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64 | NewScientist | 30 April 2011 FEEDBACK STUCK for a subject to write a scientific paper on? Why not do something on how far grasshoppers can kick their poo? This is what Yosuke Tanaka and Eiiti Kasuya did. They published their study “Flying distance of frass kicked by the grasshopper Atractomorpha lata and factors affecting the flying distance” in the journal Entomological Science (vol 14, p 133). Frass, for anyone unfamiliar with the niceties of grasshopper life, is the powdery waste material passed by plant- eating insects. Here is a flavour, if you’ll pardon the choice of word, of this treatise from its abstract: “Adults of the grasshopper Atractomorpha lata use a hind leg kick to project their frass a considerable distance from themselves… Males and females kicked their frass an average of 252 and 487 millimetres away, respectively. This represented more than 10 times the body length or 100 times the length “iPod is disabled,” Fred Dickson’s told him. “Try again in 21,668,172 minutes.” Reckoning that’s over 40 years, Fred laments: “I’ll probably have bought a new one by then” of the frass pellet for either sex.” Unfortunately, now that this aspect of the grasshopper lifestyle has been so thoroughly investigated, putative authors searching for an original topic will just have to find something else. A REPORT in the Kids and Parenting section of the news portal MSNBC.com announces: “1 in 5 US moms have kids with multiple dads, study says.” The report by Linda Carroll goes on to state that “One in five of all American moms have kids who have different birth fathers, a new study shows. And when researchers look only at moms with two or more kids, that figure is even higher: 28 per cent have kids with at least two different men.” George Neil finds something deeply unsurprising about the fact that the figure is higher for women with two or more children. It is, after all, hard see how only- children are going to have more than one father. DRIVING through Derby in the English midlands, Perry Bebbington and his friend Dave noticed a van with “Report a repair” printed on the side, followed by a phone number. The idea of reporting a fault or a problem seemed reasonable enough, but why should anybody report a repair? However, a little web searching took them to derbyhomes.org, which also exhorts people to report repairs. Perry is looking forward to phoning in a report when his TV gets fixed. BRITS call it the greengrocer’s apostrophe – an apostrophe wrongly inserted in a plural noun, as in “Apple’s £1.00 per kilo”. Caroline Cooper has spotted a novel variant. She sends us a photo of a notice behind an apartment building near her home that employs what she has dubbed the janitor’s apostrophe. The message on it reads: “Please! Do Not Leave Rubbish Here Before Tue’s Night. Thank You.” THE Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera recently carried the headline which translated reads: “Paedophilia: 10 arrests in 14 countries”. Alberto Cammozzo praises what he calls a “quantum crackdown” on suspects whose waveforms had not yet collapsed to the normal corporeal form. He applauds Europol’s “singular capabilities” in managing such a feat. IVORY, maker of software piano simulations, credits Peter Lemer with the ability to look inside the sealed envelope that he hopes contains the upgrade discs he has ordered. “Do not open until you have read and understood the enclosed end user license agreement,” it tells him. PRESENTING its “List of High Vibrational Foods”, livestrong.com aims high by invoking the theories of the 20th-century’s greatest physicist: “What Albert Einstein came up with in his famous physics equation E = mc 2 is that all matter contains vibration waves of light energy. This includes our bodies and the food we eat. As we become more aware of the life force in our bodies… we can also look at the life force of what nourishes us. By eating food that vibrates at a higher frequency, we heighten our life-force energy and feel more radiant and alive.” Rob Watkins wonders if Einstein’s equation, in the wrong hands, is becoming another indicator of fruitloopery. We are not sure: we’ll have to wait and see. What is certain is that the word “vibrational” is a sure- fire indicator, especially when it concerns food that “vibrates at a higher frequency”. FINALLY, according to the advert Peter Bennett copies to us, the new Seat Alhambra family car comes “packed with… cool features”. These include “a Park Assist feature that enables the Alhambra to park itself – just like magic”. The phrase “park itself”, however, comes with an asterisk – and a footnote below explains: “Requires driver control.” Not really like magic at all, then. You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback PAUL MCDEVITT
