Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Gone to a better conference
SADLY, Feedback must record the passing of a favourite academic author and faithful correspondent. Cleo Borzoiâs copious output includes the classic âHarnessing angular kinetic energy from colossal cloned Rodentia: re-envisioning the hamster wheel model in green energy managementâ (described here on 15 June 2013).
On 11 June, the day on which she passed away, Cleo received an urgent query from the organisers of the in Dalian, China, about her planned presentation âAquadog: Use of trained border collies to herd fish and protect them in vulnerable marine aquaculture facilitiesâ. Her literary executor, Phillip Clapham, notes that âthe only thing stupider than a conference accepting a ridiculous paper authored by a dog is a conference accepting a ridiculous paper authored by a dead dog. Fear not, Cleo will live on!â
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The London Evening Standard correctly reported âmore than 7 million cubic centimetres of concreteâ in 1940s European coastal defences. Alastair Robertson asks: whatâs that in elephants? Three, at 6 tonnes
Paper over space-time cracks
INTENSE surprise was the reaction of a journalist colleague who was recently asked to referee a paper entitled âFiber-Optic Cables Considered Harmfulâ submitted to the . Had they been mistaken for an academic? Or was the request slyly apt?
A famous web search engine quickly identified the text as a generated in 2005 by some mischievous souls at MIT and their (15 August 2009). The original went missing after being submitted to an apparently bogus conference at the time, but a copy has fallen through a wormhole in the multiverse to the journal in question. Was its editor aware that our colleague had written about spoof papers for Feedback?
For the record
MOMENTS after Feedback went to the printers, we spotted a brain fart. We had said that âAndrew Dobleâs bank annoyingly limits his online transfers to ÂŁ999,999,999,999,999.99 â some 56 times the US national debtâ and asked âWhat does it know about inflation that we donât?â (21 June). The for US national debt was at the time $17,544,440,933,912.98. So, now remembering the â ÂŁ1 = $1.70 as this went to press â the limit was some 97 times the US debt. Had we known that the pound sterling would hit parity with the dollar this week, weâd be richer.
Crumbling without foundations
WHILE in confessional mode, we congratulate Peter Verity for asking: âis Feedback channelling Aleister Crowley?â We noted that âthe idea of a metaphor without foundation just needs a name. Translating that description into Greek seems to add gravitas: âathelemic metaphorsâ, we thinkâ (26 April).
We had asked an online translation service for the Greek for âfoundationâ. We may be suffering late-onset dyslexia: the transliteration of is âthemelioâ. Or were we misled by our desire to create an antonym to the late occultist Crowleyâs âlaw of Thelemaâ â âdo what thou wilt shall be the whole of the lawâ? Whoops.
Skeuomorphic symbol and sign
SO ARE metaphors without foundation âathemelicâ? Brian Darvell also spotted the Crowley reference, which we acknowledge above is incorrect â and compared the underlying concept to the widespread use of outdated images, such as the roll-film box camera on signs warning of all-electronic speed cameras.
Ah, those would be skeuomorphs â which word we believe covers âgestures that refer back to a meaning that is no longer relevant, such as Anita Gaitâs âair scribbleâ when requesting the bill in a restaurantâ (28 May 2011).
Arthur Prent, catching up on back issues, suggested recently that this gesture represents not the manual signing of a cheque, but the still older request to a waiter to please write out the bill by hand.
Those scribbles, speed camera signs, the steam locomotives warning of electric trains crossing and the cardboard file folders on your computer screen (13 August 2011) are all, in a sense, metaphors realised in two or three dimensions. Will âskeuomorphâ do, then?
Metaphors once upon a time
AND, Michael Truscott asks, âCan you have a metaphor that isnât founded, at some point, in the past?â He offers âapologies for the pedantry â but as a lawyer itâs one of the things I enjoy about Feedbackâ. We now attempt to construct and deploy a metaphor that has never had a foundation in reality. We tried doing it from the rich seam that is legal language, but are now mining works acknowledged as fiction instead. May the Force may be with us.
Between rocks and hard places
FINALLY, one of the most widely used metaphors without foundation, says David Holdsworth, is âlowest common denominatorâ, which is invariably used to refer to the highest common factor. Considering whether to set out an explanation for the hypothetical puzzled reader, while not requiring the construction of an extension to this page, we found ourselves between a rock and a hard place.
Investigation of that phrase led to its likely foundations in the history of a in 1917: see .
We instead leave the arithmetic as an exercise for the reader and suggest a name for the phenomenon that David mentions: âwrongâ.
Article amended on 1 January 1970
When this article was first published, it attributed the curious choice of concrete volume measurements to the wrong London newspaper.
