Letter: Corneting the market
Will Amazonian ‘rainforest capitalism’ result in ethnocide? asks Fred
Pearce in ‘Brazil, where the ice cream comes from’, (7 July). It depends
on the configuration of regional historical and political economic forces.
History tells us that Amazonia is already more thoroughgoingly capitalist
than many would like to believe. And until fossil fuels begin to run out
and internal contradictions reach their global limits, large-scale industrial
capitalism is probably here to stay. Therefore, both historical reality
and realpolitik suggest that we act quickly by establishing as many large
and small reserves as possible so as to make the best of a momentary historical
conjuncture.
Nevertheless, the Acre model of extractive reserves – saving the rainforests
and marketing their fruits – ought not to be adopted uncritically for application
throughout Amazonia or other tropical forest areas. Though it has come to
symbolise the major development dilemmas of Amazonia, modern Acre is no
more typical of the Amazon basin than is any other sub-region.
In the adjacent southeastern Peruvian rainforest department of Madre
de Dios, for example, agrarian reforms of the early 1970s left no similar
residual shell of large-holding tenancy around which extractive reserves
can crystallise. Instead, the state lets out five-year concessions to collecting
families. Despite their proximity, brazil nut collectors (and rubber tappers)
of Madre de Dios and Acre have a substantially different: 1) social and
geographic origin; 2) degree of dependence on brazil nuts/rubber for household
income; 3) relationship to the state; and 4) relationship to large capital
and migrants.
Let’s get on with the job of adapting a good model to the complexity
of Amazonian societies and environments.
Thomas Love
Lindfield College
McMinnville, Oregon
Letter: Posts, not spaces
Life, the Universe and (Almost) Everything clearly does not include
a basic education in elementary mathematics or even the ability to count
(30 June). It would require 41 (not 40) origami tree-frogs to make up the
numbers from 40 to 80.
CB Elkington
Wokingham, Berks
Letter: Naked truth
Mike Baxter in his article ‘Flesh and blood’ (15 May) acknowledges that
most studies ‘have failed to find anything harmful in the way that soft-core
pornography affects men’s attitudes towards women’, but then cites in lengthy
detail a much criticised experiment that contradicts virtually all other
research. The juxtaposition clearly evidences the author’s own bias.
A collection of available research can be found in the definitive book,
The Question of Pornography: Research Findings and Policy Implications,
by Edward Donnerstein, Daniel Linz and Steven Penrod (The Free Press, a
Division of Collier Macmillan Publishers, London, 1987). Results of contemporary
research on the subject can also be found in the report, The Impact of Pornography:
An Analysis of Research and Summary of Findings, published by the Department
of Justice of Canada. The report concludes that there is no systematic research
which suggests a causal relationship between pornography and morality or
‘that increases in specific forms of deviant behaviour, reflected in crime
trend statistics (for example, rape) are causally related to pornography’.
Baxter writes of ‘a worrying trend’ in the increased use of violent
imagery in pornography and cites a purported study regarding the images
in Playboy. The impression in the article regarding Playboy is demonstrably
false.
The definitive study by Joseph Scott of Ohio State University, concludes:
‘(A) thirty-year analysis of sexually violent depictions in Playboy magazine
did not support the oft heard contention that sexually violent depictions
are on the increase. At least in the oldest continuously published adult
magazine in the US, the number of sexually violent depictions has always
been extremely small and the number of such depictions has been on the decrease
in recent years . . . The raters found sexually violent pictorials on one
page per 3000 pages of the magazine or in less than four of every 1000 pictorials
(and) it would be hard to argue that such depictions might be somehow related
to the increase in rape rates . . . Moreover, and perhaps most relevant,
is the observation that the overall amount of sexual violence has not been
on the increase recently, but rather on the decline.’
In purporting to approve the quote by the group headed by M. P. Dawn
Primarolo in the final paragraphs of the article, Baxter suggests the evidence
is sufficient to justify censorship. What evidence? The Presidential Commission
on Pornography and Obscenity, the most exhaustive study ever undertaken
on the question, concluded: ‘In sum, empirical research designed to clarify
the question has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual
materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal
behaviour among youth or adults. The commission cannot conclude that exposure
to erotic materials is a factor in the causation of sex crime or sex delinquency.’
As the overwhelming body of scientific research reveals, if violent
pornography is harmful, then the source can be found in the violent aspect
and not the sexual.
More than 100 million hard-core sexual video tapes were rented in the
US last year (about 50 per cent by women and couples) and that doesn’t count
other video tapes that were purchased. Statistics show an average of four
people view each rental tape. If there was any merit in the conclusions
in ‘Flesh and blood’ the statistics would show marked increase in sexual
violence consistent with the increasing consumption. No such correlation
– let alone cause and effect – has ever been shown.
Violence, child abuse and sexual assault have been with us long prior
to the availability of explicit sexual imagery. The research in Denmark,
Sweden and Japan, where such material has long been available, and where
sexual assault is statistically low, is in marked contrast to other countries
without such images where violence against women and children is commonplace.
To state the obvious, there are no sexual images in Saudi Arabia, South
Africa, Iran and other totalitarian countries. Of course, there is little
freedom there either.
Those who call for censorship, if successful, will end up with a society
with diminished freedom, without a concomitant measure of safety.
Burton Joseph
Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Letter: Falsifiability
Long in age (I am over 65), and short in education (prewar secondary),
I pose a question evoked by the correspondence on the application of Popper’s
criterion of falsifiability to Marxism and Darwinism (Letters, 30 June;
28 July): Does Popper’s principle pass the test of falsifiability? If it
can be falsified, what are the implications in the field of knowledge?
