Competition: what Darwin didn’t say
THIS week, as we approach the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, Feedback invites readers to provide 50 words on the thought-provoking theme of: “Things you would never have heard Charles Darwin say about evolution.” The editors will reward what we judge the wittiest non-Darwinism with the framed original of the beautiful artwork in “Uprooting Darwin’s tree” on page 31 of this issue, signed by the artist Yulia Brodskaya.
You may enter the competition by email – with the subject line “Darwin Competition”, please – or by fax or post or by going to www.newscientist.com/article/dn16399. The competition closes on Monday 16 February. The winning entry and the best runners up will be published in the 7 March issue of 51¶ŻÂţ.
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THE recording world, Feedback reported three years ago, has been split over “accidental stereo” (18 March 2006). In the old vinyl days, it was standard practice to cut two blank wax discs at the same time, in case one was a dud. Usually the two discs were fed from the same microphone, but if two microphones were used, the two discs would have accidentally captured stereo – or so some engineers claimed.
Others disagreed vigorously, so much so that EMI’s planned 1992 UK release of an accidental stereo recording of Elgar’s The Kingdom: Prelude was abandoned. A later “stereo” release by UK independent record label Naxos of the same composer’s Cockaigne Overture failed to resolve the issue, as professionals who listened to it clashed over whether it really was in stereo.
Now the argument has started all over again. A few years ago in the US, Sony Music found a stash of originals by Leopold Stokowski and his All-American Youth Orchestra that had been recorded in 1941. The discs were in pairs marked L and R rather than the usual A and B, and when the Sony engineers listened, they were sure they were hearing real left and right stereo. But Sony then merged with BMG and laid off the people planning to release CDs of “Stokie in stereo”.
Refusing to let the matter rest there, the Leopold Stokowski Society managed, after a long battle, to get clearance to release those recordings of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in “stereo”. Edward Johnson writes in the latest issue of the society’s journal: “Nay-saying listeners can now explain how such vivid instrumental separation can be obtained from one mono source.”
Let fresh battle commence.
SEATED and with a few moments to spare, Dan Barrett tells us, he found himself reading the packaging of some Andrex toilet paper, as one does. He learned that it contained eight rolls of 2-ply tissue. Fair enough, he thought – but it went on to tell him that there was an average of 360 sheets per roll, that average sheet size was 124 × 110 millimetres and that average roll length was 44.64 metres. This, he thought, was getting a bit silly – but the clincher, which applied to the entire pack, was: “Average total area 39.28 square metres.”
“Are others finding a use for the product that I don’t know about, such as wallpapering?” he wonders. “And why are they not using a more standard unit of measurement, such as the football field?”
WITH the recent holiday period still fresh in his mind, Daniel Livingstone calls our attention to a UK broadcast in the run-up to Christmas on BBC Radio 1’s 51¶ŻÂţbeat. In it, Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, “, after which 51¶ŻÂţbeat promptly proceeded to drift into mythological territory of its own.
One of the debunked myths was the popular belief that “most body heat is lost through the head”. This, it transpires, is simply not true, but 51¶ŻÂţbeat inadvisedly went on to “prove” it by suggesting that wearing a woolly hat in winter has no effect. The programme sent two subjects to stand in the cold, one wearing a Santa hat and one with a bare head. After a while, thermometers were used to measure their body temperatures. The reporter announced with satisfaction that both temperatures were the same, in the apparent belief that this proved no heat had been lost by the person with the bare head.
In fact, of course, losing heat from any part of your body won’t usually affect your core temperature – but the more heat you lose, whether from your head or anywhere else, the more energy your body has to use to keep its thermostat up. Livingstone hopes that no Antarctic explorers were listening to this broadcast.
“Arms full, Andy Thomson approached the sliding doors in a London store. When they didn’t open, he noticed a sign beside them saying: “Customers should use push buttons to open automatic doors””
FINALLY, Ian Dearing tells us that just before Christmas he received a message with the subject line: “Important Message from Santa.” Imagine his disappointment when he opened the message to find it was from a bank and its full title was: “Important Message from Santander Group.”
