Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Taking Einstein鈥檚 name in vain
QUOTATIONS, Albert Einstein said, 鈥渄o not give your Tweets even the dubious benefits of the Argument from Authority鈥�. Except, of course, that he . We nevertheless predict that any day now our fake quote will appear online in Comic Sans type overlaid on a shock-haired portrait. That would be an Internet Meme, Your Honour.
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Especially annoying to us at the moment is the purported pens茅e from the great physicist holding that 鈥淚 fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.鈥� He either. But it has been thousands of times, often the way These Young People use technology.
Feedback finds the purveyors of these quotes unimaginative in their old-grouch impersonation. We started spreading memes bemoaning the ill effects of this 鈥渨riting鈥� thing 鈥� but remembered that someone called Socrates 2400 years ago.
Hold the front page! The UK鈥檚 Lincolnshire Echo headlined on 11 August: 鈥溾��
Delusions of gravitas
TWEETERS are, of course, not the originators of Einstein abuse: writers wanting to give the impression of being Very Serious have long been wont to open their tomes with his words. A recent example from old media is a Jerusalem Post columnist, for 鈥渄ismantling Gaza鈥�, opening with these alleged words of Einstein: 鈥淲e cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.鈥�
Someone will be along in a moment to insist that what Einstein actually said was: 鈥淣o problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it鈥� (but, probably, in German) and that the comment applies only to experiments such as those that showed the unvarying speed of light.
The columnist鈥檚 version seems to be halfway from there to the far more common rewrite: 鈥淣o problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.鈥� But this version implies chakras and vibrations 鈥� rather than the supply lines and explosions the columnist had in mind.
Help us collect Einstein fakes
GIVEN these examples, Feedback seeks your help in compiling a catalogue of the quotations most egregiously and falsely attributed to Einstein, found 鈥渋n the wild鈥�.
Is this general errortivity?
THE practice of taking Einstein鈥檚 name in vain needs, of course, a name. Feedback offers 鈥済eneral errortivity鈥� as a working title for the activity, and welcomes better suggestions.
A grin without a cat
WHILE we are on the subject of naming things, Feedback鈥檚 eye was caught by Ron Barnes asking: 鈥淚s a neutron without its spin still a neutron?鈥� and our editor鈥檚 observation that 鈥渘obody has a name for a neutron without a spin, or indeed a spin without a neutron鈥� (30 August, p 30).
So what are these names to be?
The experiment that separated a particle from its physical property 鈥� by sending the particle on one path through an experiment and its spin on another 鈥� may only be a beginning (26 July, p 32). If it pans out, we will need a whole new zoo of pairs of names, for particles deprived of their physical properties, and for those physical properties that suddenly find themselves with no particle to call home.
And, if readers such as Andrew Scott (23 August) have their way, names for a non-cat and the properties-of-a-non-cat鈥�
Egregious Ebola exploitation
WHERE there is fear, we note, there is a market (2 August). We now worry that .
Citizens of the US, among others, are receiving promotions for snake-oil treatments and prophylactics for Ebola (23 August, p 7). The US Food and Drug Administration was moved to issue .
We had surprising trouble tracking these down online: are they in the 鈥�dark net鈥�? We did find about the 鈥渆ssential oils鈥� the writer would use to prevent 鈥� or cure 鈥� Ebola. The text helpfully linked to pages where she offers to sell you each oil: the charmingly named 鈥淭hieves鈥� oil costs a mere $44.41 for 15 millilitres.
Homeopaths鈥� sense diluted
OTHER Ebola-related fruitloopery shows less obvious cash motives. Something called The Light Party called Crotalus horridus 鈥� which, it explains, is named after the . So, were it to have actual ingredients, it would be actual snake oil.
And the New York Daily News that naturalnews.com 鈥� describable as a nest of non-standard mentation 鈥� had removed a radically homeopathic recipe. First obtain Ebola-ridden bodily fluids鈥� then dilute鈥�
Writing to your bottled water
FINALLY, we return to the realm of quackery that is, as far as we know, relatively harmless, except to your wallet. Readers have reminded us of the strange offerings of Masaru Emoto. His magic-water recipe is much less energy-intensive than others. 鈥淪ymbols and words have been shown to have a remarkable effect on water,鈥� reads the poster that Phil Clapham saw. Since we first reported Emoto鈥檚 method of giving his water printed instructions to be good (1 July 2006) he has a new branding: 鈥淏lue bottle love鈥�. Blue is 鈥