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In 1942 a dentist with a flair for invention came up with the bright
idea of firebombing Japan’s cities with tiny incendiary bombs carried by
bats. Using some personal connections, the doctor got his proposal to the
desk of President Roosevelt, who promptly fired off a memo to the army saying
‘this man is NOT a nut’ and asking them to look into it.

One of the first people recruited into this weird scheme was high school
student Jack Couffer, who had been collecting bats for a museum mammalogist
also inducted into ‘Project X-ray’. Couffer has now researched government
archives and looked up old friends to write Bat Bomb (University of Texas
Press, Austin, 1992), his thorough but light-hearted description of one
of the least-known detours of the Second World War.

The chemist who had just invented napalm was also on the team, and
he managed to come up with an effective firebomb, with a time fuse, weighing
just 19 grams. The plan was to drop thousands of bats, each with a bomb
glued to its fur, over Japan at night. They would seek shelter in buildings
– which would go up in flames 30 minutes later. Couffer can’t prove it,
but cryptic notes in the files indicate Project X-ray was shelved (in February
1944) when the atomic bomb seemed to be on its way toward making a one-plane
raid even more destructive.

* * *

Mysterious goings on at the Old Vicarage, Grantchester. A materialisation
has apparently taken place – not, in this case, the ‘sly shade of a Rural
Dean’ (as former owner Rupert Brooke put it), but rather the sly shade of
cavity walls.

Towards the end of last year, the present owners, Jeffrey and Mary Archer,
spent £7793 on the 17th-century house in order to save £1067
a year on their energy costs. The most profitable measure was cavity insulation
in the north walls of the house.

Splendid, environmentally-right-on stuff, you may say. And you could
be right, but Feedback is puzzled. Because in 1991, Mary Archer, as chairperson
of the National Energy Foundation, had the vicarage surveyed to determine
its national home energy rating. It came out embarrassingly low, but according
to the Sunday Times report at the time, Mary Archer ‘shrugged off’ the result,
explaining that the walls were ‘solid, rather than thin and they lose heat’.

So whence came the cavities? Creepy, isn’t it.

* * *

Word has reached Feedback of an attempt at the London Waste Regulation
Authority’s executive committee to encourage the law to take firmer action
against those who pollute our fair city. Liberal Democrat Councillor Mike
Rowlands of the London borough of Richmond-upon-Thames tabled the following
question at the committee’s meeting of 8 December:

‘Following the decision of the Nigerian government to increase the penalty
for importing waste from life imprisonment to death, is the chair satisfied
that the sentences for environmental offences in this country reflect
the seriousness of the offences?’

* * *

Tasteless promo of the week comes from Meiko, with a brochure about
its Computing Surface CS-2 system. ‘High performance computing,’ runs the
blurb, ‘is one of the factors which keeps you at the forefront in your field.’
So what do we get on the cover of the brochure? The slogan ‘Predatory Computing
Performance’ – and a photograph of a cheetah in the act of slaughtering
an antelope.

File under Toys for Immature Boys.

* * *

Wouldn’t it be silly if the newly privatised regional electricity companies
suddenly started paying different amounts of share dividends to people with
the same number of shares? But that’s what happened to Keith Crook and his
wife Ann.

They both own 150 shares in Eastern Electricity, which set its year-end
dividend at 11.85 pence per share. But when the cheques came in, Mr Crook
received £17.78 and Mrs Crook, £17.77.

Feedback wondered why, so Eastern Electricity asked its registrar,
National Westminster Bank, which came out with the following. When the sum
to be paid isn’t a round number in pence (in this case it would be £17.775)
the remainder is carried over to the next shareholder on the list, who may
be lucky enough to be rounded up another penny.

As Crook observes, ‘I bet the original computer program writer rounded
everything down and then wondered what to do with several million 0.5 pences
that the company suddenly accrued. I bet he wasn’t given it for a bonus.’

* * *

Oh dear, your super soaraway Sun has got its knickers in a twist over
the undies worn by Britain’s female Antarctic scientists. Following Feedback’s
revelation that financial cuts at the British Antarctic Survey had forced
some women (and men) on trips to the continent to go without the traditional
knicker allowance (24 October), The Sun stepped in with a page 3 pledge.
It promised to stump up £500 worth of underwear for the women.

But what the women wanted was Marks & Spencer knickers. What they
got was long johns. So piles of worthy but worthless thermals are now cluttering
up the BAS storeroom – and The Sun has made an ass of itself, yet again.

* * *

Here at New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, we’re not averse to the odd eye-catching headline
– so long as the bounds of good taste and scientific probity aren’t overstepped.
Even so, there were a few raised eyebrows when a press release arrived from
the British Trust for Ornithology headed by the screamer: ‘SEDGE WARBLER
³§±«±Ê·¡¸é³§°Õ±«¶Ù!’

The release went on to catalogue ‘a shocking story of sexual excess
from Pennington, near Leigh in Greater Manchester’, where, according to
amateur bird ringer Peter Alker, one particularly macho local sedge warbler
fathered no less than five separate broods of chicks in just three months
. . .

You see, the headline worked. We all read the story.