E. Paull
London SW16
Letter: Freebie Frisbees
Besides polycarbonates (‘Flight of the Frisbee’, 28 July), there’s another
product of the chemical industry which contributes to Aerobie-like performance:
the humble gasket.
As a vacation-job shiftworker in a chemical plant in the early 1970s,
trudging a tank farm with clipboard and pencil (a task hopefully now assumed
by a nanosecond’s attention from a microprocessor), I relieved the tedium
by collecting discarded pipeline gaskets. The larger ones flew fairly straight
courses of at least a hundred yards, landing with a satisfying splash in
a nearby settlement lagoon.
As with the structure of the Aerobie, I observed that those with stubbed
and splayed edges were more likely to reach the target than undamaged ones.
In all cases, the otherwise flat cross-section generated little lift.
I leave as an exercise for others proof of the proposition that the
bolt perforations somehow assist stable flight.
Ed Matthews
Kingston, Surrey
Letter: Ring vortex
During the last week of July we watched an air-display, above RAF Brawdy,
from our home in north Pembrokeshire. In the early afternoon of a sunny,
warm and windy day an aircraft dived vertically from high altitude, rolling
on its own axis so that the wing-tip smoke-canisters generated a twisted
rope of smoke descending like Jack’s beanstalk from the sky. Sadly for the
spectators, the wind was too strong and much of the rope was blown-away
before the manoeuvre ended some 100 metres above the ground.
Our attention wandered, but after a few seconds we noticed that a smoke-ring
had detached itself from the main column at about 100-200 metres altitude.
This seemed unsurprising, but when the ring remained visible for another
half-minute, despite the gusting wind, casual interest turned to puzzlement.
By this time the smoke column had dispersed but the slender smoke-ring
remained, having wriggled itself quite actively into a twisted shape. The
ring was very pronounced and its last traces did not disappear until well
over a minute after the aircraft had pulled out of its dive. It was difficult
to judge the size precisely, but the diameter of the ring must have been
some 10 to 20 metres and the annulus cross-section less than one metre.
The wind speed was between 40 and 50 kilometres per hour with considerable
gusting: sufficient to sweep away most of the smoke-trail displays well
before each fly-over was completed.
Except for standing waves, gaseous structures usually have very poor
coherence, especially when buffeted by turbulent currents. Do any of your
aerodynamicist readers have an explanation for this long-lived, wriggling
and wind-firm ring? And as I do not frequent air-displays, I wonder: has
anyone seen this sort of thing before? Is the phenomenon more common in
calm conditions? Could the ring vortex be maintained by ‘windmilling’?
John Etherington
University of Wales, Cardiff
Letter: Belly laugh
In reply to AJ Baczkowski (Letters, 4 August) on the emphatically ennavelled
Adam and Eve who adorned the cover of your issue of 21 July, may I submit
the following thought:
Here’s a problem twice compounded: Was Adam’s abdomen nicely rounded?
Or cicatrix-pitted more or less With scar of an umbilicus?
If in God’s image, then Adam’s smooth stomach Harboured no hollow, hatchway,
or hummock, But if only in Man’s, then grotesque and gross Mayhap was Adam’s
omphalos.
And what of Eve? Do ribs imply A navel or no, and in either case why?
Artists cunningly hid their guess With aptly flowing auburn tress.
Unhap’ly, with Adam dilemma remained, And stark and grim and puzzled
and pained They struggled to solve theology’s riddle Posed in Eden’s leafy
idyll.
Riddle there is, but answer I’ve none. Just as well my song is done.
Whate’er we think on whether they had ’em, Lie cryptic the craw of Eve and
Adam.
Ralph Estling
Ilminster, Somerset
Letter: Bird strike
The efforts of Pratt and Whitney and other turbine producers to enhance
air safety through improving bird impact resistance of their products is
without doubt beneficial to the flying public. However contrary to your
article ‘When bird meets aircraft, a computer simulation can help’ (Technology,
4 August), gulls are not used in air cannon testing of turbines but chickens.
These fowl can be produced in the standard sizes that are required for testing,
unlike gulls which come in the weights that nature and the season dictates.
The chicken, although it lacks a hard beak, has loose soft feathering
and a rigid flyable skeleton, and is often stored in a freezer before tests
produce a fair approximation of the damage to jet engines caused by wild
birds.
The blood and guts of this type of testing prompted the move to gelatin
balls which are more pleasant to clean up after a test. They also make an
accurate representation of what happened when a test chicken hit a turbine.
Now, any engineer or scientist must question the value of a computer simulation
which is verified against data that are already twice removed from the real
world.
May I suggest that what is required to verify this computer simulation
is more stringent bird- strike reporting from aircraft operators under regulations
set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. If the precise components
of the airframe impacted with or without damage were known, then the simulation
could be better tested for accuracy to the real world. Current ICAO reporting
requirements only ask for a broad description of the impact point, wing,
engine, flap etc. Many aircraft operators do not realise that tiny fragments
of feathers can be collected following a bird strike to identify the bird
species involved and thus the mass of the bird which impacted the airframe.
Testing all bird strike remains and reporting accurately every bird strike
is required.
The number of bird strikes world wide to civil and military aircraft
each year represents the largest and most expensive destructive testing
programme in aviation, data from which are currently only partially exploited.
T. Adam Kelly
Barton Seagrave
Kettering, Northants