En garde!
weapon for a more civilised age? The French Fencing Federation has recognised lightsaber duelling as a sport. The authorities accepted the Star Wars energy swords as a way to encourage more young people to take up the sport.
Traditional fencing relies on three blades: the foil, sabre and 茅p茅e, none of which glows in the dark or makes dramatic droning noises. Those qualities are key to inspiring a new generation of wannabe Jedis (or Sith Lords) to put away the games console and take up the sport. But with the trend among young Jedi of turning on their mentors, would anyone be brave enough to train these youngsters?
Moggie misadventure?
cats from trees is all in a day鈥檚 work for firefighters, although a team in California deserve a special mention after a wild mountain lion got stuck in a pine tree. A resident of San Bernardino county spotted the big cat trapped 15 metres off the ground, probably feeling rather embarrassed. Animal control workers tranquilised the cat before firefighters slipped it into a harness and lowered it to the ground. It will be released back into the wild once veterinarians give the all-clear, where it will no doubt rush to adapt its story into a heart-warming screenplay.
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鈥淰isitors to the Grand Canyon museum may have felt all aglow after three buckets of uranium ore were discovered in the taxidermy exhibit. The radioactive rubble was rapidly disposed of鈥�
Screen wipes?
may be an app for everything, but new rules proposed by a province in Eastern China would see homework apps erased from the curriculum. Zhejiang province is pushing for the move to combat high rates of nearsightedness in children.
As well as requiring homework to be paper-based, the rules would increase outdoor activities and limit screen time in classrooms. Good news for pupils everywhere.
Earth, wind and fire?
AUSTRALIA is sweltering in a record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures so high that in one cattle station, the ground itself has caught fire. Footage from the Mt Denison Station in Northern Territory shows ground resembling a cast-iron pan 鈥� not only black and smoking, but with an egg cooking away, as prepared by rancher Terry Martin.
News reports that Martin attempted to measure the temperature of the smoking char, but it melted his thermometer. Efforts to quench the fire with water have had limited success, with new fires soon appearing. A 鈥減rofessor of pyrogeography鈥� noted that well-trodden manure in the pens may have contributed to a naturally combustible layer of organic matter.
He says similar fires have erupted in dried lake beds and drained swamps during the heatwave. For residents, there is little to be done except allow these fires to burn themselves out 鈥� and maybe cook a little breakfast on them while they wait.
Dirty dust?
blackened earth: people in central Russia awoke recently to discover that their town had been covered in black snow. Residents of Kiselyovsk shared apocalyptic scenes online of homes, cars and fields buried in the sooty mantle.
Blame for the odd precipitation has fallen on nearby open-cast coal mines, which residents say are responsible for widespread ill-health. One environmentalist told The Guardian: 鈥淭here is a lot of coal dust in the air all the time. When snow falls, it just becomes visible. You can鈥檛 see it the rest of the year, but it is still there.鈥�
To a fault?
WE HAVE only ourselves to blame. We breached our self-imposed ban and now new examples of nominative determinism slip unbidden into our inbox. 鈥淚 know, I know, how fed up you must be of these,鈥� says Adam Robinson insightfully. 鈥淏ut I love Feedback, and when I saw this I couldn鈥檛 help but think of you.鈥� He forwards a newly published paper on tectonic faults co-authored by one Filipe Terra-Nova.
Meanwhile, Bill Barksfield points us to The Daily Telegraph, which features an interview with sheep farmer Sally Shepherd.
Making a splash?
the ever-productive laboratory of media measurements, Mark Vandersluis finds The Guardian grappling with the size of the database fed to an AI to teach it to write. There was no way to relate this to blue whales, but the cetacean theme endured: the paper reports that the training set contained 40 gigabytes of data, or 鈥渆nough to store about 35,000 copies of Moby Dick鈥�.
This measure will be handy for anyone with a library filled with nothing but Herman Melville novels. 鈥淏y my reckoning,鈥� says Mark, 鈥渢hat makes a white whale just over 1 Mb in size, with a MegaMoby coming in at around 1.143 Gb.鈥�
Risk of squids?
PREVIOUSLY, Feedback reported on a Devon driver investigated for driving under the influence after claiming he swerved to avoid an octopus (16 February).
鈥淧erhaps he is telling the truth,鈥� says Peter Slessenger. 鈥淭here are quite a few seafood restaurants in that part of the world, and octopuses are noted for their escape abilities.鈥�
Peter recommends that Feedback takes an investigative trip to the west coast to find out whether restaurateur Rick Stein is missing a starter or two.
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