Holy hand grenade
DEVOTED pope-watchers may have noticed a recent brouhaha swirling around His Holiness, owing to the pontiff鈥檚 reluctance to let worshippers kiss the papal ring. In video that rewards repeat viewing, the pope can be seen beckoning the faithful nearer with an encouraging smile before papally yoinking his papal hand out of the way so fast that some of the more enthusiastic congregants nearly take a papal tumble.
The Bishop of Rome鈥檚 excuse for breaking with tradition is, apparently, an abundance of concern for hygiene. It seems that the papal signet ring, a Petrine Petri dish of divine proportions, risks turning into something of a holy weapon. Thank the lord it remains in the right hands.
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All our seasons come at once
THE times, they are a-changin鈥�, but they will stop a-changin鈥� in the European Union from 2021, after the European Parliament voted to abolish daylight saving time.
鈥淒ave File鈥檚 packet of prochlorperazine tablets advises contacting a doctor when noticing any of a range of side effects including sudden death. 鈥淚t may be rather difficult to comply!鈥� he writes鈥�
Under existing rules, all member states are required to put their clocks forward an hour in March and back again in October. The European Commission moved to call time on the ritual after a public consultation showing that 84 per cent of respondents want to scrap it.
鈥淢ember states should themselves decide whether their citizens live in summer or winter time,鈥� said commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. As for the UK, its future membership of the EU is still uncertain at the time of writing, but our sources tell us permanent winter is a pretty likely outcome.
Beat the buzzer
AT LAST, we have a new weapon in the war on mosquitoes. 快猫短视频s in Malaysia have discovered that electronic music, specifically the Skrillex masterpiece Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, has a disruptive effect on the behaviour of Aedes mosquitoes, the transmitters of dengue fever, Zika and chikungunya.
While the song was being played, mosquitoes made fewer attacks on a test subject 鈥� a restrained hamster 鈥� and were less inclined to mate.
The Skrillex track was chosen for its mix of high and low frequencies, but with no other songs tested, it is impossible to conclude whether mosquitoes have a general aversion to human music, or if the screeching synth and bass wobbles of dubstep just isn鈥檛 their jam. Perhaps they prefer jungle?
One small snooze for a man
KEEPING up with the news often leaves Feedback in need of a lie-down. Luckily, the perfect opportunity has arisen to earn money in a horizontal position. NASA and the European Space Agency are offering 鈧�16,500 to 12 men and 12 women willing to stay in bed for 60 days. Not just any bed 鈥� one tilted 6 degrees so body fluids will be redistributed towards the head, mimicking the effect of microgravity.
It is a tempting offer, but perhaps we need something stronger. Any researchers looking to study the effects of a year spent in the fetal position, get in touch.
Maths persuasion
鈥淎MERICAN teenagers take top spot in the global lying league鈥�, reads a headline in The Times, reporting on a study investigating the deception skills of students in several English-speaking countries. Youths from the US 鈥� particularly male ones 鈥� were more likely than those in other countries to make up an answer when asked to explain non-existent mathematical concepts, such as 鈥減roper numbers鈥�, 鈥渟ubjunctive scaling鈥� and 鈥渄eclarative fractions鈥�.
No doubt the blagging abilities of US teenagers is not to be sniffed at, but for a journalist to declare them the world鈥檚 biggest liars does seem a tad hypocritical 鈥� especially for a story published on 1 April.
The same jocular issue of The Times reported that readers could buy a drone that walks their dog for them. According to the article, the device struggled to adjust for the different weights of dogs, and its motor was so powerful that for 鈥渁nything smaller than a Shih Tzu it had a propensity not so much to take the dog for a walk as to give it an impromptu flying lesson鈥�.
Cats among the Bretons
THE sea can be cruel. It can be fickle. And sometimes, for no discernible reason, it can bombard your coastline with landline telephones shaped like the cartoon character Garfield the cat.
This has been the strange plight of the people of Brittany for nigh on 30 years. These egregiously repulsive phones 鈥� whose eyes, so Sky News informs us, open when the receiver is lifted 鈥� were until recently of unknown origin. Speculation that they had been deliberately cast into the sea by some poor soul trapped on a desert-island-cum-Garfield-shaped-phone-factory doesn鈥檛 seem to have been rigorously pursued.
Instead, it fell to a local anti-litter group to track the source down, eventually discovering an abandoned shipping container that had been leaking the plastic monstrosities into the sea.
Distinctive flotsam can, of course, have genuine scientific merit, allowing us to track ocean currents and the movements of maritime life. But in this case, the insight it gives us into life in the 1980s is one we could do without.
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