WE PROMISED we wouldn’t do it again. No more product warnings for Feedback,
oh no. But this is, after all, the season for broken resolutions (applies only
in cultures where it is customary to make resolutions on 1 January).
READER Arthur Robinson is partly to blame, for his flattery about how much he
“has enjoyed reading many a silly instruction”. His nomination is from the
owner’s manual of his Honda Concerto. “Do not allow water spots to stay on your
car when the sun comes out,” it says, “as they can act as a magnifying glass
causing the paint to burn.”
A more impressive grasp of physics is shown here, then, than you’ll find in
many a warren of warning-writers. But Arthur, is there a warning about the
serious hazards of stopping on the edge of a high-speed road to dry the car off
with a soft cloth whenever the rain stops?
Advertisement
An equally strong—nay, irrefutable—grasp of the principles of
science is demonstrated by the microwave pasta meal which reader and hiker
Jonathan Boswell came across in a hostel. “WARNING. Meal may be hot after
heating.” Shhh . . . don’t tell the product liability lawyers that all
tautologies and only tautologies are guaranteed true, or we’ll be up to our
necks in them.
ONE OF the most captive audiences in the world is to be found shaking its
hands under streams of hot air in institutional restrooms. So anything written
on hand dryers is going to get analysed, which is where reader Ben Chenoweth
discovered: “This product has been designed to prevent the dangerous practice of
drying face and eyes in the direct airstream, to prevent damage or loss of
eyesight in the event of fusion.” As Chenoweth notes, “This machine must have
quite a power source, don’t you think?”
Perhaps it has the same source of energy as the halogen lamp bought by
Charles Corfield. “Input 55W” it confidently proclaims on the box, “Output 85W”.
Charles, being a New Scientist reader, got out his calculator and
concluded that if the bulb is converting mass into energy at the famous rate of
e=mc2 then “the 30W deficit would consume about 1g per 100,000 years”
which, he adds, is “significantly longer than the expected operating life of
either bulb or owner.”
And only the same phenomenon, whatever it is, can account for Philip Crohn’s
kettle, which according to the instruction booklet has the special feature “Fast
Boil. Boils a cup of water in no time at all.” Mmm. Please fit an infinite-amp
fuse to the supply circuit. The inevitable distortions in space-time
accompanying such a phenomenon must explain the claim on the box: “1.7 litre
capacity (9* cups)” with the asterisk pointing to the footnote “Based on 160 ml
cups.” Another job for the calculator . . .
FROM THE arithmetically to the geometrically strange: perusing the shelves of
the stationery shop Staples in Truro, Ben Sewell was interested to find a pad of
paper labelled “2-sided”. Despite his curious search, he could find no 1-sided
paper anywhere nearby.
He went home to assemble a new garden bench, and put it outside in the rain
before tidying up indoors and reading the “after-care” label. It instructed him
to “avoid direct wetting” of the chair. Stash it in Arthur’s car, Ben.
More geometry from the manufacturers of a South Park badge. “Not
suitable for children under 36 months” they warn Simon Walke’s friend, sensibly
so far. But then, “Contains functional sharp point.” As opposed to, Walke
presumes, a “completely gratuitous” sharp point.
AS THE EDITOR of a North London newspaper, Charlie Harris receives the
newsletter of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. The
newsletter is produced by a printer in who claims to use “environmentally
conscious” paper. “As a print journalist, I find the idea of paper with any sort
of consciousness extremely disturbing,” Harris notes, “or a conscience.”
0UR paper is complaining now, so we’ll move on from warnings to matters
scatological. Prompted by our notes on toilet doors, reader Ken Green insists
that many years ago an inconvenience at Marylebone railway station in London
bore the legend “Out of Odor”. Did they mean order, odour or ordure, he
wonders?
AND, INSPIRED by our item on 18 November about YAeHMOP (Yet Another Extended
Huckel Molecular Orbital Package), Rosemary Gault tells us that she got curious
about the name of the software standard for picture scanners—TWAIN. So she
asked her father, Leslie, who claimed it stands for “Thing Without An
Interesting Name”.
The official word from www.twain.org, however, is that it doesn’t stand for
anything. “We at times have held contests to create a name for which this could
be an acronym,” they write, “but do not have an official expanded form of this
name.” Which makes Leslie’s theory all the more likely. One more computer
acronym before we sign off: GNU, a family of free software. It stands for “GNU’s
Not Unix”.
