8 June 2019 | New Scientist | 53The back pages Feedback
Grasping at straws
The UK government intends to
ban plastic straws and stirrers
in England from 2020, as part
of efforts to reduce people’s
impact on the environment
(the toll of whatever replaces
them conveniently isn’t factored
into the equation).
However, there will still be
a way for die-hard soda suckers
to get their fix. The Times reports
that disposable straws will remain
available in pubs and restaurants for
those with disabilities who might
need to use them. These straws will
be available on request, without any
appraisal of the customer’s need.
Ministers seem to have sensibly
realised that vetting the severity
of someone’s disability isn’t
something we should expect from
underpaid behind-bar toilers.
Nevertheless, Feedback feels
compelled to point out that these
laudable new arrangements could
be abused, leaving the possibility
that even after the ban anyone
could walk around with
20 centimetres of environmentally
destructive plastic concealed on
their person.
Or perhaps not. Given the UK
government’s record on making its
disabled citizens’ lives difficult, we
fear that a civil servant is already
working on a comprehensive central
vetting programme: a “Fit to slurp”
scheme to follow on from its late
and unlamented “Fit for work” one.
Dust to dust
The US state of Washington wants
to apply principles of sustainable
living to dying, suggesting that
we consider mulching our elders.
Citizens will now be able to
choose between burial, cremation
or “natural organic reduction”
when the time comes to lay their
loved ones to rest. Those opting for
the latter will see the body covered
in straw and woodchips and, six
to eight weeks later, receive a bag
containing the soil that remains.
It is then up to families to
decide what to do with the dirt.
We suggest a nourishing compost
Twenty’s far too plenty
News reaches us that the City
of London Corporation, guardian
of London’s storied (in all senses)
“Square Mile” financial district,
has voted to impose a 15 miles
per hour (24 km/h) speed limit.
Feedback is cautious. Average
traffic speeds in central London
hover just above 7 mph, so earning
a speeding ticket in the City might
prove challenging for car drivers.
But with the flightiest of us
sprinting at above 15 mph,
beware that unexpected turn
of speed when you see your bus
coming round the corner.Fission fruitloopery
Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise
is proving to be a right royal pain
after launching a professional
and romantic partnership with
a US shaman, Durek Verrett.
Verrett boasts a string ofcelebrity clients, including –
inevitably – Gwyneth Paltrow.
“Chosen” at age 5 to be a shaman,
he once came back from the dead.
As well as foreseeing the future,
he claims that by adjusting
a person’s constituent atoms,
he can alter their age. Handy.
Norwegian media report that
Crown Princess Mette-Marit has
urged her sister-in-law to give up
her title, but so far she shows no
interest in doing so. The princess
and shaman duo even attempted
to organise a seminar in
Stavanger’s St Petri Church, but
the bishop withdrew permission
after it proved too much even
for liberal Lutheran sensibilities.
The scientific establishment
also remains unconvinced.
In typically brusque Norwegian
style, University of Oslo physicist
Sunniva Rose told the country’s
largest newspaper Aftenposten:
“What he’s claiming is 100 per
cent bullshit.” ❚for your plants. Think John Innes
No. 3 potting compost, now with
added John.Stone the crows
Nominative determinism rocks,
and Dwight Hines has the proof.
He sends an extract from Marcia
Bjornerud’s Reading the Rocks:
The autobiography of the Earth,
in which she notes that
sedimentologists spend a lot of
time determining the grain sizes
of rocks by passing particles
through ever-finer sieves.
“Appropriately,” she writes,
“one of the leading sandstone
experts of the last half century
is Harvard’s Raymond Siever.”
Meanwhile, Merrill Cornish
discovers a treatise on the bestial
nature of humankind, titled
The Imperial Animal, by Lionel
Tiger and Robin Fox.Red, dead, redemption
Stout, short-sighted and liable to
die after sex with Earthlings: that is
the vision of life for human settlers
on Mars proposed by evolutionary
biologist Scott Solomon. In a TEDx
talk at the University of Houston,
Texas, in January, woken into
new life through discovery by
the tabloids, Solomon argues that
life on the Red Planet would be
nasty, brutish and short.
Weak Martian gravity would
reduce bone density, and anyone
foolish enough to venture into
the surrounding freezing airless
desert, even in a protective suit,
would expose themselves to
searing carcinogenic radiation.
On the plus side, with long
periods spent together in sunless,
underground tunnels, mutations
increasing survival fitness would
spread quickly through a Mars
colony. Again, a down side: after
a few generations, the colonists’
immune systems would be so
compromised that liaisons with
Earthlings would prove deadly.
Seeing what happens to the first
batch of settlers, it is hard to
imagine anyone on Earth would
be following close behind.What does Liana Finck?
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