The wondrousness of flower essences
GRADE A gobbledegook is available for the reading pleasure of connoisseurs, thanks to the alertness of John Meyer, at â home of Australian Bush Flower Essences. Curiously, the company is based in British Columbia, Canada. Presumably, exotic Australian things are doubly exotic there.
We have space only for a small sample of the wondrousness: âWhen an Essence is ingested or absorbed through the skin, it is assimilated into the blood stream. Then it settles midway between the circulatory and nervous systems. There, an electromagnetic current is created by the polarity of the two systems. The Essence then moves directly to the meridians, which are vital mechanisms of interface between the subtle bodies and the physical body.â
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There are more revolutionary findings that should excite physiologists everywhere: âThe quartz-like crystalline silica structures in the physical body, such as those in the bloodstream, the hair and nails, amplify and transmit the healing energies of the Flower Essences to their appropriate sights [sic]âŠâ And at that, Feedbackâs heart turned to stone.
We did go back to discover that the Essences are prepared âby imprinting a flowerâs unique vibrational healing signature onto a carrier solution of brandyâ. So they may be effective against sobriety, weâll grant.
âOn a readerâs tube of Colgate toothpaste it is written: âClinically proven everyday protection against time.â So if you smear it on your head it will stop hair loss?â
âPerhaps,â John muses, âI need to take some Bauhinia, which is for âembracing new concepts and ideas. There may be some hesitation or reluctance, initially, in coming to terms with theseâ.â Feedback plans to douse an expenses claim â for a $385 correspondence course on flower essences â in this belief-inducing substance. Shhh, donât tell the Editor.
âANY discussion of oral sex has clear links with the last two USA administrations,â write Marian Pitts and Anthony Smith in an editorial in the Australian journal Sexual Health (vol 5, p 315). Itâs the sort of opening sentence that definitely grabs oneâs attention. The reference to Bill Clinton was obvious, but what about George W. Bush? A curious Feedback read on, wondering if they had discovered Bush in one of those interesting moments that lead to sudden resignations âto spend more time with the familyâ. Alas, they only linked him to the issue of sexual abstinence, which he was in favour of, and through that to the discussion of âtechnical virginsâ â those who, like Clinton, donât consider oral sex to be intercourse.
âThe issues of what counts as sex and what one actually can do while remaining sexually abstinent are important questions,â the authors continue. They cite some fascinating statistics, such as a survey of 925 Californian teenagers aged 14 to 19, reporting that 44.2 per cent thought âgenital touching was consistent with being abstinentâ, 33.4 per cent considered oral sex OK, and 14.3 per cent thought anal sex fell within the boundaries of abstinence. They donât mention if any of the Californians thought they could remain abstinent while having vaginal sex but, given the above, Feedback suspects some would have responded in the affirmative.
The authors go on to cite a host of other surveys of other groups, but eventually the details and the sentences grow tortuously convoluted and academic. âMost oral sex,â they write, âis happening concurrently with vaginal or anal sex and so must be understood within the context of a more complex and multifactorial sexual encounter, yet these other activities seem somehow less worthy of consideration or our attention.â It makes Feedback recall a cynical response to the long-running debate over sex education in schools â it would make sex seem so dull that pupils would lose all interest in it.
Chemistry at a considerable cost
IS THIS the worldâs most expensive chemistry book? Its is: âChemical Shifts and Coupling Constants for Silicon-29 (Landolt-Bornstein: Numerical Data and Functional Relationships in Science and Technology â New Series) (Hardcover)â by R. R. Gupta, M. D. Lechner, H. Marsmann, B. Mikhova and F. Uhlig. It costs $8539 â a mere $18.44 for each of its 463 pages, as one Amazon customer-reviewer calculated. Another noted that while the 463-page tome âstarts off a little slow, once you get into the third chapter, âSilicon Molecules: We Hardly Knew Yeâ, you just canât put this book downâ.
If you want a piece of this action but youâre feeling the pinch, donât worry, Amazon has kindly made the shipping free.
SPOTTED on the internal jobs bulletin board at the BBC by a reader whose anonymity we have carefully protected by losing their message for months: âJob title: Marketing Manager, Earthâ.
Marketing to whom? At you can see that the post is âno longer being advertisedâ. Has the planet been sold, then? Why were we not told?
Mutually exclusive ticket machines
FINALLY, our thanks to Dennis Kaye, who has sent us a photograph of two payment machines standing side by side in a car park in Redbridge, London, UK. Both have a notice on them saying: âPlease use other machine.â
