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We already have British Telecom waking us up in the small hours with
jingling noises caused by phone line tests. Now comes an early warning
of more trouble on the line.

Communications giant GPT has proudly announced its ‘predictive dialler’,
called iCAT. This takes lists of names and telephone numbers held by companies
involved in mass telephoning activities, such as telesales, market research
and debt recovery, and automatically calls them. It ploughs through the
list, dials the numbers and switches the call to a human operator only when
someone answers.

So anyone trying to have a quiet evening at home can soon expect to
be answering a phone connected to a computer, which will then ask them to
hold on while it finds a human to talk to them. Being out, hanging up or
switching on an answering machine will be no escape. iCAT will produce a
report of all failed calls so that staff can ‘determine alternative methods
of contact’.

The worst of it is that GPT thinks the market for dialler products like
this will double this year ‘as awareness of these user benefits grows’.

* * *

Dedication to science can go to lengths that Feedback can only regard
with awe. Two teams of scientists have recently deliberately paralysed
themselves in order to work out how we control our muscles.

Using a drug similar to curare, the substance used by South American
Indians on their arrow tips, they blocked the neuromuscular junctions throughout
their bodies. A pressure cuff tourniquet was inflated around the right arm
of each person so that the drug didn’t reach one hand, enabling them to
communicate by moving their fingers for the early part of the experiment.
Apart from that, they were totally incapable of performing any movement
for over two hours. They could not even open their eyes, even though they
were totally conscious. Throughout the experiment, they were kept alive
using a ventilator.

Presenting their findings at a meeting of the International Union of
Physiological Sciences in Glasgow earlier this month, Robert Banzett of
Harvard Graduate School of Public Health in the US said: ‘You might think
that this process would engender fear. Basically, you have just got to trust
the friends who are looking after you.’

Indeed.

* * *

A computer software company, which shall remain nameless to avoid giving
it the publicity it seeks, has just announced that one of its programs prevented
a ‘second Chernobyl disaster’. Headline news? Not if you read on.

An international team, looking at ways of conserving the Chernobyl nuclear
plant, was due to fly to the Ukraine to put its proposals to the government.
Five days before departure, the team’s computer crashed, losing data on
its hard disc. So the team bought one of the several software programs now
available for retrieving lost data from crashed discs, phoned the technical
support line, recovered the data and flew off to the Ukraine to make its
suggestions to the government.

And so, a ‘second Chernobyl disaster’ was averted. Aren’t we all lucky?

* * *

The National Westminster Bank admitted last month that it keeps personal
information about its customers – such as their political affiliation –
on computer. But now Computer Weekly reveals that a financial institution,
sadly unnamed, has gone one better and moved into the realm of personal
abuse.

The institution decided to mailshot 2000 of its richest customers, inviting
them to buy extra services. One of its computer programmers wrote a program
to search through its databases and select the customers automatically.
He tested the program with an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard.

Unfortunately an error resulted in all 2000 letters being addressed
‘Dear Rich Bastard’. The luckless programmer was subsequently sacked.

* * *

Amazing facts: The journal Green Energy Matters calculates that for
trees to offset the output of carbon dioxide from the 375 million cars in
use worldwide, an area the size of Argentina would have to be reforested.
Two acres of trees would need to be planted per car to negate its CO₂
emissions during its lifetime.

Closer to home, all of England (and a bit more) would have to be turned
over to trees to balance the output of the nation’s cars, leaving no room
for the Department of Transport’s new roads – which will cover an area the
size of Oxfordshire.

* * *

Australian men fart more than Australian women, and their farts smell
more. These are the findings of the largest ever study of flatus emissions
(farting), carried out by R. A. Stanton, a nutrition consultant from Sydney,
and T. D. Bolin of the Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, NSW.

Sixty men and sixty women took part in the study. Each was given a small
pocket ‘flatometer’ to record the number of emissions each day. The participants
also gave a subjective estimate of the aroma of the emission, rating it
on a 4-point scale from ‘odourless’ to ‘severe’ in order to arrive at an
‘aroma quotient’ for the day’s farts. A dietary diary was kept to reveal
the flatus potential of different foods.

At the end of the five-month study period, men reported an average
12.7 farts per day with a mean aroma quotient of 0.86. Women reported a
lower 7.1 farts per day, with a more discreet aroma quotient of 0.54.

The study revealed a high correlation of emissions with dietary fibre
intake, consistent with popular wisdom about baked beans. However, an expected
correlation between farts and beer remained unproven.

* * *

Finally, thanks for all your wonderfully entertaining entries to our
2020 Vision summer competition. Selecting the winners is going to be difficult,
but great fun. We look forward to publishing them on 18 September.