64 | NewScientist | 20 October 2012

FEEDBACK

DID you know that the United Nations has a “destructive and insidious” plan to “ultimately destroy the sovereignty of the United States of America”? So says the Board of Chosen Freeholders, legislators of Ocean County, New Jersey, in a resolution passed last February. This resolution, like others being promoted by right-wing US groups like the Tea Party and the John Birch Society, forbids engagement with the UN’s 20-year-old voluntary initiative, Agenda 21.

This is the same policy that many environmentalists regard as wishy-washy – encouraging local authorities to think they can fob off the threat of ecosystem destruction merely by tackling the twin menaces of plastic shopping bags and kids dropping chewing-gum wrappers.

Those environmentalists, who see Agenda 21 as more damp squib than plan for world domination, are probably crypto-communists in the eyes of Alex Newman, who lauded the Ocean County move in The New American, magazine of the John Birch Society.

When Gerben Wierda in the Netherlands clicked “help” on the PayPal website it apologised: “Help information isn’t available in English yet.” This was mildly helpful, and in English…

Why is Agenda 21 so bad? Newman’s objection centres on the words of Maurice Strong at the 1992 launch of the initiative in Rio de Janeiro. The then secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development said: “Consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and workplace air conditioning and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”

Newman was still at it last month, and the crux of the matter is expressed in another resolution that he quotes approvingly, this time passed by the city council of College Station, Texas. It complains that the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, which promotes Agenda-21, is “an insidious, extreme institution that does not represent our citizens”.

Feedback agrees. At least, we agree that views such as Strong’s may not be precisely democratic, as they do not represent the views of those citizens who believe that air-conditioned, drive-in burger joints

ought and indeed must be sustained. Meanwhile, Feedback is feeling a

bit heavy today. Would the Chosen Freeholders of Ocean County be the appropriate body to reconsider gravity, we wonder?

TALKING of official oddity, who in Bermuda’s Department of Airport Operations commissioned the sign in the picture sent us by Andrew Doble? It instructs: “No signs allowed.” Congratulations, whoever you are, you’ve made it into Feedback.

SEVERAL readers point out that the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency was not so daft in asking people to state any changes in the country they were born in (22 September). International boundaries are continually shifting, they point out. What if you were born in Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia?

Ian Harragan notes that a changed date of birth is also possible, for centenarians born in countries that hung on to the Julian calendar and only adopted the Gregorian one in the 20th century. The website at bit.ly/JultoGreg shows that this could apply to people born in China, Greece and Russia, among others.

NORMALLY, the Microsoft Outlook 2003 program on David Young’s computer groups emails by when they were sent, as in “Today”, “Yesterday” and so on. But an email sent around midnight was shown, just after, as having been sent “Tomorrow”.

David is still trying to work out the temporal implications.

LOCAL UK paper The Canterbury Times, Julio Hernandez-Castro informs us, recently reported that “Students can win their university fees paid for a year if they buy three Pyrex products from Dunelm Mill… The competition closes on October 12 and the winner will be announced by October 10.” Could they be using

David Young’s email system? Or is this an example of the problems you get when you try to group students and cookware in the same sentence?

FLYING to Rome, Stephen Scott was supplied by British Airways with a “Coronation chicken sub roll”. The long list of ingredients seemed at first to be mostly natural vegetable thingies. Stephen was confused, though, by this: “Chicken (25 per cent) (Chicken (99 per cent), salt).

The nested parentheses are a clue, Stephen. Colleagues who have written computer programs smell a special style of thinking, which defines “chicken” as a filling function with its own ingredients, including another local “chicken” function. Or do

we have here a recursive ingredient list, like Harry Gibson’s “Beef Stock” made with beef stock (6 November 2010)?

FINALLY, “This is an enviro septic which recycles water into the garden,” says a notice that Matthew Wilcox saw in a guest house in Catherine Bay, New South Wales, Australia. “The system clogs very easily,” it went on. “Please do not place any matter other than toilet paper into the toilet.” Doesn’t that rather take away the point?

You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback

PAu

l M

CDEv

iTT

121020_Op_Feedback.indd 64 12/10/12 13:33:38