ONCE again, boring old conventional science has been scooped by a âSpiritual Teacher and Healer, Naturopath and Telepathic Channelâ. Moikeha Asar K brings us â at â important news about the nature of life itself: âFor many years carbon was said to be the only living atom on the Earth, but recently all the aspects that allows [sic] carbon to be classed as such have been found in Silica also. This means that by scientific and human means silica-containing substances are alive.â
Like Zacharias Orfanos, who alerted us to this, we feel deep disappointment that these âscientific and human meansâ were not taught to us at school. Meanwhile, not content with rethinking the whole of biology, Mr K also has news for oceanographers: âLife forms have been found in the deep oceans of earth that demonstrate all the characteristics of life, even being able to reproduce, without any carbon in them.â
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What, though, is Mr K selling? âLiquid Crystals are prepared by imprinting a Crystalâs individual Holistic Planetary vibrational healing signature into water and holding it there with the geometry that creates it.â Thatâll set you back a mere A$7.50 for 10 millilitres of, er, water. As Mr K notes, âAs yet we donât completely understand their sacred language of geometric light.â Indeed.
STARTLING news from the European Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS): âThe âLarge APEX bolometer cameraâ⊠the worldâs largest for detecting extremely cold astronomical objects, is now in operation⊠in order to pick up slight temperature fluctuations, the camera must itself be cooled to below absolute zero (-272.85 °C).â
âFrom the department of disarming honesty: Ben Hill came across a road sign in north Wales that said âSlow Construction Aheadâ
Nowhere in the newsletter do we discover how the twin universe-changing feats of altering absolute zero and then going below it are accomplished. But Allan Reese, who spotted this, went to the trouble of digging out the press release from the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere on which the CORDIS piece was based. Here we find the more conventional explanation that the camera is cooled to âless than 0.3 degrees above absolute zero, that is below minus 272.85 degrees Celsiusâ.
This forgivable slip-of-the-pen explanation is not available, however, to the press office of the UKâs Science and Technology Facilities Council, which on 7 November issued a press release which opened thus: âAt 1.9 degrees below absolute zero, colder than outer space, the last interconnection in the worldâs largest cryogenic system was sealed today.â Oops. Or âEurekaâ? Sadly, it seems that officials at CERN â home of the particle accelerator near Geneva under discussion â never made such a claim.
WHEN you order something, the arrival of the bill comes as no surprise, but some people in the US who signed up with AT&T for a new iPhone got more than they expected. Part of the deal was to be charged a flat rate each month for internet services, so it would have made sense to summarise that part of the bill in one line. However, AT&T charge other users per minute of internet use as well as for phone calls and text messages, so now they print out all the details for iPhone users too, and send them to every customer who hasnât explicitly asked them not to.
It seems the users of older phones donât spend much time on the net, but iPhone users do. Now their bills have started coming in, some of them hundreds of pages long and costing several dollars in postage. They list every single minute of internet use â even though the customers have already paid for them in the flat rate.
âBY 2010, the production and sale of each bottle of water will actually result in a 120 per cent net reduction of carbon in the atmosphere,â Thomas Mooney of Fiji Water told The Guardian newspaper in London. âCan nothing be done to stop these people,â Mike Rodgers asks, âbefore itâs too late?â
MORE on the subject of liquid electricity (24 November). In the physics departmentâs study area at the University of Leeds, UK, Stephen Murray tells us, there are several signs on the wall saying âDanger! Not drinking waterâ and âDo not drinkâ. However, instead of warning people about the risk of drinking from taps or sinks â of which there are none in the room â the warnings are placed next to an array of electrical sockets.
FINALLY, we noted recently that the Service Availability section of the UK Driving Standards Agency website tells us: âYou can normally book a theory test online 24 hours a day, every dayâ and continues âOutside these hours you may make a âpending booking'â (27 October). What we failed to notice at the time, as Paul Meara and Gabriel Jacobs have pointed out, is that at the bottom of the page containing this strange statement are the words: âThe text on this page has been approved by the Plain English Campaign for clarity.â
