Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

The European Patent Office is still avoiding the vexed question of patenting
animals. It decided Harvard University could patent its famous onco-mouse,
after initially saying it couldn’t, but is now happily bracing itself for
a deluge of lawsuits against the decision which could take years to settle.

The reason for its lack of enthusiasm is that the European Patent Convention
clearly says, in several languages, that you cannot patent types of plants
or animals. But European chemicals companies, which want to be able to charge
a farmer royalties every time a bioengineered bull gets loose in the cow
pasture, are very keen to patent animals, especially as the US Patent Office
has no qualms about it at all. Anyone who thinks this should be a cut and
dried case knows nothing about the arcanities of patent law, or about the
clout the chemicals industry has in Germany, where the EPO lives.

The EPO has now hit on a unique method for finding the solution to its
moral dilemma. It has launched an essay competition, on the subject ‘Patents
and Ethics in the Context of Modern Technology’. Prizes are DM15 000 (about
£5000) for outsiders, DM10 000 for the patent office’s own staff.
Entries, marked with a codeword and not your name, and up to 30 typed pages
long (one-and-a-half spacing, please), are due at the European Patent Office,
Erhardtstrasse 27, D-8000 Munich, by the end of August. Good luck.

* * *

Those dismayed by the seemingly unending boom in mindless TV quiz shows
may be heartened by this tale from what used to be communist Poland.

The inspired Polish answer to Blind Date in those days was a form of
20 questions. Teams of contestants tried to guess a word from an encyclopaedic
dictionary in less than 20 goes. To each question they were allowed only
a yes or no answer. The game could quite happily have gone on boring the
wits out of the nation had it not been for the intervention of a team of
mathematicians.

The four mathematicians took with them a list of every word in the dictionary.
They then asked the quizmaster whether the word they were after was in the
first half of the list. If the answer was yes, they went on to ask if the
word was in the first quarter, and so on. In this way, the mathematicians
halved the number of possible words with every question.

In 20 questions you can deal with a list of 1 048 576 words – more
than enough for any dictionary. So the mathematicians always found the
word. In addition, they had already proven to themselves that this technique
is on average faster than any other. The mathematicians won every time,
and the show was taken off the air.

* * *

Many thanks to reader Will Higgs, who sent in a copy of Flattened Fauna:
A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets and Highways, by Roger
Knutson, thus finally confirming its existence (see Feedback, 11 April).

Hard on its heels, John Townley of Virginia in the US has sent in a
copy of the work’s companion volume, The Roadkill Cookbook, by US biologist
David Larcey. This is a collection of recipes for cooking fauna that ‘have
given their lives so that we can drive from point A to point B in as little
time as possible’.

The animals dealt with are different from the ones in Knutson’s study,
since the latter have become, in the author’s words, ‘enroadened’. Larcey
is concerned with creatures which have broadly retained their shape, and
hence their edibility, despite making the ultimate sacrifice in the cause
of human transport. The recipes, which are for animals encountered on American
roadsides, include ‘Turnpike turtle soup’ and ‘Freewayed frogs’ legs’. There
is also a useful section on collection techniques, including what to do
if an animal such as a rattlesnake turns out to be resting rather than deceased.

* * *

Normally Feedback would not dream of holding hostage to fortune by sniping
at someone’s spelling or grammar, but we couldn’t resist this one.

The US company Reference Software describes itself as ‘the world leader
in electronic reference tools’. Its flagship is a computer program called
Grammatik, which proofreads text. This, says Reference Software, results
in ‘dramatically improved grammar and accuracy’.

How does it work? ‘Through the word processors’ (sic) button bars.’

Oh dear. Rather a singular mistake.

* * *

When the Channel Tunnel opens next year (or the year after – but we’ll
keep you posted on that), the British and French police forces will have
to work closer together than ever before. To help iron out the pitfalls
in communication a team of linguistic experts at Wolfson College, Oxford,
backed by British Telecom, has drawn up ‘policespeak’, a simplified language,
which according to the BT press release, gives ‘a precise lexicon of police
use of English and accurate equivalents in French police terminology’.

So Inspector Nacoeur and les flics will be able to produce such constabulary
gems as ‘Bonsoi’ tout le monde’ and ‘Allo, Allo, Allo, qu’est-ce qui se
passe ici?’

One question, though. Will the lexicon include the French equivalent
of that time-honoured phrase ‘Hard luck, squire, you’ve been fitted up’?

* * *

Recent industrial action in the Russian health service has stimulated
public interest in home cures and do-it-yourself remedies. The weekly Argumenty
i Facty (Arguments and Facts), once a specialist journal for communist propagandists,
now carries letters from readers sharing favourite remedies. The latest
issue proposes a surprising cure for haemorrhoids, submitted by one V. Karnishin.

‘Take a warm bath (35 °C),’ it suggests, ‘then lie down and insert
a candle-shaped piece of raw potato into the anus for half an hour.’

This method of treatment is apparently infallible – but only if the
patient is careful not to drink alcohol for at least 48 hours beforehand.