21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 95The back pages Feedback
2019 has been quite a year, hasn’t
it? It’s had everything – catastrophic
climate change, impeachment
proceedings, even the occasional
bout of political drama in the UK.
Throughout it all, as the arrow of
time shot remorselessly forward,
one thing didn’t change: the world
remained as weird a place as ever.
As we leave the crematorium
of one year for the birthing ward
of another, Feedback longs to cast
one last look over our shoulder at
the year that was the year that this
year was. And what better way to
do so than by bestowing our very
own awards, the inaugural Feedbys.
Think of them as recognition of the
pinnacles of absurdity recorded in
our past revolution around the sun.
Artificial stupidity
We begin with the most highly
coveted of these awards, the
Skynet Memorial Feedby for
Human-Robot Interaction. Robots
and sundry other possessors of
artificial intelligence littered our
pages in 2019, often with some
ill-advised human not far behind.
In Kyoto, Japan, a $1 million
robot began work as a Buddhist
priest, and tiny automated
chaperones were used to
accompany potential couples
on their first dates. Russian
television appeared to show an
equally impressive display of
robotics early in the year, until
news got out that it was actually
a human in a costume.
Not only were humans
mistaken for robots in 2019,
robots were also mistaken for
humans – though not necessarily
in ways that would set off Turing
test alarms. In April, Feedback
reported on an emergency call
made by a woman in Oregon who
was alarmed at noises inside her
home. Police promptly arrived at
the residence, bursting inside to
discover an autonomous Roomba
vacuum cleaner diligently
performing its allotted task.
In a characteristically generous
gesture, Feedback awards the
Skynet Memorial Feedby to
everyone involved in this surreal
fantastic in the visible spectrum.
But Feedback’s award for
Flimflamology Beyond Compare
goes to the inventors of quantum
speed-reading, a technique
designed to let you absorb the
contents of an entire book in
seconds. The word quantum
seemed to have fallen out of
favour among purveyors of
woo-woo of late, so we feel
strangely reassured to discover
it is still actively misleading
punters. May there be more such
old-fashioned nonsense next year.Going cold turkey
And finally, for what is absolutely
guaranteed to be the last time in
2019, we break our pledge not to
mention nominative determinism
in order to bestow our Feedby for
Best Supporting Surname. We
nearly called them the Oscars,but then we realised that naming an
object after a person went against
the spirit of what we were trying to
achieve. Also, the legal fees would
have been extortionate.
It has been quite a year for people
with apt names: we had a sheep-
breeding Nicola Lambe and multiple
nominations for a whisky-brewing
Jim Beveridge. Coastal researcher
Ruth Reef gets an honourable
mention, as does the campaigner
for more spacious lavatory seats
Neil Longbottom. But the undisputed
winner, narrowly beating the
urologist Nicholas Burns-Cox,
is former US National Security
Agency employee John Sipher.
Thank you to everyone who
enabled our addiction in 2019,
but we absolutely must put our
foot down and insist that 2020
will be a year free of nominative
determinism. We are counting
on you all to hold us to it. ❚tableau: the police, the
homeowner and, last but
not least, the Roomba.Animal spirits
The other great pillar of
preposterousness on which
2019 rested concerned the affairs
of animals. There was sad news
when Trevor, the world’s loneliest
duck, was murdered on the remote
Pacific island of Niue by a passing
dog. The canine might have had
a brief moment of triumph, but
cosmic justice was served on all its
kind a month later when the state
of Kentucky officially banned dogs
from becoming welders.
Tragedy also befell a Japanese
slug that electrocuted itself in a
device that powered the local train
system. Dozens of trains were left
out of order and thousands of
commuters rendered unwillingly
sluggish themselves.
However, for demonstrating
power out of proportion to its size,
no animal could match Darwin’s
finch, which we learned generates
320 times more force with its bite,
pound for pound, than a T. r e x.
This remarkable strength, no
doubt aided by the finch’s big-name
sponsorship deal and heavyweight
PR team, earns it Feedback’s Animal
Spirits award for 2019.Quality flimflamology
As usual, our inbox overflowed
with the myriad ways in which
the public’s gullibility was being
exploited. There were some real
gems this year, and we aren’t just
talking about “bewater”, a brand
with an idiosyncratic aversion to
capital letters, which decorates its
water bottles with semi-precious
stones in the hope of purifying
the contents with their
vibrational energy.
Similarly ludicrous was the
Ultimate Smart Shirt 3.0, whose
awe-inspiring multifunctionality
promised to make it even more
useful than Batman’s utility belt.
It was said not only to reflect
ultraviolet radiation, but also to
emit infrared radiation and lookGot a story for Feedback?
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[email protected]Twisteddoodles for New Scientist