56 | New Scientist | 16 January 2021
The back pages Feedback
The last word (again)
Many thanks to those who wrote
in response to our division of the
world into magazine-forwards and
(Feedback’s favoured) magazine-
backwards readers (19/26
December 2020). Robin Shipp
confesses to taking things even
further, reading our individual items
in reverse order, thereby sometimes
missing the point of running jokes.
Robin, if you’re reading this week,
nice to have you with us and it’s a
pleasure to devote our sign-off item
to you. Our apologies that none of
the preceding items followed on
from one another, but at least you
have the consolation that we are
all, column-forwards and column-
backwards readers, now just as
confused as each other.Me and my spoon
Onwards and... downwards. As the
roving albatross is to the high seas,
so the humble teaspoon is to the
office kitchen: its mysterious
comings and goings are the
subject of myth and legend, and
much academic research. We need
hardly remind you, dear readers,
of that seminal paper from 2005
which established that the half-life
of a teaspoon in the communal
tea rooms of the Macfarlane
Burnet Institute for Medical
Research and Public Health in
Melbourne was 42 days.
The latest instalment in the saga
comes courtesy of a paper in The
Medical Journal of Australia sent
to us by reader Lyndal Thorburn.
It is by Mark Mattiussi at the Royal
Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
and his colleagues – clearly,
cutlery-related passions run
particularly high in Australia –
and is entitled “What the forks? A
longitudinal quality improvement
study tracking cutlery numbers
in a public teaching and research
hospital staff tearoom”.
In the equivalent of ringing
an albatross with a radio receiver,
only not, the team introduced
18 forks and 18 teaspoons to
a communal cutlery drawer,
each furnished with a red nailyou pour out the water? Now that
really would be a research project.The weight of W(h)ales
“If we assume that the annual rate
of teaspoon loss per employee can
be applied to the entire workforce
of the city of Melbourne (about
2.5 million), an estimated 18 million
teaspoons are going missing in
Melbourne each year. Laid end to
end, these lost teaspoons would
cover over 2700 km — the length
of the entire coastline of
Mozambique — and weigh over
360 metric tons — the approximate
weight of four adult blue whales.”
We append this quote from the
2005 research merely to note that
Mozambique isn’t the only place
blessed with around 2700 km
of sea views. This was a golden
opportunity to express something
in terms of both Wales and whales.On the button
As a brief interlude, responding
to our question last week of how
many belly buttons there are in
a 10-minute walk, John Dobson
suggests “a very good estimate
is one per person undertaking
the walk”. Very good, John – but
how many people fit into a
10-minute walk?Put your clothes on
Welcome, column-backwards
readers. To perplex you straight off,
the cutlery research actually took
second place in The Medical Journal
of Australia’s annual Christmas
research competition. The golden
stethoscope went to David
Chapman and Cindy Thamrin at
the Woolcock Institute of Medical
Research in Sydney for looking into
factors affecting the productivity
of Australian medical researchers
during the covid-19 pandemic,
apart from unfocused cutlery rage.
The list of most frequent causes
of interruptions to teleconferencing
meetings will be familiar to many:
internet connectivity (61 per cent of
respondents), children (42 per cent)
and other household members
(40 per cent). One person reported
an interruption by a sleepwalker,
although the researchers observe “it
is unclear whether this was during
a daytime nap or a night meeting”.
The headline findings of the study
may be summarised as: having
young children at home while trying
to work depresses productivity,
but doesn’t affect mental health.
Wearing pyjamas while working,
on the other hand, has no effect on
productivity, but does correlate with
more frequent reporting of a decline
in mental health. This finding tallies,
the researchers suggest, with earlier
studies showing improvements
in the mental health of hospital
patients when encouraged to
change into day clothes.
Feedback’s elegant silken
pyjamas are supremely
comfortable, that’s our excuse. But
we’re going to have to find another
excuse for why we squeeze out just
this one measly column a week. ❚varnish dot. During a seven-week
observation period, six spoons
went missing, compared with
only one fork. In a previously
unobserved phenomenon, the
overall number of knives and
forks in the drawer went up,
presumably because the passive-
aggressively marked spoons
shamed the light-fingered into
returning half-inched wares.
As to the deeper question
“where the fork did all the spoons
go?”, that remains as deep a
mystery as what happened to
that other sock. Hastily hiding our
emergency stash under a pile of
tea-stained correspondence, we
point by way of diversion to our
suggestion a few years back that
quantum teleportation might
play a part: could the disappearing
teaspoons be the same ones that
mysteriously appear at the bottom
of every washing-up bowl whenGot a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or
New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayedTwisteddoodles for New Scientist