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The macho image of the oxyacetylene welder receives something of a dent
in the current issue of the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. A study
in Denmark found that testicular temperature of Danish welders on the job
rises about 2 °C above normal – as well as a drop in the sperm count
by about 25 per cent and a significant drop in the number of normal-shaped
sperm. On the other hand a career in welding could be the start of a new
male contraceptive.

* * *

Readers (regular or otherwise) of The Guardian will know how much fun
the Diary has had of late with other people’s surnames, and how appropriate
(or otherwise) they are for their jobs. Stunning examples include Mr Phang
the dentist. The gag has been running for months, and you’d think that all
the possibilities have been exhausted. Strangely, one obvious name seems
to have escaped mention. So, all you Guardian readers, please note that
the editor of the newspaper’s health page is John Illman.

* * *

All things bright and beautiful, all PR coups great and small. Nuclear
Electric, the company that no one wants to buy, has bought (sorry, sponsored)
a cathedral choir. Those wanting to praise God and pass the fuel rods should
pop into Bristol Cathedral, whose song sheets trumpet the divine message
of sponsorship. No jokes, please, about being on the side of the angels,
playing God, paying God, or the Church of England being the nuclear industry
at prayer.

* * *

It is, of course, a journalistic rule of thumb that the bigger the fiasco,
the larger the public relations effort. So the source of the most elaborate
astronomical press kit of recent memory was no surprise. Someone had clearly
spent a bundle: colour photographs inside a folder printed in colour, cut
in an elaborate pattern, and with embossed lettering on the cover. And,
of course, it came from the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US.

The surprise came on the inside. ‘Find out where the science is growing
rapidly . . . and the funding is robust,’ promised the envelope. One quick
rip, and out pops an invitation to spend $247 for 12 issues of something
called Super Collider News. It’s a monthly newsletter devoted to ‘news of
SSC funding opportunities and the exciting new science being created’. Now,
$247 is a lot to pay for the promise of exciting new science, but exciting
new grant opportunities – well, who knows?

* * *

Still, why worry about grants when there are so many more important
things to occupy your mind. A deep discussion about dress sense has broken
out in the University of Birmingham’s internal newsletter.

Naturally, the point at issue is not trivial. It concerns the correct
angle of the dangle of the tassel on one academic’s mortar board. It seems
that Bryan Perrins had the misfortune to attend two degree convocations.
At one, ‘all the processing doctors wore their gold tassels over their left
ears; at the other all the processing doctors wore their gold tassels over
their right ears’.

This is a severe problem for the thinking academic. As Perrins says:
‘If left is right and right is wrong, I do not want to be left wrongly right;
whereas if right is right and left is out, I do not want to be left right
´Ç³Ü³Ù.’

* * *

Stephen Salter, he of the eponymous wave-energy ‘ducks’, is not just
clever, he’s modest as well. Appearing before the House of Commons Select
Committee on Energy, he showed the flair and style which have made him almost
as formidable in controversy as in engineering.

Explaining that corrosion by sea water would not be much of a problem,
he said corrosion was much worse in a damp industrial city than in clean
sea water – in the case of Manchester, for example, by a factor of five.
He continued impressively in the same vein, covering sailing ships and motor
cars.

At the end, the chairman thanked him for being ‘one of the best witnesses
we have had before this committee’. Salter corrected him: ‘The best,’ he
cried.

* * *

Are you a budding novelist who suffers from writer’s block? Well, if
you use a computer to write – or to finger the keyboard nervously, longing
for inspiration – your problems could be over. Word (or words) has reached
us from America of the seemingly limitless skills of the computer. You can
actually buy a ghost writer to help you through those hours of literary
blackout.

And it really is ghostly, according to the manufacturer, so you’d better
hold on to your seat: ‘GhostWriter is like a phantom waiting to pop up in
any program at any time.’ This is truly automatic writing – it lets even
the least spiritual read the words of nearly 900 of the dear departed, which
appear mysteriously on the computer screen. The choosy can even specify
how old they wish their ghoulish correspondent to be, from Ancient, Renaissance
and Industrial (1800 to 1920) to Modern. There’s no real need to call in
the Ghostbusters, though – all this is simply a computer dictionary of quotations.

* * *

And finally, the comment to end all comments about the beneficial effects
of confusion over SI units (see Feedback, 11 January). Last month, the esteemed
publication Drilling Weekly announced the following: ‘NOTE: As from this
issue, Drilling Weekly adopts the metric system . . . We regret this change
to a less accurate system, which has been necessitated by the growing internationalism
of our business.’

Oddly, the only figures inside the issue that have changed from imperial
to metric units are drilled depths. Horizontal distances are still in miles,
choke settings in inches,oil volumes in barrels and gas volumes in cubic
feet.