Dinner by moonlight
Around a tenth of the 21.5 kilograms of moon rock the Apollo 11 astronauts brought back to Earth on 24 July 1969 ended up as food. In Building 37, at what is now known as NASA鈥檚 Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, it was ground up and fed to various microbes, insects and aquatic animals. Would they sicken or die? Would they acquire strange powers?
Eight cockroaches were among the diners, and Feedback is now digging through the penny jar in a frantic attempt to raise enough to bid for the traces of their meal. Three of the insects have already reached over $21,000 on the web page of , a Massachusetts firm specialising in space memorabilia.
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NASA had sent a vial containing the pickled cockroaches to Marion Brooks-Wallace, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota. Brooks dissected them, looking to see if the moon rock had done them any damage (it hadn鈥檛). On her retirement, she hung the stuff of her study in a display case on her wall.
And there the story would end, except that, according to RR Auction, 鈥淭he original vial of extracted material was broken, spilling its contents into the display鈥� The ground fines and glass shards were then meticulously separated into two larger glass vials.鈥�
Eight cockroaches. A meal of moon dust. A broken phial. And an auction lot of three cockroaches? Feedback believes there are many worse screenplay ideas and is even now downloading Final Cut.
Orbital entities
Having done all it could to ensure outer space is free of moon dust-munching bugs, you would think NASA would want to keep the place free of ghosts. But no: on 8 October 2021, Josef Schmid, a NASA flight surgeon, shimmered into existence on the International Space Station alongside Fernando De La Pena Llaca, CEO of Aexa Aerospace. Aexa wrote the software that let orbiting European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet talk to Schmid and De La Pena as though they were actually on the station.
VR wheezes are all very well, but on NASA鈥檚 news page, Schmid said 鈥渋t is a brand-new way of human exploration鈥�. He goes on to how 鈥渙ur human entity is able to travel off the planet. Our physical body is not there, but our human entity absolutely is there.鈥� Feedback feels this is a sentiment worthy of the goofier end of Thomas Mann鈥檚 notoriously ambiguous The Magic Mountain. More prosaically, the aim is to bring VIPs onto the space station to visit astronauts. That should brighten Pesquet鈥檚 day.
Modern manners
Another day, another fractional adjustment to the world after the arrival of covid-19. Gustatory mischief-makers Bompas and Parr (more usually found mixing transformative cocktails) have released a follow-up to , their wipe-clean (no, really) anthology of anecdotes drawing our attention towards one of the surer indicators that urban nightlife is recovering 鈥� what Feedback, with customary daintiness, will call the urban traces of a good night out.
In the pages of The Atlantic, standards of social etiquette are far higher. Witness the exhaustive algorithm design that mathematician Daniel Biss has brought to his recently featured 鈥淲hat Time to Arrive At a Party Calculator鈥�. Answer some simple questions about yourself, your peer group and your upcoming event, and will ensure you arrive to catch the funniest stories and meet the best people. Feedback is dusting off its party clothes now.
Buzzing off
According to a , bumblebees are fish. This isn鈥檛 as unlikely as it may seem, given the California Fish and Game Code decided (for the purposes of an admirable brevity) that the definition 鈥渇ish鈥� included any 鈥渕ollusk, crustacean, invertebrate (or) amphibian鈥�, be it terrestrial or aquatic. If it looks like a fish and it swims like a fish, then it鈥檚 a fish; also when it doesn鈥檛.
Poor Linnaeus must be spinning in his grave. Also likely to be unhappy at the outcome is the Almond Alliance of California, which argued that insects have no legal protection in the state, even when endangered. Is it a mixed metaphor too far to suggest the alliance now has egg on its face?
Judge not
No sooner did reader Philippa Sandall call for a means to describe people who expound on matters from a position of ignorance (4 June), than our friend Anthony Tasgal leapt into the fray with 鈥渦ltracrepidarian鈥�.
According to Pliny the Elder, in the 4th century BC, the painter Apelles of Kos invented the customer survey. Hidden behind his paintings, he would listen to the comments of potential customers. After a passing cobbler remarked on a figure鈥檚 poorly rendered sandal, Apelles made amendments. The cobbler passed by again and complained about the figure鈥檚 leg. Apelles realised what a horror he had visited upon the world, and snarled: 鈥�Ne sutor ultra crepidam iudicaret鈥� (a cobbler shouldn鈥檛 judge beyond the shoe). In 1819, William Hazlitt coined the word 鈥渦ltracrepidarian鈥� to tick off critic William Gifford for his cluelessness.
Crouched in the shadows behind 60-plus years of back copies of 快猫短视频, Feedback welcomes all comments and observations.
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