29 August 2020 | New Scientist | 55The back pages Feedback
David AIttenborough
One of the finest collections of short
fiction on the internet is to be found
on Reddit. The website boasts a
plethora of pseudo-chat rooms that
cater to every conceivable taste, both
safe for work and otherwise. One of
the most popular is r/ Relationships,
where people can share details
of their personal lives with total
strangers for validation and advice.
Yet as stories on r/Relationships
have become more baroque – my
boyfriend doesn’t want anything
to do with the dog I adopted during
a previous relationship, help me
convince my partner not to drop
out of law school to start a podcast,
etc. – suspicions are growing that
many of the posts are made up.
That hasn’t stopped software
developer Garett MacGowan
from creating an AI rendering
of David Attenborough’s voice
to read out some of the forum’s
most iconic threads. Feedback was
worried that such a melding would
tarnish the stature of a beloved
icon, but the reverse has happened:
in Attenborough’s husky whisper,
even the internet’s worst imaginings
take on a dignified hue.Lean times
Feedback previously reported on
a case of nominative determinism
that had crept into the pages of
New Scientist, in which Glasgow
researcher Michael Lean was
quoted in an article on obesity.
Jon Arch has now written
in – with Michael’s blessing –
to point out that his surname
in fact derives from the Gaelic
words Macgillean Dubh, and so
didn’t emerge fully formed as an
adjective indicating slenderness.
“New Scientist might like to reflect
on the assumption that all British
names are English,” they write.
A salutary reminder, thank you.Brain spinning
Continuing on the same theme,
Christine Dann points us in the
direction of a choice quote from
neuroscientist Scott Grafton’sObjects iN Near infrAred
usIng Sources Estimation”
as MAYONNAISE. Only an
astrophysicist could come
up with that one. And no, that
wasn’t intended as a condiment.Neat pun
Feedback’s attention has been
drawn in recent weeks to a number
of journal articles with noteworthily
punning titles. This week’s entry
is a paper in the American Journal
of Respiratory Cell and Molecular
Biology on the use of interleukin-6
(IL-6) receptor antagonists as a
possible treatment for covid-19.
In the paper, Tanner Hedrick,
Brian Murray, Robert Hagan and
Jason Mock reflect on the undue
attention such treatments have
received and the need for greater
care in promoting new therapies.
The title? “Clean-up on IL-6”.Western central time
Questions continue to swirl
around Kanye West’s campaign
to become president of the US.
Is he really running? If so, why?
And, crucially, will he have to
redefine time to win?
In order to be on the ballot
in Wisconsin, West was required
to turn in his nomination
paperwork by 5 pm on 4 August.
According to documents cited
in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
however, his campaign actually
filed it 14 seconds late, meaning
that his name won’t appear as
an option for Wisconsin voters.
Rather than admit defeat and
move on, the West campaign
opted to challenge the decision.
On what grounds, you might ask?
Well, says lawyer Michael Curran,
the 59 seconds immediately
following the start of the new hour
continue to belong to the previous
one. In his own words: “For the
average observer, arriving before
5.01 pm is arriving ‘not later’ than
5 pm.” To be filed later than 5 pm,
he argues, it would therefore have
to be submitted at 1 minute past.
It is an ingenious line of
reasoning. Hopefully, our editor
will see the light when it comes
to Feedback’s own filing deadline.PC Waddle
What is black and white and red all
over? A penguin that has just been
stopped by the police. That, at least,
is our takeaway from a story in
The Independent about an incident
in Nottinghamshire, UK. Police
officers apparently found a runaway
Humboldt penguin “plodding up a
village street” and escorted it home
(to a nearby farm, apparently, rather
than Chile).
When asked about the bizarre
story, a local inspector said officers
had been trained to deal with “a
variety of incidents with complex
demands”. Feedback would love
to know more about this apparent
penguin-stopping training.
Do flippercuffs even exist? ❚This is Gilead Amit’s last Feedbackbook Physical Intelligence: “Henry
Head was the lead editor of the
journal Brain, not to be confused
with Lord Brain, who later became
head of Brain and wrote an admiring
essay on Head published in Brain.”Dip in standards
A recurring bug in the Feedback
bed is the misuse of acronymy
by scientists who ought to know
better. The suggested appellation
for these was astronyms, owing
to their high incidence among
astrophysicists, but subsequent
readers have written in to assure
us that all branches of science
are equally guilty.
Really? You expect us to believe
that? Well, then how do you
explain a paper recently uploaded
to the arXiv preprint server that
parses the phrase “Morphological
Analysis Yielding separatedGot a story for Feedback?
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