which in April explained to reader
Peter Holness that a monopolar
version wasn’t available due to
“Brexit-related supply issues”. End-
of-year update: physicists hunting
for magnetic norths sans souths
at the Large Hadron Collider, a
facility beneath an EU external
border, are also still suffering
persistent supply problems.
Point proven, whatever it was.Flame grilling
“nope. science itself isn’t ‘true’ it’s
a constantly refining process used
to uncover truths based in material
reality and that process is still full of
misteaks. neil just posts ridiculous
sound bites like this for clout and he
has no respect for epistemology”.
This tweet from frozen steaks
manufacturer The Steak-Umm
Company to astrophysicist Neil
deGrasse Tyson came in responseto his tweet “The good thing about
Science is that it’s true, whether or
not you believe in it”. A dual award
for Social Media Takedown and
Epistemological “Truth” of the Year.Getting the measure
This year was, by any standard,
the time it took Earth to orbit once
around the sun measured against
the fixed stars. Or possibly just
365 days. Or the time after which a
fingernail would extend 1/30th of
the distance around Earth’s orbit,
if nanometres were kilometres.
This was indeed the year of the
bamboozling measurement unit.
We had the baby boy whose length
at birth was, said UK newspaper
The Sun, almost 24 inches long, or
“two footlong Subway sandwiches
for perspective”. We had The
Guardian’s sterling efforts,
including depicting Earth’s annual
heat absorption as the heat output
of “630bn common household
hairdryers blowing all day and
night, 360 days a year” and a mass
of sea cucumber excrement in
multiples of the Eiffel Tower.
Special mention goes to a
Colorado sheriff ’s office that
tweeted about a road blocked by
“a large boulder the size of a large
boulder”. But for sheer dedication
to the cause of inexplicable
explication, The Wall Street Journal
wins Measurement of the Year by
urging us to imagine an “adult
African male elephant suspended
from a rope that’s the same
diameter as a table tennis ball”.
It was about the tensile stress
of tempered glass, natch.Keeps popping up
It is tempting to grant our last award,
for Person of the Year, to Keith Weed,
whom so many of you were intent
on informing us is the president
of the Royal Horticultural Society.
We make that his third mention, so
instead the award goes collectively
to you, our dear readers, for all the
smiles and giggles in another trying
year. A happy new year to you all,
and see you for possibly too much
more of the same in 2022. ❚a set of tramlines in Reims, France,
for violating its ticket sales policy.A herring’s throw
Ever-more inventive ways to
explain 2 metres to people were
a feature of 2020’s Feedbys. This
year, we are pleased to honour
authorities in the Netherlands who
combined social distancing with a
vaccine incentive, by offering free
portions of Hollandse nieuwe
pickled herrings with a jab. And that
is quite enough covid – for this year.Poles apart
And so to Brexit. In a year when
blaming global supply chain
issues on Brexit and Brexit-related
supply chain issues on global
problems became a UK national
sport, we doff our hat to the maker
of “bipolar magnetic dog collars”,2021, eh? While undertaking the
end-of-year reordering of our
extensive piling system, we are
tempted to file the past 12 months
under “see 2020”. But leafing
through our leaves with moistened
forefinger, we find much to delight
ourselves from this year as we
dole out the Feedbys, the coveted
annual Feedback awards.New and shiny
As billionaires competed to get
to space in 2021 (see page 24),
those of us left on the ground got
a feel for the high life thanks to
“zero-gravity” chairs and beds that
featured in our pages this year – the
former with super-atmospherically
super-useful UV-resistant mesh
seating, the latter with anti-snore
preset positions ensuring that,
even if in space someone could
hear you snore, they wouldn’t.
We also discovered hydrogenated
water, now the secret of Feedback’s
eternally fresh’n’young-looking
skin. But our award for Innovation
of the Year goes to a forward-
thinking, digital addition to the
personal grooming space: Nimble,
“the world’s first device that uses
artificial intelligence to self-paint
and dry nails in under 10 minutes”.
Feedback has four on order with a
special telescopic applicator stick,
for those rushed mornings when
we need to look just fabulous.Computer says wot?
Staying in the digital space,
February brought us the story
of Liam Thorp, a 32-year-old
journalist based in Liverpool, UK,
who received an urgent call-up
for an early covid-19 vaccine.
The assessment of Thorp’s BMI
as 28,000 kg/m^2 turned out to be
based on interpreting his height of
6 foot, 2 inches as 6.2 centimetres.
But on the basis that human
error might well have played a part
here, Malgorithm of the Year goes
to the Facebook photo-checking
algorithm that found shots of a
high-rise building, the England
cricket team and a herd of cows
overly sexual, and denouncedGot a story for Feedback?
Send it to [email protected] or New Scientist,
Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT
Consideration of items sent in the post will be delayedTwisteddoodles for New Scientist
The back pages Feedback reviews 2021
88 | New Scientist | 18/25 December 2021CH
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