Lies, damn lies and children’s books
INITIALLY, Richard Mallett was excited to be told that there is a new magazine for children on sale in the UK, called . But then he read the sample article on the flyer, entitled “Eco bulbs, money saver?”. This unexpectedly veers off into fundamental – and indeed novel – theories of the nature of light itself.
“Most theories in physics talk about it behaving like a wave, when it travels fast it splits into the colours of the rainbow,” we are informed. Albert Einstein, apparently, “theorised that light can create particle-like entities called photons” and these “throw off energy”. Counting the number of ways this is wrong is left as an exercise for the reader.
Advertisement
Feedback regularly hears confirmation that non-fiction children’s publications are something that, like sausages, you don’t want to watch being made. As some hard-done-by writers report in a UK National Union of Journalists’ article “Telling lies to children” (), whatever the author writes, editors are apt to change, such as moving walruses to Antarctica to improve a layout or inserting a pet theory that the playwright Christopher Marlowe faked his death. Elsewhere on the same site (), an author reports that her references to hedgehogs and free-standing wardrobes being removed for fear of upsetting potential purchasers. We suspect the hand of an unsure editor here too.
BARF in style. Feedback salutes a Canadian outfit called for its appeal to a very particular niche market.
“Are you pregnant and suffering from morning sickness?” it asks. If so, the floral designs and pastel colours of its “compact, disposable, affordable, and yet stylish vomit bags” could be just the thing for you.
Carry “a chic morning sickness bag everywhere you go”, the company exhorts. “You no longer have to use airsickness bags from the airplane, plastic shopping bags or garbage bags. You can stop searching for the nearest toilet bowl everywhere you go, and no more sticking your head in a disgusting, smelly garbage can.”
How thoughtful.
THE folders in Jim Sullivan’s Microsoft Outlook Inbox are usually arranged by date – “Today”, “Yesterday”, “Last Week”, “2 Weeks Ago” and so on.
One day last month, however, the folders were labelled “Three Months Ahead”, “2-3 Months Ahead”, “Next Month”, “Next Week”, “Tomorrow” and “Today”.
Excited, he looked for messages in them, but sadly there weren’t any – least of all any that gave him the following week’s winning lotto numbers.
The next day things were back to normal. Jim is aware that glitches happen, so he isn’t particularly fazed by this – but he remains at a loss to understand why a Microsoft software designer would choose to create folders for emails from the future and leave them hanging around to pop up from time to time.
AND what were the iPhone software designers up to when they got to work on birth dates? Eve Ousby noticed the iPhone will allow such dates stretching back to AD 1 and forwards a long way beyond 2010; Eve says cramp of the thumb set in when she reached AD 3186.
Dates in the not-too-distant future could be useful for new arrivals. “And maybe some devout Christians would like to have Jesus on their contact list,” she suggests. “But is it really necessary to have such an extensive range of birth years?”
COINCIDENTALLY, the trade association Meat & Livestock Australia publishes a magazine called Feedback. Nancy Graham tells us she was intrigued by an article in it discussing a report on phosphorus that asserted: “A scant 2 per cent of phosphate applied as fertiliser in Australia ends up being eaten as food by the nation’s inhabitants.”
“My question,” Nancy says, “is how much phosphate fertiliser do they think we should be eating?”
“DON’T kiss them, they’re not princes,” warns a report from the US Department of Health & Human Services in response to an apparent epidemic of frog kissing.
“Frogs are not princes, and they can cause sickness,” says the report. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s hearing about more people becoming ill because of pet frogs, especially African dwarf frogs. People have been getting salmonella, which can lead to diarrhoea, fever and abdominal cramps up to 72 hours after infection.” Frog fanciers: you have been warned.
FINALLY, how’s this for an inappropriate company name? Simon Sherrin couldn’t quite believe it when he saw a truck emblazoned with “Sweeney Todd Medical Waste Disposal” pass in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia. He figured he must have misread it, but no, a quick web search took him to . The company boasts of using “the latest in world-class medical waste disposal technology”. Presumably that includes discarded razors and the like?
A recruitment agency in central London announces: “7.5 tonne delivery drivers wanted”. David Lloyd hopes this is not a result of a lifetime at the wheel