Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

As readers will have noticed, Feedback shamelessly raids other scientific
journals for stories we feel deserve wider dissemination and that we’re
too lazy to research ourselves. An unexpectedly good source is The Bulletin
of the Atomic Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs, with its lively ‘In brief’ section. The current
issue has two items we thought you would like to know about.

One concerns the defence ministry in Bulgaria, which has been researching
antidotes to radiation exposure in the wake of the Chernobyl accident. Its
main finding to date is that a brand of beer called Lulin Special Light
Lager helps rid the body of strontium. Feedback would be most interested
to know exactly how this discovery was made – and how it was tested.

* * *

The other story concerns an example of Catch-22 that Joseph Heller
would have been proud to have dreamed up. According to the bulletin, the
US State Department maintains a list of overseas businesses that it believes
foreign powers use to procure items for their nuclear weapons. Any US company
found selling anything to a firm on the list can be prosecuted. But if an
exporter wants to check out a potential customer, it won’t do any good asking
the State Department. The list is classified.

* * *

Isn’t this carrying worthiness a bit far – to the point of redundancy,
in fact? Feedback recently received a communication about some medical research.
On the envelope were the words: ‘St George’s. A no-smoking hospital’.

We found this information unsurprising. How many hospitals are smoking
hospitals? We shall sit up and take notice when we receive a letter bearing
the words: ‘St John’s. The hospital that likes you to enjoy your cigarette’.
This would surely indicate a hospital with the kind of entrepreneurial flair
the new National Health Service requires – the kind that works to widen
its client base for the future.

* * *

Would you like a bit of the Skylab space station to put on your mantelpiece?
If so, all that you have to do is ring up Mark Grewar at his sheep farm
on the Nullarbor Plain in Australia (+61 90 71 5515).

When the 77.5-tonne Skylab fell out of the sky in July 1979, its 2-metre-long
titanium oxygen tank landed on Grewar’s farm. But it was not until last
year that it was spotted, by his father. Grewar tried to place an advertisement
to sell the tank in the New York Times, but the newspaper apparently thought
he was a crank and hung up on him. Even NASA, which made Skylab, showed
no interest in retrieving its property. So Grewar is looking for buyers
through the classified section of the Sydney Morning Herald.

‘There’s no rust or wear,’ Grewar assures us. ‘It looks quite nice.’
To which Feedback adds: ‘One owner, rather high mileage.’

* * *

Western construction firms still have a lot to learn about encouraging
favourable copy from visiting journalists. How many building corporations
do you know with a first class ice-cream parlour in their basement, for
the enjoyment of staff and guests alike?

At Kajima, one of Japan’s leading construction companies, it really
seemed quite churlish to settle for coffee at the start of an interview,
especially when the three interviewees were going for the ‘chocolate milk
lush deluxe’. Not surprisingly it didn’t take much to persuade New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s
reporter to change his mind, and he wasn’t at all disappointed.

Four tall glasses arrived for the assembled group, filled to overflowing
with an exotic concoction that lived up to every expectation – a cross between
a glorious milk shake and an extravagant ice-cream soda, decorated with
cocktail umbrellas and slices of citrus fruit. It was the sort of situation,
says our man, where you could hardly bear to go on talking, although you
knew you had to.

Gradually, the inevitable happened. Tight, incisive questioning began
to be punctuated by slurps through straws as, one by one, everyone started
to tuck into their refreshment.

The interview didn’t turn out too well – but then our reporter was more
than happy to go along for a second time and do it all again . . .

* * *

One of the easier ways of filling a hole in a long-established periodical
is to publish a historical snippet from the magazine’s archives. Of course,
one of the problems with this practice is that you can end up simply repeating
ancient errors.

And so it came to pass that The Engineer decided last month to repeat
its scoop from 1928: ‘A television experiment recently carried out by Mr
T. L. Baird, between this country and America, is said to have proved successful.’

Still, at least the magazine won’t have to face the embarrassment of
an irksome letter from Baird pointing out that his first name is John, which
doesn’t begin with a T. He died in 1946.

* * *

Here’s a campaigning organisation that Feedback is half-minded to join.
The International Slow Food Movement was formed in 1989 by Carlo Petrini
of Bra (sic) in Piedmont, Italy, as a response to the proposed opening of
a McDonald’s at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in Rome. (How could they?)

Members of the SFM aim to fight the growing world dominance of fast
food. They are not against people ‘grabbing a quick bite’, they say. ‘But
we are deeply concerned that throughout the world, rich and varied national
and regional cuisines are under threat.’

To defend us from ‘the universal madness of the ‘fast life’ ‘, the SFM
proposes to provide ‘a generous dose of guaranteed sensual pleasure to be
experienced with slow and prolonged enjoyment’.

This is exactly the kind of thing Feedback feels when consuming a plate
of sausage, egg, bacon and chips (with brown sauce); so we are happy to
pass on the phone number of the proposed British chapter of the SFM. The
number, which belongs to Morwenna Given, is 0252 843265.

* * *

Finally, thanks to the readers who wrote in to explain why the title
of Charles Handy’s book The Empty Raincoat was considered pornographic in
the US and changed by his publishers to The Age of Paradox, as we reported
on 9 April. A raincoat, they tell us, is a slang term in the US for a condom.
So now you know.