ON opening his bottle of Snapple, Ben Haller discovered the following âReal Factâ on the inside of the cap: âBroccoli is the only vegetable that is a flower.â
âCauliflower?â Haller thought. âArtichoke?â
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In a spirit of outrage that any Feedback reader would share, he went to , where his bottle cap proclaimed he could âget all the âReal Facts'â. Here he found âA male fireflyâs light is twice as bright as a femaleâsâ; a vast over-generalisation, at best, Haller says. âThe most sensitive parts of the body are the mouth and fingertipsâ; Haller believes the clitoris easily wins this contest. And what about eyeballs, Feedback adds. âGiraffes have no vocal cordsâ; this is a myth, Haller suggests, born of the fact that they rarely vocalise. âThe temp[erature] of the sun can reach 15 million °Fâ; the core, Haller says, is almost 25 million °F, while the surface is only about 10,000 °F, so this is wrong either way. And finally, âFrowning burns more calories than smilingâ; urban legends website debunks this thoroughly, Haller notes.
He got tired at this point, but he doesnât think he has exhausted Snappleâs fount of dodgy âfactsâ. He suggests others go âfactâ-finding for their own amusement. He also points out that Snapple consistently puts the word âfactâ in quotes, and wonders if this is because it recognises its âfactâ -checking leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, on its website Snapple âpromises theyâre correctâ. Huh?
THE British company that Perry Bebbington works for supplies office telephones, including the popular BT Response 75, which he discovered has a strange quirk. When a caller rings in and leaves a message, the Response 75 announces out loud: âThank you for callingâ.
All very polite, you might think â but it only does this after the caller has hung up. So the caller wonât hear the message and, since answering machines are usually only switched on when their owner is out, neither will anyone else.
THE BBCâs director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield, was frank about the perils of relying on computer technology for home entertainment, as we reported on 14 July. Will he be as frank about the technology relied on by iPlayer, the BBC system that lets people download TV programmes they have missed?
Feedback has now had a chance to try iPlayer and heartily agrees with the shed-load of criticism posted on the BBCâs website (). Entering our user name and password we got instructions to âinstall the BBC iPlayer library softwareâ. After an apparently successful installation, we clicked to download a TV programme but instead got the same instruction to install software. Since we had already installed it, the only options available were to Remove or Repair, so we hit Repair, and tried to download a programme again. Result? We got the same instruction.
The BBCâs website provides the option to send a message pleading âHelp me with my Error Messageâ. But trying this threw up a fresh error message: âA runtime error has occurred. Do you wish to debug? Line 516. Error. Object expected.â After some trial-and-error clicking, the Help Me message winged off, and brought back the response: âWe canât guarantee a personal reply⊠due to the huge volume of emails we receive.â Meanwhile, the iPlayer main menu was showing a fresh message. âSorry but we are experiencing technical difficulties.â
All of which makes us wonder whether the BBC management was wise to cut back on R&D and base the iPlayer on technology researched and developed by Microsoft.
KIM DOMANI is concerned. According to an advert by Crystal Clear promoting âelectron water machinesâ in the 2007 Old Farmerâs Almanac (Canadian edition): âFifty years ago the hydrogen bond angle in water was 108° and you rarely heard of anyone with cancer. Today, itâs only 104°, and cancer is an epidemic!â
Domani asks us to pass this information on because âat this rate we shall all be feeling the effects of decreasing angles of our hydrogen bonds very acutelyâ.
âWilliam Joseph was not sure if he was pleased to read the announcement on Tiscaliâs website: âDegradation of service has been restored by our network engineersâ
FINALLY, here is another strange Amazon recommendation. When Don Curtin ordered a book on chess from the online retailer a year ago, he was told: âWeâve noticed that customers who have expressed interest in Think Like A Grandmaster: Algebraic Edition by Alexander Kotov have also ordered The Art of Pole Dancing: A Spin-by-Spin Guide by Peekaboo Pole Dancing Ltd. For this reason, you might like to know that⊠The Art of Pole Dancing: A Spin-by-Spin Guide will be released Paperback on October 28⊠You can pre-order your copy by following the link belowâŠâ
Curtin is now wondering whether Amazon needs to tweak its customer software a bit, or whether his fellow chess fans have proclivities he has hitherto been blithely ignorant of.
