Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
To boldly cook
Various Trekkies in the New Scientist office have pointed out to Feedback that this year is the 60th anniversary of the venerable sci-fi franchiseStar Trek (TV columnist Bethan Ackerley even wrote a whole article about it). Naturally, its corporate owners have marked the occasion by cancelling all the television shows still in production. A movie is currently in development, but since that has been continuously true ever since the last cinematic release in, er, 2016, it seems best not to hold one’s breath.
In the absence of, say, a special episode where the characters in a current show are inserted Forrest Gump-style into an episode of the original programme, fans must make do with what they have, and what they have is apparently an expensive range of* Star Trek*-branded cookware, one item of which was briefly sent into space.
Advertisement
For some reason, Star Trek has partnered with Le Creuset, makers of distinctively orange cookware. One can now buy a selection of cooking items, including various casserole dishes emblazoned with trekanalia, a mug with a handle shaped like one of Spock’s pointed ears, and a spoon rest in the form of a Vulcan salute. A small prize, also, to whoever came up with the idea of the communi-grater.
To draw attention to this new range, Le Creuset hired a company called Sent Into Space, which describe themselves as “the industry leaders in filming products, items, and bespoke activations in space”. Sent Into Space used a balloon to take a Star Trek casserole dish to an altitude of 35 kilometres, which isn’t a sentence Feedback ever expected to write. One can, if one so chooses, watch this event on the Le Creuset YouTube channel, which is a thing that exists.
Chief subeditor Kelsey Hayes learned of this after being sent a promotional email about it. She notes that 35 km is “well below the Kármán line”, which is one standard definition for the edge of space and is somewhat arbitrarily set at 100 km altitude. So, it’s a matter of debate whether the cookpot went to space or just really high.
Feedback will say this: we prefer this stunt to that time Elon Musk sent a Tesla Roadster into space. That car is now orbiting the sun and will litter the solar system forever. In contrast, the Le Creuset cocotte was parachuted back to Earth.
Happily, the landing took place in an isolated field. As Kelsey says: “Imagine getting beaned by a Le Creuset Dutch oven dropped from 110,000 feet.”
Hey good-looking
Feedback is always keen on a new scientific acronym, and this one is new to us: self-assessed physical attractiveness (SAPA). As the name suggests, it refers to a person’s opinion of their own hotness. And according to a recent study, a person’s SAPA can be linked to a host of other traits.
In the journal Evolutionary Psychology, two researchers report asking hundreds of volunteers to rate their own attractiveness and then answer questions to see what correlated with SAPA. “Participants rated their attractiveness on a 0–100 scale,” which Feedback finds immediately baffling because how do you choose between, say, 76 and 77? Surely 1 to 10 would do.
This one was sent our way by assistant news editor Alexandra Thompson, who flagged a key line in the abstract – “higher self-rated attractiveness was associated with being male” – and simply said “LOL”. We must tell you that higher SAPA was also associated with holding a university degree, greater optimism, being more religious, having a liberal political orientation and being able to tolerate ambiguity. In contrast, “cognitive ability showed a small negative association with SAPA”.
It seems to follow that the people with the highest opinion of their own attractiveness are men who have university degrees despite lacking cognitive ability. Upon having this realisation, Feedback had a flashback to our days as an undergraduate, and we can see the truth in it.
The researchers also did personality tests, but since they used the DISC test invented by the creator of Wonder Woman, which is decidedly non-evidence-based, we won’t bother about the results.
The point of all this is to try to understand the dynamics of our society. The authors write: “There is a vast literature on the beauty premium, which suggests that, in males, and possibly more in females, physical attractiveness is a considerable asset in all competitive situations such as mate selection.”
Feedback cannot quite get over how many people think of dating as inherently competitive. Our experience is that the main obstacle to securing a healthy adult relationship isn’t competitors who are more attractive, but rather one’s own devastating personality flaws.
Maybe that’s because Feedback is so ridiculously good-looking.
Monks gone wild
Our mission to explore the world of unfortunate tech-induced abbreviations and truncations is ongoing. Duncan King tells us that, in the 1970s, his job included teaching students how to use the Science Citation Index, an index of thousands of leading journals.
Duncan explains that the index used a KeyWord In Context system. However, on occasion this led to peculiar side effects. Notably, an entry that was supposed to read as “Atherosclerotic tendencies in monks” would be split by the format, appearing instead as “ATHEROSCL EROTIC TENDENCIES IN MONKS”.
Got a story for Feedback?
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.