctorate emerged. But it turns out at that âJohn Keen, PhD, has spent more than 20 years researching neuro-performance, rejuvenation, longevity and higher states of consciousness.â
Are McVea and Keen just colleagues in close agreement? Or has a fifth-dimensional transformation caused them to share life paths, transcending the narrow bounds of âselfhoodâ, even to share the same coordinates in our mundane space-time?
âJOIN me and my friends on WAYN,â read the email that Nam Khuan Chuaâs friend sent, âand meet more than 5,007,919 million members from all around the world!â Has the worldâs population exploded, unnoticed? Or has the web reached out across species barriers?
The buzzes on the âBâ side
WE probably shouldnât encourage him, but weâve agreed to pass on Bob Hunterâs claim that our story on Cornell Universityâs press release about its CD of owl voices â âa veritable âWhooâs Hoooâ of North American owl soundsâ (15 July) â reminded him that the university had earlier cut a vinyl recording entitled âBuzzes of North American Waspsâ. There was, he says, some initial controversy over the recording in that many wasp experts did not recognise the buzzes. The controversy was put to rest when it was pointed out that the experts were actually playing the âBâ side.
FINALLY, Jana âskinnyâ water is âa no-calorie waterâ it says at â and its list price is $43.20 plus shipping for 24 bottles. Nicky Thompson wishes to be reminded by way of comparison what the calorific content of a glass of ordinary tap water is.
