Shame - but maybe some are just looking, still.

Meanwhile, a selection of gems from this week's Feedback column:

Reader Keith Huggett was prompted by our piece on aptronyms (12 January) to tell us that many years ago, at the Mitcham Grammar School for Boys in south London, there were four pupils in one year named Huggett, Brushett, Pettit and Boylett. Huggett is unwilling to discuss the direction his own life subsequently took, but says he often wonders how Brushett, Pettit and Boylett got on.


Health food is more wonderful than you thought. Duncan Cameron was reading Healthy, published by purveyors of health food Holland & Barrett. "Consuming large quantities of Vitamin C," he read, "may halve your risk of death." And it's not just H&B that says so: "According to research published in the Lancet," Healthy tells us, "increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables by 50 grams a day may cut your risk of death by 20 per cent." Feedback is going straight out to the street market to get a kilo of luvverly fresh, 100 per cent organic carrots, and munch the lot on the bus home. This, by the logic being deployed by Healthy, should result in our risk of death changing to minus 400 per cent. So expect 4 separate columns next week, and forever...


Finally, reader Tom Jeffs spotted an intriguing sign on a van in the west of England recently. Belonging to Bartens Goods Delivery, the van sported the company motto on its side: "We move stationary fast."

There is more Feedback on our website: http://newscientist.com

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