Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Jurassic Pork
A PALEO diet may be fashionable these days, but is it compatible with religious sensibilities? Roy E. Plotnick and his colleagues ponder this important question at length in a paper entitled 鈥溾��, prompted by a student鈥檚 query over whether brachiopods 鈥� abundant in fossil records 鈥� were kosher.
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In their paper, the authors compare the morphology of extinct fauna with definitions of 鈥渃lean鈥� and 鈥渦nclean鈥� animals in Jewish texts, to deduce what, if anything, an observant chrononaut could eat.
Unfortunately for those visiting the Cretaceous, bronto-burgers are off the menu. Dinosaurs lack the necessary cloven hooves to be considered among other large kosher herbivores, and even if viewed as distant relatives of birds, most lack the requisite 鈥渆xtra toe鈥�. Ocean-dwelling plesiosaurs are likewise off limits, as Leviticus forbids the consumption of 鈥渢he great lizard鈥�.
However, the Jewish time traveller need not starve. 鈥淧rimitive but possibly kosher duck and goose relatives are known from Antarctica at this time,鈥� the authors write. 鈥淭here are fish, including bowfins, gars, sawfish, paddlefish and sturgeon.鈥� If that wasn鈥檛 enough to whet your appetite for prehistoric cuisine, there were also plentiful grasshoppers and crickets to dine on (with wild honey?).
As for the student鈥檚 original inquiry? Brachiopods are certainly not kosher, they are shellfish.
A rigorous assessment by the Economist Intelligence Unit has awarded the UK a new accolade: It is 鈥渢he best place in 鈥�.
Science girls campaign turns ugly
THE lack of women in the science industry is a perennial problem, matched only by the number of ill-judged campaigns launched to cajole them into the life scientific.
Previously, Feedback has found that dolls were both the cause and the solution to this problem (19 September). Now, EDF energy has launched its own effort to diversify the talent pool and, in their words, 鈥渃hange teenage girls鈥� perceptions of science鈥�.
EDF鈥檚 鈥渋nspiring role models鈥� include a cosmetic scientist and the CEO of a fashion app, and the whole endeavour is laid out under the strapline 鈥溾��.
Yes, once again it appears that young women can only be attracted to science through their own latent interests, which extend to make-up and fashion.
Feedback is unsure why so many campaigns to boost the number of women in science are based on the premise that it is women鈥檚 attitudes that need changing. Nor is it clear why the female scientists of tomorrow are so often pigeonholed as living dolls interested only in make-up and clothes. Perhaps what is needed is a campaign to change perceptions of teenage girls.
鈥淐reating a buzz鈥�
CRITICISM of EDF was borne swiftly on the wings of social media, and if the agency behind the campaign was aware of previous misfires in this area (), it was sticking to the script. The name 鈥淧retty Curious鈥�, it said, 鈥溾��. EDF鈥檚 social media team spent days repeating this line on Twitter, but we don鈥檛 imagine this was quite the conversation they had in mind.
Blank checks
AMONG the peculiar joys enjoyed by those in the US medical insurance system are Byzantine billing systems and a bureaucratic insistence on patient privacy.
Encountering problems with the first, one of our US correspondents emailed the billing office. The next day he received a message saying, 鈥淵ou have received a secure message from Partners HealthCare or one of our hospital sites鈥� and requesting that he download an attached HTML document.
In short, it looked uncannily like an identity-theft scam, so our correspondent emailed a copy of the message to the billing office asking if they had sent it. They replied with a similarly obfuscated message, complete with an HTML document attached. Confirmation, of a kind?
This spoon is forked
FEEDBACK has puzzled over items whose overwrought design renders them impractical ().
Nik Whitehead offers further evidence of this trend from his local cinema in Swansea: an ice-cream spoon shaped like a flattened trident. 鈥淭his is totally unsuited for eating ice cream, unless it was a sneaky collaboration with the manufacturer of washing powder,鈥� she writes. 鈥淎s it is very good for creating ice-cream stains on your shirt.鈥�
A keen sense of smell
ANOTHER design problem: BuzzFeed news reports that the UK鈥檚 Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe sought a fanciful approach to cutting knife crime. 鈥�,鈥� he informed an audience at London鈥檚 City Hall. 鈥淭hey told me it鈥檚 impossible. You can do it for guns but you can鈥檛 do it for knives.鈥�
The obvious answer, Feedback thinks, is to require all knives to be scented in future.
Travelling in new directions
TRAVEL can certainly broaden your horizons, as Jeff Anderson discovered when he took a trip to Dublin. There, a local theatre offered him 鈥渁 motion ride experience鈥� in no less than six dimensions. 鈥淛ourneys in my Ford Focus are never going to seem quite as exciting,鈥� he laments.
(Image: Paul McDevitt)