Letters: Fungal faux pas
On reading of the unfortunate error (Feedback, 16 January) made by the
German engineers of Stereo magazine, my wife was reminded of a similar faux
pas made by a sports shoe shop in France. Hopefully, the joggers in Strasbourg
don’t get something for which they have not bargained when they buy their
trainers at ‘Athlete’s Foot’.
Robin Das Mohlin, Switzerland
Letters: Teaspoon trick
After a recent family celebration we were left with an open bottle of
champagne three-quarters full. Following the advice of an ‘old wives’ tale’,
I put a teaspoon into the neck of the bottle – which then was put into the
fridge.
The next day, when tasted, the champagne had hardly lost any of its
‘fizz’, although on the day after, when we finished the bottle, it was a
little flatter.
Could the teaspoon, an ordinary stainless-steel one, really stop the
champagne from going flat? Or was the fact that the champagne was refrigerated
the reason?
Grace Swart Runcorn, Cheshire
Letters: Scottish first
In his article on Albert Einstein (2 January), John Gribbin identifies
Karl Gauss as the discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry. In fact, the Scottish
philosopher Thomas Reid, who was widely read in Germany in the late 18th
century, has a very good claim to have discovered and described the essential
features of a non-Euclidean geometry in 1764 – 13 years before Gauss was
born – in a book called Inquiry into the Human Mind (see chapter 6, section
9, ‘Of the geometry of visibles’). The case for Reid is put by Norman Daniels
in his book Thomas Reid’s Inquiry (Burt Franklin, 1974) and is approved
by Keith Lehrer in his book Thomas Reid (Routledge, 1989).
Galen Strawson Jesus College, Oxford
Letters: Primo Levi
Commissioned in 1989 by Hutchinson to write a biography of Primo Levi,
I have now returned from six months in Italy conducting initial research.
While there is no authorised biography of Primo Levi, I do have co-operation
from members of his family. If any of your readers knew Primo Levi, I would
be very grateful to hear from them. I am especially interested to see any
correspondence, manuscripts, or other documents relating to Levi’s life,
work and character. The greatest care will be taken of any such material.
Ian Thomson 21 Gloucester Street London SW1V 2DB
Letters: Sensual pleasures
You report that Antonio Ruberti wants a return to the concept of itinerant
students called goliards (This Week, 16 January). The Random House Encyclopaedia
defines these as ‘a class of wandering scholar-poets in Germany, France
and England, chiefly in the 12th and 13th centuries, noted as the authors
of satirical Latin verse written in celebration of conviviality, sensual
pleasures, etc.’ Is this really what the first European Commissioner for
Research who has done research intends?
Christopher Perraton Melksham, Wiltshire
Letters: Wisdom and erection
We note with interest from Pat Shipman’s article ‘On the origin of races’
(16 January) that a small band of researchers wishes to re-classify Homo
sapiens to include Homo erectus. Fellows of this institute feel that the
re-classification would be more accurately descriptive if Homo erectus
included Homo sapiens, rather than the other way round, as Homo sapiens
is still in an almost continuous state of erection, and sapiens has proved
totally misleading.
Furthermore, we feel that some thought should be given to changing Homo
into something less blatantly sex discriminating.
Thylbert Vischer Institute of Bizarre Studies Malaga, Spain
Letters: Maddened mandarin
I was relaxing over Christmas with the festive edition of New 杏吧原创
when I suffered a severe bout of indigestion on reading that in 1985 European
Community mandarins criticised the quality of British chocolate and said
it should be called ‘vegelate’.
1985 was the year in which the Commission issued a Communication on
Food Law which said: ‘It is neither possible nor desirable to confine in
a legislative straitjacket the culinary riches of 12 European countries,’
and ‘henceforth Community legislation on foodstuffs should be limited to
provisions justified by the need to: protect public health; provide consumers
with information and protection in matters other than health and ensure
fair trading; provide for the necessary public controls.’
As the ‘mandarin’ responsible for the drafting of this communication
and for defending the position of free, informed consumer choice for many
years against protectionist interests, I really wonder where the author
got her information from.
In fact, the phrase ‘vegelate’ was coined by a French MEP, Mr Nordmann,
when he was opposing the Commission’s proposal to enlarge the chocolate
directive to allow chocolate containing vegetable fat (British style) to
be made throughout Europe. In the end, the Commissioner at that time, Lord
Cockfield, decided to withdraw this proposal and to let the law repose on
various European Community court judgements which were made or were pending.
The result is that any food has the right to be sold under the name
by which it is called in the member state of origin or the name given to
it in the member state in which it is sold as long as this does not mislead
the consumer.
Paul Gray Commission of the European Communities Brussels
Letters: Doll demurs
It would be unfair to the Health and Safety Commission, the asbestos
company whose employees’ health my colleagues and I have been keeping under
review since 1954, and the employees themselves to allow a statement of
Alan Dalton (Letters, 16 January) to stand uncorrected: ‘In 1982, following
the (TV) film Alice – a fight for life, which revealed the real hazards
of asbestos, the workers at the factory invited him (that is, me) to meet
them in person. A few words from them revealed that the company’s application
of the 1931 regulations had not been effective in protecting them’.
