30 November 2019 | New Scientist | 53The back pages Feedback
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[email protected]Twisteddoodles for New Scientist
Better on paper
Our masters in Silicon Valley
have our best interests at heart.
For evidence, look no further than
an innovation uploaded to Google’s
Digital Wellbeing Experiments
platform. “Paper Phone” is aimed at
helping those driven to destruction
by their smartphones and the
Google products on them.
To take advantage, simply go to
the Google Play store and download
the Paper Phone app (bear with
us here). The app allows you to
choose the things on your phone
that you can’t do without – your
daily schedule, say, maps, notes,
recipes or Sudoku puzzles, and
then... print them. On paper.
For those who don’t remember
paper, it is like a super-thin tablet
with very limited memory, or a
single page of a Kindle book in
independent physical form. With
essential data logged in this handy
format, you can safely leave your
phone at home. “A paper phone can
do most of the things a smartphone
can do,” the app’s designers explain
in a helpful video, “but it doesn’t
distract you as much.”
It all rather reminds Feedback
of the Built-in Orderly Organized
Knowledge device, a paper-based
technology first advertised on
the pages of the magazine Punch
many moons ago. Compact,
portable and durable, the BOOK
ordered essential information
on sequential sheets of paper that
were optically scanned directly
to the brain. BOOKs even came
with their own personalisation
tool, the Portable Erasable Nib
Cryptic Intercommunication
Language Stylus, or PENCILS.
Feedback still owns a few
BOOKs, and highly recommends
them. Having just tried out Google’s
latest digital detox device in the
bath, we can report it worked
swimmingly too. That’s more than
can be said of our last smartphone.
I, spy
Emerging from beneath the suds,
Feedback is reminded that the key
to being a good spy is the ability
to stay undercover. Feedback isn’t
a spy, we add perhaps too hastily.
We are merely an anonymous
magazine column prone to talking
about itself in the third person.
Few spies have blown their
cover quite so spectacularly as
Hvaldimir the Russian spy whale.
His is a story that tugs at the
heartstrings. The beluga was first
found in April near a Norwegian
fishing village wearing a harness
saying “Equipment St Petersburg”.
He has since continually
attempted to make contact with
humans, receiving numerous
injuries from ship propellers
and the like.
A few weeks ago, a beluga
looking strikingly like Hvaldimir
was filmed playing fetch with the
South African crew of a boat in
the Arctic Ocean. “Catch this,”
say the sailors, as they throw a
rugby ball into the icy waters.
“I know I shouldn’t,” you can
imagine Hvaldimir thinking,
“if I want to continue the charade
that I am but an ordinary beluga
whale, but go on.”
The suspicion is that Hvaldimir,
whom Feedback is choosing to
call The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold But Then Went Back Because
It Was His Natural Habitat, was
so heavily socialised during
his training that he has proved
unable to kick the human habit.
Meanwhile, we don’t wish to blow
any more covers, but we would
like to know what a crew of South
Africans equipped with a rugby
ball is doing in the Arctic Ocean.High on the hog
Never work with children or
animals, top wisecracker W. C. Fields
once wisecracked. Friendly Arctic
whales aside, that certainly seems
to apply if your line of business
is selling cocaine in central Italy.
One gang of dealers, accustomed
to keeping its powder dry in
underground woodland caches, has
had its entire stash discovered and
destroyed by a gang of wild boar.
The elite tusk force is said to havedestroyed more than $20,000
worth of high-grade cocaine,
grubbing up and ripping open
several packages, and scattering
their contents through woodland
near Montepulciano.
Assuming altruistic motives, that
makes them the do-gooding-est
swine since sheepdog locum Babe
won the county sheepherding
competition in the eponymous
1995 film. If Feedback were an
Italian hog, we might be considering
a career change – the thought of
being turned into an unusually
intoxicating guaniciale doesn’t
bear thinking about.Hot water bottle
Good news on the climate change
front: we could soon be tackling
it in our sleep. “You may be
interested in purchasing an
advanced technology Ceramopillow from Blu Sleep,” writes
regular correspondent Prashant
Rao. The revolutionary technology
in this bed cushion is “powered
by our own metabolism”, in which
“bio-ceramic [gel] recycles and
converts radiant body heat into
something that gives the body a
boost – infrared energy”.
Ah yes, infrared energy –
otherwise known as heat. Blu
Sleep promises that the pillow
will increase tissue oxygen
levels, reduce inflammation and
promote vitality, as well as lessen
stress and fatigue – a crucial selling
point for anything calling itself
a pillow. Yet Feedback thinks the
Ceramo is something far more
precious. By heating us with our
own expelled body heat, it must
be the world’s comfiest perpetual-
motion machine. Buy 10, and
sleep like a baby knowing you’re
doing your bit to save the planet. ❚