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Editor's Mailbag

You get some interesting things through the mail when you edit a science magazine. Among the standard press releases and conference announcements are some real gems.

The American Tarantula Society has been kind enough to send me a copy of their journal in which they'd reprinted Robert Jackson's piece [February] on the smart spiders he's been working with. The advice column opens up a whole new world -- how to prevent fatal blood loss when your Mexican redknee's leg falls off, when it's safe to cage your young pinktoes together, and other items that keep the conscientious tarantula-lover awake at night. It is delightful (and the classified ads have to be seen to be believed!)..

I've been drooling over the London Science Museum's gift catalogue, with its mix of the practical, the aesthetic and the sheer silly -- who could resist the home planetarium, the glass globes of the Galileo thermometer, or the Klingon alarm clock? And what real scientist could do without the test-tubes and chromium rack for holding herbs and spices?!.

An elderly reader has sent me a beautiful edition of Sir Robert Ball's Great Astronomers, awarded as the 1914 Viscount Portman Prize in Chemistry. He wanted the book to go to a good home. It's one of the few astronomy books I've seen which has an illustration of Caroline Herschel, as well as her better-recognised brother, and will be treasured..

I've got a sample copy of the new-look Skeptical Inquirer magazine, from the US. Their author lineup on the cover is pretty impressive: Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Francis Crick, Glenn Seaborg and Martin Gardner. If they could've channeled Richard Feynmann, it would've completed a science publisher's dream issue!.

Then there's the interesting package that arrived -- a rather elderly Pyrex cup. The owner originally wrote asking us to explain tonal changes which occur when he taps the side of the cup after microwaving his Milo. We attempted to replicate the result but couldn't do it with our range of crockery, and mentioned this problem. The cup arrived by return mail, and we've been experimenting with it since..

It's time to make some Milo (watch this space for forthcoming analysis!) and read the rest of the mail. Cheers..

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.