IN THE middle of the UKâs autumn âconference seasonâ, in which political parties worry everyone with their policy pronouncements, or lack of them, a message arrived in Feedbackâs inbox addressed to someone called GILL. It has continued to arrive once a week or so ever since.
Bearing in mind that a hot topic for this yearâs party conferences was the National Health Service, the email asks: âTired of waiting for a doctor?â It explains: âDear GILL, with an ageing population and far-reaching budget cuts, the NHS has never been under so much strain. Yet for less than the price of daily coffee, you could provide private healthcare for your whole family.â
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We are invited to âclick to compare quotesâ. When we do, weâre asked to supply our age and phone number and confirm our email address.
Who is GILL? How does the sender know that she, like Feedback, worries that the NHS is about to be crippled? Whatâs more, why are there no links to actual private health insurers? Why was the email sent from an address at âsafe-sender.netâ â an internet name that seems to be saying âlet me through, pleaseâ to email filter programs, rather than conveying any actual information about the messageâs sender?
A footnote says the message comes from Clinic Compare, âa division of MVF Globalâ. Ah. A little searching soon reveals that Marketing VF Ltd, based in Queens Road, Reading, UK, is the owner of the internet name safe-sender.net. The folks there as âGlobal Lead Generation Expertsâ â which means that their business is collecting addresses for others to write to, not, on the face of it, offering or pricing healthscare insurance at all.
All this puts Feedback in a contrary mood. Weâre tempted to send a message to âGILLâ ourselves. This would simply say: âOpt for healthcare for all, free at the point of use and ignore the blandishments of the health insurance lobby, whether itâs actually sending us email messages or not.â
The âTrickle Chargeâ option on the Battery Doctor app on Norman Allenâs Android phone will, he is told, âmaintain the liquidity of electrons to extend battery lifeâ
An excessively interesting continent
ABOUT to go on a business trip to Brisbane, Australia, and hoping to do a bit of exploring as well, Adrian Page decided to download a map onto his satnav and start planning in advance. In doing so, he discovered that Australia, big as it is, is even more interesting than he had thought.
According to Adrianâs satnav, the 1.2 million kilometres of roads that cover the continent contain â879,100 million âPoints of Interestâ.â This means that on average there is a point of interest every 1.5 millimetres of road. To put it another way, given of 7,692,024 square kilometres, the continent must contain something interesting every 10 square metres.
Clearly, truly fascinating trips lie ahead for Adrian and others.
PALAEONTOLOGISTS, it could be said, love faeces. In their quest to understand the ways of extinct species, they find that an animalâs gut contents are rarely preserved, leaving few traces of the food they liked to eat.
Far more abundant are fossils of what remained after digestion â fossilised faeces known in polite Greek as âcoprolitesâ.
To demonstrate the point, the has devoted an entire 387-page issue of its Bulletin (No 57) to coprolites. It includes a history of discoveries going back two centuries, an account of âcoprolites and characters in Victorian Britainâ, the preservation of coprolites, their proper scientific classification, and what they tell us about creatures ranging from fish that swam 350 million years ago to the hyenas of late ice-age Europe. There is even a paper on coprolites and human health. What a lot you can learn from preserved pieces of poo â and all for just $30.
WHILE weâre on the subject of faeces, Michael Holroyd sends us a scan of an advertisement he saw in The Equity newspaper in Shawville, Quebec, Canada. Itâs for a portable toilet rental service, and although itâs not a new Apple product, itâs called â get ready to groan here â âI-Poodâ.
âIT ALL makes sense,â says Graham King, âbut I can not help thinking of Feedback each time I receive this pager message: âThis is the 7 pm test message. If you do not receive this message please call the office after 9 am tomorrowâ.â We are flattered but mystified. What sense is there in this? Graham explains: âOur district rural fire service is testing the pager system as there have been several complaints of not receiving messages, important if they happen to be a fire call. We were forewarned by email of the test, but still laugh each day.â
FINALLY, Gelupo Gelato is âmuch more than ice creamâ according to the delicatessen flyer Alessandra Lythall sends. Indeed, it appears to be a logical conundrum too: âGelato does not contain milk or butter fats,â the flyer continues, âIt is made from fresh milk, cream, eggs and fruit flavourings.â So is that fat-free cream, or what?
