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Now here’s a difficult one: who invented nuclear magnetic resonance
imaging? The Nobel prize committee obviously thinks it was Richard Ernst
of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. After all, they
did give him this year’s chemistry prize. But the Americans have other ideas.

The American Physical Society in the US has kindly pointed out that
both NASA and Fermilab, the particle physics centre near Chicago, have recently
been claiming credit for inventing the imaging technique. This surely could
not have anything to do with the organisations’ desire to show how useful
their research is in order to justify further spending increases. No, perish
the thought. Must just have been a slip-up.

* * *

If you have ever wondered why government statistics seem so hard to
fathom, here is a little nugget to confuse you even more. Being a civil
servant is terribly hard, which is why the exams to get into the service
are so tough. The Department of Trade and Industry, for example, has in
it some wonderful people who supply industry and the press with the answers
to pretty obscure questions. But sometimes the answers tell you more than
you really wanted to know, leaving you to decide which bit is the useful
bit.

Take the official who last month told about a hundred assembled experts
in a new field of technology that they could depend on government support.
‘This is very close to our hearts,’ he said. But exactly how much money
was available? Could it be as much as 100 per cent? Well, yes and no. ‘There
is a grey scale,’ said the official. ‘From nought per cent upwards.’

* * *

UNICEF, the UN agency that wants to vaccinate all the world’s children
and stamp out diarrhoea, among other things, has decided it needs corporate
help. Recent adverts portray a crowd of ragamuffins as ‘a special savings
account for your company’s money’. Are they expected to pay for their jabs
when they grow up, with interest?

No. A donation to UNICEF is ‘company sponsorship’. But how much advertising
is there in printing the company logo on disposable syringes? Perhaps the
sponsorship is meant to be more lasting, along the lines of the Army, which
pays for your college in return for a few years’ service.

Hey, kid. Remember that time we saved your life by immunising you against
the five major childhood diseases? Here’s the factory. See you in a few
years.

* * *

The US has never been one to hide its virtues under bushels. A ‘fact-sheet’
sent to European journalists, listing the wonderful things the current US
administration has done for the environment, points out that 40 per cent
of all the court cases won against environmental evil-doers by the Environmental
Protection Agency were won in the past two years. The agency has ‘set new
records for environmental felony indictments, convictions and prison sentences’.
Come again? More environmental offences means the environment is better
off?

* * *

We’ve all learnt about software and hardware. Now, from the pages of
Com-puter Weekly, comes a new word: stiffware. This is defined as a computer
program ‘of obscure origin and purpose’. It appeared in an article called
‘Raising stiffware from the dead’, which was all about modifying unused
programs to make them useful.

But some terms are still verbal stiffware, to coin a phrase. Can anyone
explain what ‘wetware’ is? Word has it that it refers to neural network
experiments on real brain cells, though a fuller explanation is tantalisingly
elusive. Still, there’s no doubt about the meaning of ‘softwear’ – cuddly
toy parts which you stick to your terminal to make it look more friendly.

* * *

The world is going ‘bunjee’ mad. It is now at least five years since
Feedback found a plaque on a bridge in Colorado commemorating someone’s
jump over the side on the end of an elastic rope. A recent visit to a village
in the Australian rainforest (well, Feedback does get around) revealed entrepreneurs
offering anyone the chance to do similar jumps, and boasting that an 83-year-old
man had just jumped.

But first prize for enterprise must go to a bunch of East (or is that
easterly?) Germans. On Sunday afternoon they borrow the enormous tower cranes
which are currently clearing the ground round the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin,
near where the Wall used to be. The organisers charge local young bloods
100 marks (around £35) to stand in a cage and be hoisted 60 metres
into the air. Passengers are then encouraged to dive out with an elastic
bunjee rope tied round their legs.

The rope tightens at around 30 metres, stretches for another 10 and
then flings the diver back up in the air to the height of the cage. It takes
around ten oscillations for the bunjee to settle down. The crane driver
then lowers the diver back to the ground, and a round of applause.

The advertising sign by the crane challenges all comers: ‘No guts –
no glory.’ No thanks.

* * *

With only a few shopping days until Christmas, now is the season of
adver-tisements for fragrances. But consider the following. The operators
of a landfill tip somewhere in England wanted to disguise the stench given
off by methane gas. Not a nice whiff. So they sprinkled quantities of perfumed
deodorisersp to please the nostrils of the tip’s neighbours. Except that
they weren’t pleased. The residents complained, saying they couldn’t stand
the smell of the perfume. They preferred the original pong. Which just goes
to show how perverse the human olfactory gland is. Advertising copy writers
please note.