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How the sausage gets made
BUREAUCRATS in Brussels have turned their attention to one of Feedback鈥檚 favourite subjects: nutritional nomenclature. The European Parliament鈥檚 agriculture committee has decreed that vegetarian food should not be labelled with terms usually reserved for meat, such as steak, sausage or burger. French MEP 茅ric Andrieu dismissed suggestions that the meat industry鈥檚 trotter-prints were on the legislation, adding that 鈥減eople need to know what they are eating鈥�.
Feedback was unaware that those buying veggie burgers or sausages were under any illusions about their contents, but perhaps there is a case for increasing clarity. No doubt vegetarian food producers who grasp the opportunity to rebrand their wares as bean pucks and mycoprotein cylinders will soon be bringing home the streaky tofu strips.
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Flipping ridiculous
REPLICATION is to the scientific process what water is to a swimming pool: without it, you鈥檝e just got a lot of people in safety goggles angrily beating the floor with their fists.
It is a simple enough principle. If your experiment says a certain effect should follow a certain cause, then anybody replicating that cause should observe the same effect. Trouble is, this doesn鈥檛 happen as often as it should. It happens so infrequently, in fact 鈥� about 50 per cent of the time 鈥� that a team of researchers in Germany decided to save themselves the bother of replicating an experiment by flipping a coin instead.
Their was intended to make a serious point about deficiencies in clinical trials, but Feedback worries people may get the wrong idea.
We predict the rapid emergence of coinology, a scientific discipline dedicated to picking the right coin to produce the desired results. Detailed sub-disciplines will no doubt emerge, pitting the pound against the euro on the basis of flippability and heft. And theoretical numismatists will hypothesise a perfect, ideal coin that exists in 12 dimensions, is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe and always comes up heads.
鈥淩ob Ellis sends us a photo of a 鈥淢oroccan vegetable pasty鈥� encased in packaging that promises 鈥渁 taste of Cornwall鈥�. 鈥淒id someone move Cornwall or Morocco?鈥� he asks鈥�
Creative mathematics
LAST week, Feedback reported on a study testing how willing students were to bluff their way through tough questions. When presented with entirely made-up mathematical concepts, such as 鈥減roper numbers鈥�, 鈥渟ubjunctive scaling鈥� and 鈥渄eclarative fractions鈥�, many chose to invent definitions rather than plead ignorance.
Since then, it has been pointed out to us that these expressions do in fact have legitimate mathematical meaning. A proper number, for example, invariably refers to itself as 鈥渙ne鈥�; subjunctive scaling always involves an element of rotation, depending as it does on how one is inclined; and declarative fractions cannot have their arguments simplified without appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Readers are invited to correct the above definitions if they feel we have somehow erred, and to suggest their own entries for the following bona fide mathematical concepts that somehow remain undefined: impulsive value, sinister multiplication and trivial figures.
What鈥檚 Ed Witten written?
THE latest issue of wasn鈥檛 a terribly diverse affair. All five of its articles, spanning more than 600 pages of dense mathematical physics, were written by people who look alike, sound alike, are of the same age, height, weight and hat size, have identical hobbies and share the same name. In short, they were all written by Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies physicist Ed Witten.
Witten, who has won a Fields medal and is frequently called the smartest man alive by some of the other smartest people alive, is clearly no slouch when it comes to churning out copy. We look forward to his future publications in Productivity, Writing and No Sleep Monthly, The Journal of Applied Overachievers A and Inferiority Complex Review.
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The lady鈥檚 not for bending
INTERNATIONAL man of cutlery in the public eye of late after claiming he would use telepathy to stop the UK from leaving the European Union. He implored prime minister Theresa May to change course, but frustratingly for the noted spoon-smith, his intervention appeared to have no impact.
Contrary to some reports, May is not made of metal, and is therefore apparently invulnerable to Geller鈥檚 unique brand of mental manipulation.
So Geller came up with an alternative plan. On 4 April, a pipe burst in the House of Commons, causing a flood that necessitated the suspension of the parliamentary session. Geller immediately claimed responsibility on Twitter, saying 鈥淚 can鈥檛 sack them but I can soak them鈥�.
One observer on Twitter remarked that Geller鈥檚 foray into political terrorism should earn him the nickname 鈥淕uy Forks鈥�. However, we can鈥檛 help thinking that his pragmatism, flexibility and willingness to accept the limitations of his abilities should be an example to Britain鈥檚 politicians.
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