State nanny
The Children鈥檚 Commissioner for England, responsible for protecting the rights of the little 鈥榰ns, is unhappy with big tech firms that insist they can鈥檛 block under-13s from their platforms.
鈥淐an it really be the case that they can create driverless cars, see inside black holes and programme computers to beat the best human players of complex games like Go, but not find ways of making digital platforms fit for purpose for children?鈥� wrote Anne Longfield in . 鈥淥f course not. And for the record, I鈥檝e been reassured that it is all very possible.鈥�
There is a lot to unpick here. We are surprised to learn that the likes of Instagram have beaten the world鈥檚 astrophysicists to peering inside a black hole 鈥� is there no magic that a photo filter can鈥檛 work? They should say immediately what they found there. Hopes, dreams, a sense of self-worth slowly eroded by mind-numbing hours swiping through pictures from the perfect lives of others on their platforms?
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But most of all we are keen to know who verified to Longfield that age verification is 鈥渧ery possible鈥�, and what their experience is of the low cunning of the pre-teen.
Clapped in irons
鈥淚sn鈥檛 it ironic,鈥� Canadian-American singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette once wrote and sang about, among other things, 鈥渢en thousand spoons when all you need is a knife鈥�. Not so much ironic, thinks Feedback; more an alarming sign of incipient kleptomania.
Or perhaps Uri Geller is in the 鈥榟ood. The self-proclaimed psychic and cutlery bender has , telling his followers: 鈥淥ur target is to amass ONE MILLION spoons from all over the world from kids! Spoons for peace!!!鈥�
It isn鈥檛 immediately clear how an impressively stocked cutlery drawer will deliver peace, but Geller moves in mysterious ways. In April, he claimed responsibility for a burst water pipe that flooded the House of Commons, saying it was an attempt to stop the UK government鈥檚 pursuit of Brexit.
Perhaps the spoon collection is part of a dastardly next stage, disorienting the British political elite still further by depriving them of essential tea-making equipment. For the wider goal of world peace, however, Feedback worries that the kids will be too busy evading age-verification schemes on the internet to donate their spoons. Ironic.
By any other name鈥�
Our nominative determinism garden keeps blooming. Dominic Driver alerts us to the Highlands and Islands Woodland Handbook, which bills itself as 鈥渁 comprehensive guide to establishing, managing and utilising woodland鈥� in the north of Scotland. Its author is one Bernard Planterose.
Meanwhile, a colleague reports the arrival of an unsolicited email from one Ben Pester of Pester PR, 鈥渁lthough just the one, so far鈥�.
Fuelling democracy
Can you bottle a feeling? How about an ideal? A patriotic employee at the US Department of Energy renamed natural gas as 鈥渕olecules of US freedom鈥� in a from the Freeport LNG terminal on Quintana Island, Texas. This conjured up more than a whiff of 鈥渇reedom fries鈥�.
Those sticks of deep-fried potato were briefly served in Congressional cafeterias in 2003 in place of the Gallic variety, in protest against the refusal of France to support an invasion of Iraq. Going further back, some may even recall that when anti-German sentiment reigned during the second world war, sauerkraut in the US .
But how else might US energy exports be rebranded to win hearts and minds? Coal could become 鈥渓iberty stones鈥�, perhaps, or tar sands 鈥渄emocracy sludge鈥�. The same principle in reverse could apply to alternative energy sources. Wind power? Commie fans. Solar cells? Terror cells, more like. Remember: if you drive an electric vehicle, the bad guys win.
Axes of evil
Staying in the US, officials have come up with a clever way to alleviate those doom-laden climate predictions. The head of the US Geological Survey, James Reilly, has 20 years into the future, rather than until the end of the century as was previously the norm.
As a service to the scientifically unscrupulous, Feedback has some other useful ways, besides lopping off the end of the x-axis, to make your climate charts less scary.
鈥� That temperature chart going up too fast towards the end? Just make the y-axis logarithmic. Boom! Bye bye hockey stick, hello pool cue.
鈥� Carbon dioxide levels are measured in parts per million, or ppm if you must. So it is only right that the y-axis starts at zero and ends at 1 million, right? Huzzah: 440 ppm doesn鈥檛 look so scary now.
鈥� Sea level rises should be expressed only as a per cent increase in total ocean depth. Nothing in it, is there?
With these tips and more, you can rest assured that it will be business as usual 鈥� at least until the US Capitol is demolished by the last iceberg to float out of the Arctic.
Ghost in the machine
A recent article on making your own electrical gizmos by Hannah Joshua (4 May, p 51) reminds Mike Egan that all electrical devices work by smoke. How so? 鈥淧roof鈥�, he says, 鈥渋s that when the smoke comes out, they stop working.鈥�
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