How often students have group sex
“FEMALE art students more sexually active than male science nerds,” blared the headline on an Agence France-Presse story published by . Wondering who thought this was somehow, you know, news, Feedback almost missed a quote from the original paper in the Australian journal Sexual Health by Bernadette Zakher and Melissa Kang: “Males in the study were less likely to have had sex as a group compared to the group of females in the sample.”
Would that be as a Lie group, perhaps, or a more generic Abelian group? Or some more interesting type of group that Feedback missed when dozing off at the back during a mathematics lecture?
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Hercule the unbreakable hamster
THE packaging of the exercise ball Edward Tripp bought for his hamster, Hercule, states: “Only Runner Medium is made from high impact non-toxic polystyrene which makes the hamster very robust and unbreakable.” Tripp is delighted to know he is the owner of Hercule the unbreakable hamster.
FEEDBACK readers – you’re an odd lot, and we like you. Normal people just mutter “yeah, whatever” when new software presents them with a licence agreement, and happily hit the “yes” button that means “just let me sign away my firstborn child, if any, and play, NOW”. But you – you read them.
Oliver Taylor, for example, came across the following. It was all in capital letters, but in case you’re reading this in a quiet place we’ve removed the shoutiness: “The Apple software is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control systems, life support machines or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.”
“The instructions on Alistair Anderson’s mini flashlight say: “Different types of batteries or new and used batteries are not to be mixed.” It takes a single “AAA” cell. Help in breaking the rule would be appreciated…”
Feedback does not claim to be totally up to speed with the technicalities of nuclear power station control software, but we do have a teensy and amateur suspicion that running one using Oliver’s iTunes program might indeed prove unfortunate.
OUR fruitloopery of the week award goes to the TRV University, which, Peter Day has discovered, tells us at that: “Now you can convert ANY rollerball style pen to operate like a Magic Pen capable of downloading precise and accurate information about the future, the past or anything you want to know – anywhere on the planet… It’s a mind technology called Technical Remote Viewing and anyone can learn this formally top secret skill and for less than a dollar convert an ordinary pen into a magic pen worth millions.”
Elsewhere, at we are told that the pen can “probe the mind of Osama Bin Laden in real time” and “find out what is hidden underneath the Sphynx in Egypt… or if life ever did exist on Mars”.
Wonderful value for the price of a pen – available exclusively with the $1295 basic training course.
THE UK government has developed a bad habit of losing discs and memory sticks that contain citizens’ confidential personal information. Now it has lost the name of its security advice centre.
Security specialist company Sophos has discovered that when the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) was shut down in April 2006 and replaced by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the British government let go of the registered website name, . Not realising this, other websites including the BBC still link to the NHTCU site. But, after a legitimate purchase by a German company, now offers private high-tech crime information resources.
And what happens if the firm legitimately sells the site name on? “In the worst possible scenario,” Sophos says, “fraudsters could use the site to… try and harvest confidential information”. Then SOCA would have to warn people about the risks of using the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit website.
THE New Zealand Post sold David Blest a small box in which to mail a gift. Its internal dimensions were 140 millimetres × 130 mm × 25 mm. Outside, it bore the warning “Maximum weight 20 kg”. Feedback has checked Blest’s calculation, and that box’s volume of the densest material you can actually buy – either osmium or iridium (we’re not joining that fight) – would barely break the 10 kilogram mark, though it might break the bank.
So what does New Zealand Post know that physics doesn’t?
FINALLY, when Sandra Lloyd was about to put her new “Pure & Natural” jumper in the wash, her husband John checked the side seam for the washing instructions and found that it was indeed “pure” – 100 per cent, no less. However, John says that in 60-odd years on this planet he has never come across a “natural” acrylic sheep.
