Casso-wariness
It has been a while since Feedback last covered units of measurement used in guidelines for social distancing. That鈥檚 partly because we thought we had spotted all the good ones, but also, we confess, because we took our eye off the ball. So we are grateful to Simon Kravis for his example from the signage at Cairns Airport in Queensland, Australia.
the airport is planning to use the length of the cassowary 鈥� a flightless Australian bird 鈥� to keep travellers the necessary distance apart. Adult cassowaries are apparently around 1.5 metres from nose to tail, so imagining that one exists between you and your nearest neighbour seems like sound advice. But with claws that can exceed 10 centimetres in length and a predisposition for kicking nosy passers-by, you are probably going to want to stay even further away from that imaginary cassowary. Those travelling through Cairns are likely to be very socially distanced indeed.
Amen to that
Feedback would be nothing without our colleagues. They selflessly share with us their anecdotes and expertise, keep us informed of the goings-on in the world and are always willing to trawl the depths of their spam folder for entertaining nuggets.
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This week鈥檚 nugget is particularly amusing, for, after a bit of throat-clearing, it runs: 鈥渃hurches like NEW SCIENTIST are struggling more than ever during the new normal. Giving, attendance, events, and more are down or non-existent.鈥� We hear you, unnamed email sender, we hear you.
That鈥檚 why, it continues, 鈥測ou will have 6 months to take advantage of a complete risk-free church solution鈥�. If risk-free solutions are available, then rebranding as a religion is certainly an attractive prospect. But we are curious to know what our distinct appeal might be. What sort of rituals would we engage in? What holy texts 鈥� if any 鈥� would we adhere to? Your offerings (via email, post or bank transfer) are welcomed.
Have you finnished?
Nominative determinism in English? Old news. Hackneyed. Boring.
Nominative determinism in Finnish? Exciting. Frisson-inducing. Moreish.
This is Feedback鈥檚 new policy, spurred on by an email from Ilpo Salonen who informs us that a leading figure at the Finnish mining and metal-refining firm Metso Outotec is called Markku Ter盲svasara. The Finnish speakers among you will scarcely need to be reminded that this surname translates as 鈥淪teelhammer鈥�. 鈥淲hat a waste of a useful heavy metal band name,鈥� says Ilpo. Ba-dum-tsh.
I spy a joke
快猫短视频s shouldn鈥檛 be allowed to name things. All too often, they crowbar in their own names or come up with an unconvincing pseudo-acronym that elicits groans at every conference. Or, if they are astronomers, they just go with a dull and pedestrian option. This mindset has gifted us the (existing) Very Large Telescope, the (soon to be) Extremely Large Telescope and the (perhaps mercifully cancelled) Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.
Unabashed, Anna T. P. Schauer, Niv Drory and Volker Bromm have uploaded a to the arXiv preprint server in which they speculate about a hypothetical Ultimately Large Telescope. It is so powerful that it can see back to the cosmic dawn when astronomers finally lost the spark of creativity.
Fake News-scientist
Nine times out of 10, when Feedback comes across a humorous fragment of text on the internet purportedly written by an AI, the trace of a human hand is clearly apparent. Items in the exceptional 10 per cent have 鈥� so far at least 鈥� originated from GPT-2, a text-generation programme developed by OpenAI. Its fearsome ability to predict what should follow a given sample of text led to its creators not releasing the full version, for fear it be used to create fake news indistinguishable from the real thing.
It turns out that a of the internet forum Reddit is devoted to the output of GPT-2, wherein every post, comment and response is artificially generated. And lo and behold! Among the recent threads is one responding to a completely made up 快猫短视频 headline: 鈥淗uman body is the oldest DNA ever discovered and it came from a fossil of a human who was 2000 years old.鈥�
Indistinguishable from the real thing, eh? But while our subeditors may not be quaking in their boots just yet, it is the comments that really confound us. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a new record for us humans,鈥� says one. 鈥淵ou got to admit, it鈥檚 pretty cool to look at old genetic sequences being compared to other old genetic sequences,鈥� says another.
鈥淚鈥檓 not sure how much weight this paper holds,鈥� begins a third, with laudable scepticism, adding that 鈥渢he fossil is from the Hoxne-Dahydran culture, which is the earliest known culture to have agriculture and a complex society. This is the only known evidence for a pre-agricultural society anywhere in Europe.鈥�
Astonishingly coherent, distinctively erudite and, alas, involving entirely made up facts. As a simulated version of an online comment, that takes some beating.
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