Black hole batteries, 2-at-a-time reading, Coffee with confusion, Edge on Edge, Names harvest

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them:

Tiny black hole batteries — … They handwave away the swath of problems reputed to afflict anyone who suggests even going near a black hole. Their black hole, they specify, will be a “tiny black hole”. This kind of confidence inspires venture capitalists, a variety of humans who are experiencing a golden age here in the early 2020s. Many are looking for new big opportunities to raise funds and invest portions thereof after extracting appropriate fractions therefrom. Black hole batteries could be their next big thing, following hard on the flighty footsteps of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, both of which flocks of investors have found to be as compellingly attractive as black holes.Two-story superpower — … “I could read them a bedtime story out loud while at the same time silently reading a novel to myself. I have no idea how my brain managed to separate out the two stories, but it certainly helped with the tedium of reading the same bedtime story yet again.”Coffee with confusion — Ambiguity has a field day in this medical journal headline: “Coffee and heart failure: A further potential beneficial effect of coffee“….Edge on edge — Sam Edge is vexed about a paper that featured in a previous Feedback column (4 November 2023) called “New insights on the genetics of hair whorls from twins and the southern hemisphere“. Sam finds it hair-raising that the paper drew any attention. He says: “The old chestnut about drain circulation rears its head again, I see….”Sheffield names harvest — Susan Frank doesn’t beat about the bush in conveying garden variety information. She writes: “I thought you’d like the names of two of our trustees associated with the Sheffield Botanical Gardens Trust, Barbara Plant and Christine Rose.” …