Walking dread
Move over product placement: this season, it鈥檚 about planet placement. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts 鈥� better known as BAFTA and for hosting awards ceremonies 鈥� has launched an initiative of that name to improve the visibility of climate change on our screens.
BAFTA commissioned research to establish the compared with other topics in the subtitling of 128,719 UK TV programmes between September 2017 and September 2018. Goggle-eyed, Feedback hopes that this process was at least partially automated.
In general, the exercise reveals much about British preoccupations, with 鈥渂eer鈥� (21,648 mentions), 鈥渄og鈥� (105,245), 鈥渢ea鈥� (60,060), 鈥渃ake鈥� (46,043), 鈥渟ex鈥� (56,307) and 鈥淏rexit鈥� (68,816) among the most frequently uttered words. 鈥淐limate change鈥�, meanwhile, merited just 3125 mentions, only just pipping 鈥渮ombies鈥� at 2488.
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The often-comical inaccuracy of British television subtitling, with its history of outlandish bloopers such as , leads Feedback to question some of the finer details. However, we, too, are concerned about climate change scoring just one notch above the walking dead. At least zombies have an excuse: they are in dramas and movies about, errrm, zombies.
TV producers concerned about the screen profile of both zombie and climate apocalypses could take a leaf out of George R. R. Martin鈥檚 books. The wild popularity of the Game of Thrones series adapted from them doesn鈥檛 seem to have been hurt by featuring both extreme environmental conditions and armies of the dead.
Blue-sky research
鈥nd dragons. With Game of Thrones finally wrapping up, one girl in New Zealand has turned to higher powers for her fix of the pyrotechnic reptiles that blaze a trail through the series. The 11-year-old sent a letter to prime minister Jacinda Ardern, asking her to launch a dragon research programme, and including a NZ$5 note to get things moving. The grant proposal also outlined a side project into telekinesis, because how else would we communicate with dragons?
Sadly for the budding scientist, Ardern and declined to open a dragon research project. While applauding the idea that politicians should never accept bribes, however noble the cause, Feedback is worried that this is somewhat short-sighted. How can we say dragons don鈥檛 exist if we aren鈥檛 prepared to even look for them? Physicists who are engaged in the unsuccessful hunt for dark matter, for example, have been making similar arguments for years.
Feedback thinks the unnamed child might have better luck petitioning UK politicians to fund cryptozoology research: after all, they have spent the past three years looking for unicorns.
Carrier wave
Waiting for his next package, Tim Robinson has misgivings about Quantum View, the parcel-tracking service offered to UPS customers.
鈥淒oes that mean my package might pop in and out of existence,鈥� he wonders, 鈥渙r that it might be delivered in a parallel universe?鈥� Feedback is uncertain, and thinks it could be a service that can tell you when your package is due, or where it is, but never both.
Medicine man
快猫短视频 reaches us of a row in Texas House District 92, an electoral ward where state congressman Jonathan Stickland has accused a respected vaccine expert of witchcraft.
Peter Hotez is head of the Baylor College of Medicine National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston, where he develops vaccines to combat neglected diseases. He has been a vocal critic of the movement against measles vaccination in the US, including in our pages (20 April, p22). Having accused Hotez on Twitter of being in the pocket of big pharma, Stickland was unassuaged by Hotez鈥檚 . The congressman told him to 鈥�.
Cases of measles continue to soar in the US, following a record dip in the number of vaccinated children that has left . If Stickland鈥檚 opinions are at all representative of his constituents, subscribers to the post-Enlightenment order may wish to steer clear of this part of the Dallas-Fort Worth conurbation. Ignorant paranoia looks to be contagious, and as the , there鈥檚 no vaccine for that.
Ocean view
If you don鈥檛 want to know the score, look away now. Traffic slowed to a crawl on the Courtney Campbell Causeway near Tampa, Florida, when rubberneckers did indeed divert their gaze鈥� towards a dozen manatees engaged in a rare behaviour, known as a mating ball.
It is a case of flippers not slippers, as females kick off these hotly contested mating rituals every two to five years. Feedback assumes it is this sort of behaviour that led the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017 to , after decades on the endangered list.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told reporters that manatee mating season runs until November, and has warned local drivers to anticipate further delays. Feedback hopes the mammals don鈥檛 suffer from performance anxiety.
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