FEEDBACK

FEEDBACK sincerely hopes that readers in flood-prone parts of the UK are over the worst of it now. The huge quantities of water that have been sloshing around inevitably generated a surge of strange similes. Three readers alerted us to the Windermere as a unit of water – after the lake in Cumbria celebrated by the Romantic poet William Wordsworth. David Williams informs us that The Times, for example, on 11 February reported on its front page that 300 Windermeres of rain fell on the UK in January. A reader later wrote to the newspaper to ask what that would be in Olympic swimming pools. David writes: “As a Welshman I am disgusted that the universal measure of ‘Waleses’ was ignored.” Feedback’s experience of Wales largely confirms that this is an appropriately archetypal unit of rainfall. David suggests: “3.4 million elephants of rain is more acceptable, at the standard conversion rate of 5 tonnes per elephant.” FINANCIAL journalists at Bloomberg have excelled in the use of new units. Jay Jungers points us to a video about the world’s five largest cargo ships (bit.ly/multi-units). In 1 minute and 25 seconds, it manages to compare the ships’ dimensions and capacity to the Niagara Falls, millions of bananas, the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, soccer fields, building storeys “and obviously,” as Jay says, “the all-important elephant”. Feedback wonders whether, in considering the generation of such similes, we should have paid more attention to the sociological aspects of journalism. For example, it is conceivable that  by making this video someone in the Bloomberg office won a bet. MEANWHILE, Feedback makes a rather different kind of bet. Looking at the current state of the world, we  eagerly await a paper The Cardinia Cultural Centre café in Pakenham, Victoria, Australia, instructs Peter Robinson that “any patrons that bring dogs must under council policy be on a leash.” Harsh, but fair?

in a respected journal of sociobiology positing a hard-wired hundred-year cycle in human affairs. We would expect this to feature a lead author with interesting hair, and a comparison of this year’s events in Ukraine with the origins of the First World War in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.

WE SUSPECT a bet may also have been involved in the editing  of the Wikipedia page for the pterosaur Arambourgiania. According to Courtney Kelly, at some point it provided the essential information that the beast was two and a half Benedict Cumberbatches tall, referring to the actor who plays Sherlock Holmes for the BBC. At the time of writing, this information remains on the Dutch version of the page. Feedback wonders whether this may have been inspired by last year’s popular compendium at bit.ly/Otters-who-look-likeBenedict-Cumberbatch. DIGITAL Radio UK is a trade body valiantly trying to get analogue radio switched off and replaced by digital-only stations. It runs getdigitalradio.com and, not  having the cachet or funds to  book megastars, it annually  invites meso-celebrities to extol  the benefits of digital radio. In 2012 James May, a presenter  of the BBC’s Top Gear TV car programme, sheepishly admitted  that he had no digital radio in his car. At the December 2013 event, Simon Mayo, a BBC radio presenter, visibly winced at a radio and video advert, which features a puppet incarnation of Barry White who wants to “spread the luurv” for digital sound. “I hate those commercials,” Mayo burst out. This year, could they go a step further and invite someone who doesn’t or can’t listen to radio at all? TWEETER @bitoclass attracted the attention of several New Scientist colleagues with the memorable observation: “I didn’t even think it was possible to have a favourite page of a freezer manual.” The aforementioned page graphically illustrates “some sounds during normal running”. Do not call for repairs if your freezer goes “brrr” like a cat, “hiss” like a steam iron or “blubb” like wine being poured into a glass. FINALLY, Feedback rather regrets that we were unable to accept an invitation to a “Spy Training” day on 20 February. Premier Communications offered us “a unique bespoke training day which will offer you the opportunity to learn all things spy”. The operation of a “dead drop” we think – perhaps rashly – we can work out for ourselves. If we need the sort of gadget advice that James Bond would get from Q, we can always  ask you, or the reader over there  with the turned-up trenchcoat collar. It turns out this was a promotion for the UK release of a spy drama, that we are tempted to call a spook-soap, on DVD, so the tuition may not have been up to military specifications. We were particularly intrigued, though, by the promise to teach  a bunch of journalists “The Art of Honey Trapping” – referring to the tradecraft of extracting information through the promise of sexual favours. Are they suggesting that journalists could in future get their stories this way?.