Feedback: Electrons are so good for your feet

Electrons are so good for your feet

AUSTIN THOMPSON is worried that his shoes are preventing him from absorbing electrons. The worry stems from reading about Pluggz "Get Grounded" Flip Flops at bit.ly/groundedshoes.

"People say they feel better when walking barefoot on grass or sand or earth," the promo says. "According to modern science that's because being barefoot enables the body to efficiently absorb earth's abundant electrons. The very same electrons that make us feel good." (Isn't it amazing what modern science tells us these days?)

"Traditional shoes interfere with this absorption," the blurb goes on. "Not pluggz. Every pair of pluggz has a black plug - the round circle towards the front of the shoe, beneath your metatarsal - that is particularly adept at allowing the free transfer of the electrons... giving your body what it needs to help heal itself, and stay balanced and happy."

Shoe science must have come on a bit since Feedback last bought a pair, but even so we can't help wondering about this. Surely everybody knows that shoes alone can't make you happy - you need a matching handbag for that.

On a field trip to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Patrick Kennedy was taken aback to find a menu offering "little squids with potatoes in their jackets"

Avoid sharp tuning

WHEN Julian Eley was sorting through his deceased father's belongings, he came across an eight-page set of instructions for the Baird Televisor home reception kit.

In these days of HDTV, he was intrigued to read: "Extreme selectivity is not necessary or desirable and any form of sharp tuning that tends to distort or reduce the upper frequencies of the signal should be avoided."

Anachronistic football fixture

BOB MALLICK was puzzled by a message apparently sent from the Barclays Premier (football) League, alerting him to a match due to be played nearly three years ago. More puzzling still, the timing of the match was itself the result of a 30-year postponement.

Headed "Fixture Change Notification", the message began "Hi Bob", then went on to say: "The date and/or time of each Barclays Premier League fixture below has been amended: Man Utd v Everton, Wembley - This fixture was originally scheduled to be played on 22 Nov 1977 at 00:00. Due to lightning it will now be played on 23 Nov 2009 at 07:00."

Bob thinks this message has to have been spam. If so, what was it trying to sell? What was the point of it? Sometimes electronic communications are just plain weird (see bit.ly/PLemail).

Protection from ice creams

THE weather was pleasant when Chris Goddard and his family visited the Center Parcs holiday centre in Elveden Forest, Suffolk, UK, so they purchased ice creams from the boathouse by the lake.

At the bottom of the lengthy receipt for this transaction, along with a sales tax number and the instruction to keep the receipt, was the advice: "A cycle helmet is recommended."

Chris wants to know if any readers are aware of circumstances in which consuming ice cream is rendered less hazardous by wearing a cycle helmet. For example, does eating ice cream make one susceptible to meteorite strikes? If not, what?

NASA mixes its metres again

OH DEAR. NASA is mixing up its measurements again. Paul Cornock alerts us to a video on the NASA website at bit.ly/NASAunits. Entitled Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror, the clip dramatically describes the entry, descent and landing (EDL) sequence of the Curiosity Mars rover.

When the video gets to the final stage of the EDL, a NASA engineer explains: "Twenty metres above the surface we have to lower the rover below us on a tether that's 21 feet long."

Is it redundant or is it art?

A COLOUR photograph sent in by Simon Smallwood features a wall in Witney, Oxfordshire, UK. Inlaid in the wall is what Simon rightly describes as a "beautifully carved sign" made of a material that appears to be stone.

The elegant lettering on the sign, which would have taken a mason several hours to create, reads: "THIS SIGN IS NOT IN USE. By order of the Magistrate. MCMXXXVII."

That's 1937 in today's numerals, so this sign in Witney has been proclaiming its redundancy for the past 75 years - unless, that is, it is a 21st-century work of "art".

Two-dimensional Gary Barlow

AN ANNOUNCEMENT on the cover of Hello! magazine on 5 June provided Alan Slater with food for thought. In what the magazine claimed was a "world first!", it promised: "See Gary in true 3D. Download the free Hello! 3D app."

The question that came into Alan's mind was: "If no one in the world has seen Take That's Gary Barlow in 3D until now, has he actually been two-dimensional? Is he an escaped flatlander, and if so, how did he gain an extra dimension?"

Worried vegetarian

FINALLY, "What are vegetarian meatballs made of? Vegetarians, of course!" This was the response of one reader to our brief note about "vegetarian meatballs in sauce" (18 August). The reader signs himself "Erik Foxcroft (a worried vegetarian)".

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