The first (and only) Time Traveler Convention
NOW is the time for Feedback to announce the first and only Time Traveler Convention. (There’d be no point in repeating the event. You’d simply issue a past-tense imperative, as used in an email to someone you suspect has already left for their holiday: have-had a good time! Have-come to the first one!)
We’re happy to respond to Emily Singer’s request to help publicise it, since her web page at will be taken down in less than a year when she graduates, and furthermore, as she notes, “the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently.”
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Instead, she asks that you “write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries. Carve them into a clay tablet. Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history!” Since time travel may not be invented until long after the venue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has faded into oblivion, she asks you to include the latitude/longitude information: the convention took place in the East Campus Courtyard, 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W.
Yes, it took place on 8 May 2005 at 02:00:00 UTC – or didn’t, as the case may be. Feedback believes that this announcement, which was in press while the convention was in an interesting superposition of happening and non-eventitude, is timed perfectly to encourage a maximally interesting attendance.
AH, THE awesome power of Feedback! Our report on the mussels and “*bleep*les” to be found on Inverclyde Council’s bowdlerised website (9 April) has resulted in a hasty bit of editing. The birds on the inner Clyde estuary now enjoy the uncensored mussels and cockles to be found on Mussel Bank and Cockle Bank.
“Another wonderful warning, from some herb seedlings Kristie Mitchell bought: “Warning: Use stem and leaves only. Do not eat roots or potting mix.””
But Howard Ritter, who noticed this, still wonders why the council’s virtual Dr Bowdler felt the need to scrutinise and censor text written by the council’s own staff for its own website, rather than being content to vet only the input of the potentially unsavoury masses from the outside world?
Then while researching this piece we discovered that much of the work of removing the rude bits from Shakespeare attributed to Thomas Bowdler was probably done by his sister Harriet – making her a ghost-un-writer.
Never mind the b*ll***s, let’s have some science
PUNK bands are generally known more for their volume and vocal angst than for their scholarship, so it may come as a bit of a surprise that the founder and lead singer of one southern California band holds a doctorate in evolutionary biology.
Greg Graffin founded Bad Religion in his teens and resurrected it in 1987 when he was in his early 20s. Since then he has earned a master’s degree in geology from the University of California at Los Angeles and carried out research on the fossils of jawless fish, which he published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1992. He earned his PhD from Cornell University in 2003 for a dissertation titled “Evolution, monism, atheism and the naturalist world-view” which examines the religious beliefs, or lack thereof, of leading evolutionary biologists. But Bad Religion is still going strong, with a new album titled The Empire Strikes Back that includes songs such as Let Them Eat War and Los Angeles is Burning.
Meanwhile, a NASA press release informs us that Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, probably the only missile defence analyst in Beverly Hills, California, has been recruited to its Exploration Systems Advisory Committee, where he will provide advice and recommendations to NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems. Somehow the space agency neglected to mention that Baxter is better known as rock guitarist for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. Never mind the b*ll***s, let’s have some science.
TALKING of travel, say you disembarked at the hoverport in Ryde on the Isle of Wight off the UK’s south coast, hoping to take in the sea air at Ryde Esplanade. How do you get there?
Luckily, you have your laptop with you and can to use the “Planning your journey” option. So you enter a starting point of “Ryde Hoverport” and, as if by magic, your journey is mapped out for you: hovercraft to Southsea…bus to Portsmouth and Southsea station…train to Portsmouth Harbour…ferry to Ryde Pier Head…train to Ryde Esplanade.”
Alternatively, as John Winters discovered, you could put your laptop away and walk the 100 metres to the esplanade. We’d heard that the National Rail website offered the pedestrian alternative too, but when we tried checking, the page arrived 25 minutes late. The hyper-efficient and über-logical from German Federal Railways confirms, however, that the long way round works.
FINALLY, Ralph Bowsfield wanted to sail to the Isle of Wight from Lymington on the mainland. But a notice in the harbour there warns sternly: “You may not be permitted to sail if you do not declare that you are carrying dangerous goods.”
Since he was not carrying dangerous goods, he couldn’t make the required declaration – but was still permitted to sail, even though they probably didn’t mean to mean what that “may” means.