Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Public relations – the task of providing an acceptable gloss on the
indefensible – can have fewer greater challenges. We refer, of course, to
the now sadly tarnished image of that purveyor of motorways to the gentry,
the Highways Agency. On April Fools’ Day the agency took over from the Department
of Transport the heavy responsibility of covering the remnants of the
English countryside with concrete, tearing down the houses in the way of
the M11 and turning the M25 into a 12-lane hyperway.

Now the agency is advertising for a head of public relations, to manage
not only its fledgling press office but also its new external PR consultants.
Candidates will need to demonstrate ‘evidence of the qualities needed to
deal effectively with politically sensitive issues which can arise in the
management of the trunk road network’.

This bed of nails is currently on offer for a paltry £40 000
a year – scarcely more than the cost of 2000 square feet of glistening
black asphalt laid on the site of special scientific interest of your choice.

* * *

This week’s prize quote come from The Bulletin of the Atomic Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs:
‘In 1953 the (US) Defense Department officially adopted the Nuremberg Code
for protecting human subjects of scientific experiments – guidelines written
in response to Nazi atrocities committed in World War II. . . There was
only one hitch: the document was classified until 1975, meaning that researchers
never saw it.’

The bulletin says it found this information in The Washington Post earlier
this summer. The same source provided the news, passed on with glee by the
bulletin, that shops in the retail concourse within the Pentagon’s security
perimeter have an unusual problem: shoplifting rates are twice as high as
the national average.

* * *

On 28 May, this magazine related the sad tale of the great auk, the
penguin of the north, hunted from abundance to extinction by hungry seafarers
and, in its last days, scientists (‘How collectors killed the great auk’).
The last auks were caught in Iceland and their insides reside in alcohol
in Copenhagen. Their skins disappeared.

Icelanders eventually realised what they had lost. In 1971, word came
to Reykjavik that one of the few remaining stuffed auks – caught in 1820,
24 years before the species became extinct – was to be auctioned at Sotheby’s
in London. In the four days left before the sale, the people of Iceland
collected £10 000, and bought the bird. It may be seen at the Natural
History Museum in Reykjavik, where staff will tell you it is part of the
national heritage.

Quite so. After visiting the unfortunate auk, you may stroll across
town and dine on one of his close relatives, a razorbill or a puffin. These
are still fairly numerous for the time being, and are eaten with gusto and
fruit sauce in Iceland.

* * *

Voluntary Euthanasia on Video’ announced a press release from the Voluntary
Euthanasia Society earlier this summer. However, Feedback’s first thought
– that the video consisted of footage of people topping themselves in various
exemplary ways – proved to be unfounded. It is, in fact, an examination
of the issue of euthanasia from a variety of perspectives – medicine, law,
philosophy, ethics – and is presented by actor Tom Conti. You can get further
information by calling the society: 071-937 7770.

* * *

Here is one of those press releases you don’t know whether to believe
or not. It comes from an organisation called (this is what it says) Hikers
Against Doo-Doo (HADD).

‘The 1993 HADD Annual Directors meeting was held in our field office
near Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus region of Russia, where we met with
our staff leader, Olga Lukina, Alpinist guide, as well as HADD advisor Dr
Nickolay Volyynsky, surgeon,’ it tells us. ‘Additionally, a HADD group enjoyed
a successful ascent up Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe. . .
At our meeting we initiated plans to design an improved ‘outhouse’ at Priut
No. 11, the Mount Elbrus high camp at 13 800 feet, a facility which Outside
magazine called ‘the world’s nastiest outhouse’.’

The release goes on to explain that HADD was founded in 1990 by A. Bern
Hoff, parasitologist and environmentalist, after ‘the joy of hiking Mount
Kilimanjaro in Africa, Galdhopiggen in Norway, Heleakula in Hawaii and the
Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon was blunted by the presence of human
and domesticated animal faeces on or near the trail’.

A worthy cause, then, that all environmentalists and hikers will surely
support. But why on earth was the press release sent out a year after the
event?

* * *

A British TV station has been running a series of Room 101 interviews.
Prompted by George Orwell’s 1984, celebrities admit their own worst fears
and private dreams of hell.

At the height of the heatwave, railstrikes and traffic jams, Feedback
got a phone call which brought us face to face with our own Room 101. A
nice PR man from a car company was organising a press trip to show how
well the new GSM pan-European all-digital cellular telephone system works.
The party would fly to the heart of Italy and then drive in cars to Holland,
making phone calls all the way. We declined with thanks.

* * *

A new book from Souvenir Press argues that, as the title says, The Turin
Shroud is Genuine. The author, Rodney Hoare, apparently proves that the
stains on the shroud ‘could not have been faked’ and that carbon dating,
which ‘is not infallible’, gave too recent a date for the shroud.

Feedback is unable to comment on the plausibility or otherwise of these
arguments, but was struck by one of the claims on the dust jacket. The book,
it says, is ‘written with scientific objectivity from the unbiased standpoint
of a Protestant’.

* * *

A pleasant new trend is started in the July/August issue of What’s New
in Computing. The masthead listing the staff of the magazine begins as follows:
‘Editor, Peter Bresser; Assistant Editor, John Moxon (Just Married). . .’

We hope that other magazines (including this one?) will follow this
lead, and look forward to further information about their editors and staff,
such as ‘Just Pregnant’, ‘Just Drunk’ and ‘Just Fired’.

* * *

Finally, thank you for all your entries to the Feedback Summer Competition.
There has been a tremendous response, and judging the winners is not going
to be easy. We will publish the results on 17 September.