56 | New Scientist | 20 February 2021
The back pages Feedback
Recycling maths
Feedback has never been a fan of
shopping, especially the type that
involves passive-aggressive web
formulas informing us of an invalid
input before we have finished typing.
The UK’s continuing lockdown
has, however, given us a renewed
appreciation of our local shopping
precinct, devoid as it is of people
and actual shops to go into. Caught
there in an eddy of pavement
social distancing arrows without
an apparent route of escape, we
are brought up short in front of
an excitable hoarding over a shop
that is being recycled. Adorned
with adorable cartoon pictures of
marine life, it is the pinnacle, we
find, of our confusion surrounding
measurement units in recent weeks,
as it declares:
“We recycle the weight of
a KILLER WHALE in plastic
EVERY YEAR.
“We turn mixed waste into fuel.
Enough to power 135 TV’s for a year!
“We recycle the weight of TWO
BLUE WHALES EVERY YEAR
“We recycle the weight of
550 SEA TURTLES in cardboard
EVERY YEAR”
A pen and paper, if you will.
Assuming standard blue whale,
orca and sea turtle weights: (a) How
much more cardboard than plastic
is recycled by weight? (b) What
proportion of the total waste
recycled is cardboard? (c) Assuming
standard calorific values, what is
the average power output of a TV
in kilowhales?
Answers on a hoarding, please.That’s the problem
Meanwhile, we are going back
inside, where we find John Davies
has written to us to take issue with
the subject line of a New Scientist
daily newsletter on 10 February:
“‘Extremely unlikely’ virus
came from lab, says WHO team”.
The interpretation that SARS-
CoV-2 was an extremely unlikely
virus that came from a lab was
probably not the intended one,
he suggests.
Pending radical new insights,and this can be combined with the
equally physically startling “infinite
positions for head and foot”.
Sadly, though, on the models
we have seen, zero-gravity and
anti-snore are mutually exclusive
alternative settings. Which perhaps
isn’t such a problem: in space, after
all, no one can hear you snore.Extensive piles
Our intention to erect a hoarding
a considerable fraction the size of
Wales over the units issue is holed
by The Guardian newspaper’s
decision to express a mass of sea
cucumber excrement in terms of
multiples of the Eiffel Tower.
We have no idea, either. To
return to the more accepted
use of the Eiffel Tower as a
unit of height, thanks to the
approximately 0.15 Eiffel Towers
of you who sent that one in.Shoots, leaves and eats
The entry “Holothurians, excretory
peculiarities of” in our own
extensive piling system contains
sadly just one item, a 2013 entry on
our esteemed website concerning
the giant California sea cucumber
Apostichopus californicus. In its
regular, largely unhappy, encounters
with its predator, the sunflower
seastar (Pycnopodia helianthoides),
we reported that it sometimes
“squirts its digestive system out of
its anus in a tangled, sticky mess,
confusing the seastar and allowing
it to get away”. Thus deprived of a
digestive system, it proceeds, with
admirable fortitude, to switch to
eating through its anus. We are
sure that you are glad we checked.Taste and decency
We include that nugget among
other reasons to convince you
that we aren’t – yet – an AI. Just
weeks after preventing people
in Plymouth, UK, from offending
public morals by mentioning
local landmark Plymouth Hoe,
and following an instance last
year of a picture of onions being
deemed overly suggestive
(7 November 2020), Facebook –
or rather, we suspect, its artificially
unintelligent algorithms – is at
it again.
BBC News reports that the site
blocked multiple images from the
owner of a digital photo gallery in
the UK. Among those falling foul
of the malgorithms are shots of a
high-rise building and the England
cricket team in a huddle (both
apparently overtly sexual), a neon
sign saying “disco” (promoting
alcohol), ripples on a pond (selling
adult products), some cows in a
field (overtly sexual again) and
“a set of tramlines in Reims,
France, which Facebook said went
against its ticket sales policy”.
A good night out, a sporting
occasion, a wholesome country
walk, a relaxing city break –
honestly, even if we could go
further than the local shopping
precinct, we couldn’t take an
AI anywhere. ❚we are happy to confirm this, and
rummage around in our hamper
of spares for the missing “that”.Drifting off
More upliftingly, Ivan Watson writes
from Melbourne – the Australian
one, we presume, although
apologies to any readers in
Derbyshire, UK, tired of that
presumption – with what he
describes as his “inaugural
contribution” to Feedback.
Presumptuous yourself, Ivan –
but you are very welcome. We, too,
are excited by the newspaper advert
for a bed base with a “zero gravity”
setting, also offering “anti-snore
preset positions”. Presumably, Ivan
suggests, the sleeper can be preset
to float on their front above the bed.
Due diligence reveals that
anti-gravity is a Thing in the Land of
Nod – indeed, choose the right bedGot 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