âYOU cannot be serious,â tennis ace John McEnroe famously shouted when the umpire ruled one of his shots as âoutâ. Reader John Mulligan suspects that the patent officer felt the same way about Timothy Wace Robertsâs patent application for a âBusiness method protecting jokesâ.
The abstract of his US patent office application 200602593306 opens: âThe specification describes a method of protecting jokes by filing patent applications therefor, and gives examples of novel jokes to be thus protected. Specific jokes to be protected by the process of the invention include stories about animals playing ball games, in which alliteration is used in the punchline; a scheme for raising money for charity by providing dogs for carriage by Underground passengers; and the joke that consists in filing a patent application to protect jokes.â
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We donât know what the first jokes referred to are, but suspect the second relates to notices beside London Underground escalators saying âDogs must be carriedâ. As for the third â does this mean Wace Robertsâ patent application is evidence of âprior artâ, making itself invalid â or is it valid and in breach of itself? Wace Roberts attempts to resolve the problem with a further claim: âA novel type of patent application, one that claims itself, and hence is termed âhomoproprietaryâ, is disclosed.â
ââWarning, danger of suffocationâ advises a notice on the safe in a room at a Swindon hotel in southern England. Colin Deady says the safe was barely large enough to contain his mobile phone, let alone his headâ
WE ARE not sure how many words a picture is worth these days, but we have just come across one on the front page of last Novemberâs MIT Media Lab newspaper Frames that certainly adds value. It is attached to an article about doctoral student Noah Vawterâs experiment in transforming noise into music. His device picks up ambient sounds, adds rhythm and harmony, and âchanges the annoying sounds around us into musicâ. The photo shows him standing in the middle of a street near MIT, eyes staring into the distance as he soaks in the music through his headphones, oblivious to the bus bearing down on him from behind.
STILL on the topic of transforming things into music: what is the sound of a protein folding? Cat Wilson alerts us to , where you can listen to the answer.
How is it done? Mary Anne Clarkâs technique involves assigning synthesiser notes to each of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins. Another âinstrumentâ plays (we think) the DNA bases that code for these.
Listening to the serotonin transporter protein 5-HTT warbling away sounds like early-20th-century composer Claude Debussy writing ambient music for a late-20th-century chill-out room â though technically, one might add, it seems to have more in common with the serial music of Arnold Schoenberg and others.
Thatâs our analysis. Wilsonâs analysis is more pithy: âSo thatâs what the strange voices in my head are.â
Chlorine dioxide minus chlorine
IN PURSUIT of healthy, âchemical-freeâ outdoor pursuits, Sasha Lauer ended up perusing the FAQs at Gossamer Gearâs website. She was reassured to read, in the section covering water sterilising tablets: âIs there chlorine in chlorine dioxide? No, there is no chlorine in chlorine dioxide. Although chlorine dioxide has the word chlorine in its name, the two chemicals have completely different chemical structures.â
Perhaps Gossamer Gearâs copywriters would now like to answer another question that is likely to be asked rather frequently: who taught you chemistry?
SEVERAL readers have told us about their Sony Ericsson K800i camera phones. They say that the imaging section of the user guide announces: âTake nine pictures each time the camera button is pressed (ranging from just before to just after you press the button).â
How on earth does the camera achieve such prophetic abilities? Michael Gantry has a theory: âPerhaps it means that it buffers everything you point it at, and just stores a sequence from either side of the moment of your button press.â
Even so, Gantry is now looking forward to a phone that tells you someone is going to call you a couple of minutes before they dial your number, so you can find a quiet spot to take the call. Feedback, meanwhile, hopes to borrow Gantryâs camera and take it to the races.
WRITTEN on the label of a bottle of Batemans Autumn Fall Multigrain Beer: âAs it contains no fish based finings [substance used for clarifying liquid] it is vegan friendly. Ideal as an accompaniment to traditional pies and spicy Lincolnshire sausages.â
John Berry asks: âWhich part of the word vegan do they not understand?â
FINALLY, can anyone help Olaf Lipinski? The other day he bought a shirt with black and white stripes. He was delighted with it until he read the label which says: âWash dark colours separatelyâ. Now he just doesnât know what to do.
