Tech wizards
PERHAPS hoping to attract a generation raised on Harry Potter, the Royal Bank of Scotland has unveiled the latest advance in recruitment: a sorting hat. Or, as The Huffington Post described it, the MindWave Mobile, a 鈥減ortable brain scanner鈥� that can reveal what role attendees to graduate recruitment fairs will find most appealing at the bank.
The headset measures prospective candidates鈥� neural responses to 10 images flashed up on a screen, and makes its assessment accordingly.
It鈥檚 only a matter of time before banks use this kit to reveal what customers really plan to do with their loans. Young wizards now have good reason to brush up on their Occlumency; Muggles among us will have to make do with tinfoil hats.
Advertisement
鈥淜aryn Houssenloge reports that one of the sponsors of Australia鈥檚 Hopman Cup tennis tournament is 鈥淪olid Gold Diamonds鈥�. They must have a very low carbon footprint, then鈥�
Nom de chem
REGULAR readers will recall Mike Lavan鈥檚 challenge to distil the essence of celebrities by spelling their names using only chemical symbols (7 January).
Keith Perring, who literally wrote the book on it (An Elemental Philavery), is excellently placed to respond. 鈥淚 can add BONO and NICO to the list,鈥� he says, though he adds, 鈥渢hese are more like brands than names.鈥�
If we allow two-letter elements, the process becomes much easier, says Keith, 鈥渇or example, FRaNK SINAtRa and LaUReNCe OLiVIEr, and there are also quite a few science celebs such as FRaNCIS CrICK and NIKOLa TeSLa.鈥�
The high road
FEEDBACK has already reneged on its new year鈥檚 resolution to do away with nominative determinism (perhaps we would fare better if we pledged to give up making rash promises).
Happily, though, our negligence allows us to bring news from Gordon Ross of Oakville, California, who writes about the man he and his wife once met during a hiking tour of the Dordogne.
While traipsing up and down the hills and gullies, Gordon writes, 鈥渨e marvelled at the name of the local contact for the tour company 鈥� Cliff Walker鈥�.
Burning through money
NORTHERN Ireland is reeling from a catastrophically mismanaged green energy scheme, which paid businesses overly generous subsidies for switching to wood burners and is expected to run 拢490 million over budget. Deputy first minister Martin McGuinness has resigned, a move that has led to the collapse of the power-sharing government and triggered an election.
Rachel Cave notes that the UK鈥檚 secretary of state for Northern Ireland, James Brokenshire, has perhaps found his calling.
Law of attraction
AND lawmakers in South Dakota have recently voted against a proposal that would have forbidden sexual contact between politicians and their interns. Among those batting away the proposed rule was the Republican David Lust.
Hole in the wall
WHAT do physicists get up to in their spare time? Mike Lawrence sends us a report from the , relating that 鈥渇our men wearing dark clothes and balaclavas used a teleporter to break through the wall of a bank in Kimbolton, near Huntingdon鈥�.
Feedback encourages scientists everywhere to stick with more traditional sources of research funding.
Split sets
LIKE radioactive isotopes, the universe has deemed that paired socks exist in an unstable union, and will spontaneously decay into a single sock (what happens to the other sock is still hotly contested). Readers have been hard at work, it seems, developing strategies to cope.
Like Ron Petch before him, Michael Strelitz tells us that the number of matching pairs in 12 identical white gym socks quickly approaches zero once in use. 鈥淎bout 15 years ago I took to marking all new socks with a number underneath so that each pair would have the same history,鈥� he says. And when one sock gets a hole, he create lower-quality pairs labelled alphabetically.
Despite the sophistication of this longitudinal study, Michael says it is 鈥渋mpossible to explain to my wife and friends who don鈥檛 understand the issue, and treat this marking as a type of obsessive compulsive disorder鈥�. Michael, where would we be if Darwin or Lister had given up in the face of the initial derision they encountered? Remember, first they laugh at you鈥�
Light snack
NEW year, no you? Anne Barnfield reports an alarming weight loss regime advertised in the window of her local 鈥渘atural health鈥� shop. The ad reads: 鈥淟ose all your weight for only $20.17 with our programme!鈥� Feedback thinks that NASA developed a similar programme in the 1960s, although it was marginally more expensive.
Old as the hills
FINALLY, readers will no doubt recall that when Andrea Leadsom was made the UK鈥檚 energy minister, she had to ask her departmental staff whether climate change was real. Leadsom鈥檚 grip on her new portfolio 鈥� that of environment secretary 鈥� seems no tighter. Speaking at the annual Oxford Farming Conference earlier this month, the minister began by praising 鈥渁n industry that鈥檚 been around as 鈥�.