56 | New Scientist | 7 May 2022
we are vicariously pleased as Kathy
Haskard, consulting some celestial
runes in her neck of the woods,
discovers a website promising that
the “next planned solar eclipse that
will be visible from Adelaide, will
take place on April 20, 2023”.
We like the idea of throwing in
the odd unplanned one every now
and again to keep people on their
toes. The errant adjective reminds
Feedback of a report we once
spotted in a small-town newspaper
in Germany, that a spontaneous
demonstration would occur on
the main square at 11am on the
following Tuesday, and of another
clockwork certainty in keeping with
our own native country’s aptitude
for genteel chaos: disruption for
anyone so foolhardy as to attempt
to travel by train on a weekend or
public holiday. We are still unsure
whether the dread “planned
engineering works” are any lessannoying than the spontaneous,
self-nucleating variety, or which
authority ordains they should
always be precisely in our way.Testicle tans
US TV commentator and all-
round... egg Tucker Carlson has
been teasing his new documentary
film, The End of Men, with a trailer
of such startling homoeroticism
that it will possibly soon be
banned in Florida.
Carlson’s premise is that
male testosterone levels are
declining, that this is a bad thing
and that the best way to combat
it is to get your testicles tanned.
Feedback’s level of hormonal
outrage remains middling about
all of this. We are unsure of the
last part, however, which seems
to involve exposing private parts
to infrared radiation. Hot, we
suspect, and not in a good way.
Doing our due diligence, we do
run across well-founded research
reported in this organ in 2018 –
no sniggering at the back, there –
that “The higher your testosterone
levels, the more you love soft
rock”. On that basis, anything that
accidentally ends up reducing
them is probably all to the good.Woke-o-saurus
Meanwhile, in the UK, The Sun
reports that David Attenborough’s
new one-off CGI-enhanced
documentary Dinosaurs: The
Final Day features a “softer ‘woke’
version of the T-Rex”. “Predators
tend to just fight all the time and we
wanted to show them pooing,” the
article quotes executive producer
Helen Thomas as saying. This
mystifies us, as that wasn’t on our
list as a specifically woke activity.
We suspect this might annoy
those dinosaurs who like their T. r e x
raw in tooth and claw and think the
world’s gone to the dogs since the
mammals have been in charge, or
whatever. We also suspect the final
day of the dinosaurs would have
been a good one for a spot of
testicle tanning. Doesn’t seem to
have done them any good, mind. ❚daughter finds in a Google preview
window under the rubric “What to
do when your baby poops in the
bath”. “We recommend removing
them from the tub and making
sure to get rid of any excess water
which might contain fecal matter.
Once they’re completely dry, give
them a wash with baby-safe
disinfectant or boil them in water
in the same way you would sterilize
a pacifier before returning them
to the bath.” And then be sure to
throw away the baby with the... no,
wait a moment. Following the trail
back to its source, the advice turns
out to be about bath toys, but still.Like the sun going down
There are few more disheartening
ideas for those who believe in
human agency than Isaac Newton’s
conception of a preordained
clockwork universe. This is whyLove in the metaverse
A PR writes in a breathless tone that
suggests they are just back from
doing something else. “For the next
generation dating in the metaverse
won’t be optional,” we read. “There
will be a blurry line between an
in-person date and being on video.
The audio will be spatial. The video
will be immersive. And video dating
will change as we know it.”
And Mark Zuckerberg will be
hiding round a corner holding a
big bucket for your most intimate
secrets, ka-ching. We would bet on
at least some people keeping the
physical dating option open, if only
because not all sensory experiences
are fully available in the metaverse
as yet. But never say never.
History is littered with intrinsically
real-world experiences we never
expected to go virtual: shopping for
shoes, boring people with holiday
snaps, hurling abuse at strangers.
But the spatial audio bit sounds
interesting. We weren’t aware the
metaverse equated to full-on
synaesthesia. More prosaically,
the PR turns out to be offering a
hook-up with the CEO of a video
speed-dating app for hot chat
with topics including “Requirements
for dating in the metaverse” – a
large headset and wide turning
circle, we presume – and
“Cheating in the metaverse”.
We are unsure whether this last
one is in the sense of a “how to”, or
just informing us how to tell if an
avatar is cheating. There must be
ways. Perhaps guilty feet have got
no algorithm, to misquote a poet.What the doctor ordered
Possibly fresh from a consultation
in what we are now joining the
world in misbranding as the
metaverse, Andy Howe writes in
concern at his doctor prescribing
something that sounded very
like “die, mister”. We are happy to
confirm that this is a nasal spray
for the treatment of hay fever,
one Dymista, and merely
homophonically alarming.
We are altogether more
exercised by the advice hisGot a story for Feedback?
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