(Image: Paul McDevitt)
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
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Snack food with good vibrations
PERHAPS hoping to broaden Feedback鈥檚 diet of fruitloopery, Stacey Falls calls our attention to a flavour of New Age reverie we鈥檝e not sampled before. 鈥淥n a recent family vacation, I noticed a bag of Buddha Bowl snack popcorn that my mother-in-law had brought to munch on,鈥� Stacey begins.
If anyone doubted the relevance of corn-based snack food to Eastern philosophy, she reports the explanation on the packaging: 鈥淭he ancient parable says that when the Buddha Bowl broke it became a vehicle to awaken human potential and one鈥檚 true self. Today it also means choosing simple and pure foods, eating in moderation and sharing in food and love.鈥� Quite.
But what earns Buddha Bowl a place in the annals of fruitloopery is the announcement on the bag that 鈥� as well as the usual organic and GMO-free constituents 鈥� the popcorn contains 鈥渧ibrational ingredients鈥�.
Further research reveals that 鈥渉igh vibrational foods鈥� are what鈥檚 trending now in food-based fruitloopery. Lifestyle website , 鈥渢he definitive destination for those who want to build their own healthy living success story鈥�, tells us that such foods 鈥済ive you an uplifting, positive energy when you eat them鈥�. It further suggests: 鈥淕reens, because they grow upward and collect the energy of the sun, are an excellent source of high vibration in food that helps to alkalinize the body.鈥�
In the interests of remaining neutral, Feedback proposes you take such claims with a large pinch of salt 鈥� perhaps salt of a variety known as Himalayan Pink, which the website suggests is especially vibrational.
A new housing estate promises Giuseppe Sollazzo 鈥渦p to 2.3 million square feet鈥�. A pessimistic Feedback suggests not buying off-plan
THISPian talents
PREVIOUSLY Feedback sought your THISPs 鈥� Truly Horrible Ideas for Saving the Planet.
Hoping to wind back the clock on climate change, Andrew Hardwick points out that one reason why so much carbon was fossilised as coal in the aptly titled Carboniferous era was that nothing had yet evolved to digest the lignin in wood. Thus Andrew鈥檚 THISP is a virus to wipe out all microbes that break down lignin and, for good measure, those that digest cellulose. This will result in 鈥渕assive carbon sequestration鈥�, writes Andrew, 鈥渁nd as a bonus, starves those methane-producing ruminants.鈥�
Kieran Waddingham informs us that taking part in the Harvard Model United Nations, an annual event for aspirational school students from all over the globe, lent him first-hand experience of dealing with a THISP.
Proceedings were set in the year 2020, and the assembled students were called upon to discuss whether the new-found power of geoengineering could be used to tame increasingly violent weather patterns caused by climate change.
Kieran reports that after three days of negotiation, the students鈥� final resolution involved the creation of giant floating islands of non-biodegradable plastic in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with the purpose of dissipating tornados before landfall.
鈥淯nfortunately,鈥� Kieran admits, 鈥渋t seems that the next generation of politicians may have as little common sense as this one.鈥�
A touchy subject
A LESS cumbersome moniker for contactless cards is what Jonathan Swan seeks to coin. His suggestion is a Greco-Roman neologism: atact.
Shelley Charik offers to run a linguistic comb over these tangled roots: using a Latin prefix for 鈥榥ot鈥� and leaving off the ending of tactus, as Jonathan did, gives us 鈥榠ntact鈥�. Not very helpful. In Classical Greek this procedure gives us 鈥渁thict鈥� or 鈥渁thix鈥�. 鈥淏ut why this yearning for dead languages?鈥� Shelley wonders. 鈥淓nglish is all we need: call them no-touch cards鈥�.
Heeding that cry, and reaching for the youth vote, is John Stolarski, who draws inspiration from modern lingo. 鈥淐onsidering recent abbreviated neologisms like app and blog, and also how some words have been given a new, contrary meaning, like bad and sick,鈥� he writes, 鈥渉ow about 鈥榯actless鈥�?鈥�
The hot zone
MORE legendary tales of lab waywardness. Steve Midgley recounts the story of a friend at the experimental physics laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley: 鈥淗is job was to eliminate background electromagnetic noise on a very sensitive experiment,鈥� Steve explains. His friend was soon frustrated by another powerful signal, which he traced to the upper corner of the room with the help of a Geiger counter.
Climbing the stairs to the lab above, he found somebody had stockpiled a quantity of radioactive material for an experiment in one corner of their lab. 鈥淚t was carefully shielded with lead bricks on the three sides that mattered to them,鈥� writes Steve, 鈥渂ut it had not occurred to them to shield the three sides facing the walls and floor.鈥�
Having a field day
FEEDBACK was greatly entertained by the recent outpouring of fieldwork disasters shared by scientists on Twitter, under the hashtag .
Picking a favourite is too difficult, but special mention must go to zoologist Agata Staniewicz for the succinct and alarming entry: 鈥淎ccidentally glued myself to a crocodile while attaching a radio transmitter.鈥