The inadequacy of the 1931 regulations had, in fact, long been known.
My colleagues and I had reported in 1977 that: a hazard of lung cancer had
persisted in men first employed since these regulations had been put into
effect; the company had further reduced exposure substantially in the 1950s;
and stricter levels for permissible exposure had been introduced and applied.
The meeting that I attended in 1982 was arranged primarily at the employees’
request because of their concern about the distortion of the facts presented
in the TV film and nothing that was said at the meeting revealed any new
evidence beyond that which the company had already provided.
Richard Doll Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.
Letters: London's drowning
I read with interest the news item ‘London deserted because of recession’
(This Week, 19/26 December). It reports on evidence that London was largely
deserted by AD 150. Peter Marsden surmises that the reason for this depopulation
must have been an economic recession, but other possibilities exist.
Tooley (1978), in a review of sea level rise records from England and
The Netherlands, showed evidence for a strongly increased rate of sea level
rise from around AD 200, with, for example, a drowning of the Fenlands.
A high stand of sea level during this period was also indicated by Bloch
(1970), based on the high price of salt during the period (flooding of coastal
plains destroyed the salt pans). He quotes evidence that the harbours of
Rome and Ravenna were moved inland because of the rising seas.
So perhaps the people left Londinium because their basements became
flooded and they had to rebuild the harbour area because of the rising tides.
Especially telling is the quote: ‘The wharf quickly started to rot and by
the end of the third century it had silted up.’ Rather typical features
of a town losing the battle against the salty water.
Why did the Londiniumers build the large Roman wall: to protect themselves
from the riffraff or to keep the rising waters at bay?
Johan Varekamp Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut, US
Letters: Forgotten illness
In ‘Keeping an eye out for Sonic the Hedgehog’ (This Week, 16 January),
Charles Arthur discussed the latest problem associated with playing computer
games, namely that of epileptic seizures in photosensitive children.
I am writing to you from the David Lewis School in Cheshire. We are
part of the David Lewis Centre for the care and understanding of epilepsy.
Although some one in two hundred people have epilepsy, a prevalence
rate equalling that of diabetes, it is still the forgotten illness. People
with severe epilepsy and their carers still often have to fight for the
support which is available for them at such specialist centres as David
Lewis. Many individual’s stories are heart-rending.
Jacqueline Schofield-King The David Lewis Centre Alderley Edge, Cheshire
Letters: Plenty of oil
The article speculating on the use of coal as a substitute chemical
feed stock (‘Rich seams for chemicals’, 23 January) was correct in pointing
out that at present the world has reserves of oil equivalent to 40 (actually
44) years worth of production.
What the authors neglected to mention – and this is a sad fact for Australia
as the world’s largest exporter of coal – is that in 1965 the estimate was
35 years. The extra nine years added since are largely the result of the
puzzling fact that the annual growth in proven reserves, worldwide, almost
always exceeds production.
Further, should the figure ever start declining, the resulting price
increase should make it worthwhile for oil producers to extract more oil
from old fields (only a fraction of the oil in each field is extracted at
present) and look at other expensive substitutes such as shale oil – oil
locked in sedimentary rock. There are huge deposits of shale oil.
Demand for oil could always increase rapidly, especially when the economies
of the Eastern bloc and China finally develop, but any such increase may
well be a passing phase. Energy intensity – energy used per unit of GNP
– has long been declining in advanced economies.
All this means that while there must be an ultimate end to oil reserves,
that end is nowhere in sight. Coal may be very useful as a substitute chemical
feed stock and fuel, but the problem of converting coal to such uses is
not an urgent one.
Mark Lawson Sydney, Australia
Letters: Plenty of oil
The picture at the bottom of the contents page in the issue of 23 January
has caught my eye. I think the objects at the centre of the skyline are
cooling towers, whose function in the generation process is to act as heat-exchangers
for water which has become hot in its passage through the condenser cooling
system.
As far as I know, the entire cooling sequence is totally isolated from
the heating fuel and fumes and what is emerging from the towers is relatively
clean steam – a transporter of waste energy, but not a pollutant.
Pictures of this kind abound where pollution from the generation of
energy is being discussed. Certainly, the clouds of steam always look
impressively threatening; but aren’t they, like the notes of the policeman
who licked his pencil to make the case look blacker, providing an invalid
and irrelevant emphasis?
John Bedwell Burgess Hill, West Sussex
Letters: Ethical issue
I sympathise with David Burnie and Balint Bodroghy (Letters, 23 January)
for disliking the experiment on doves described in the Science section of
the 9 January issue; writing the article weighs heavily on my conscience.
In my original piece I did refer to the birds as ‘unfortunate’, but unhappily
this was edited out.
New 杏吧原创 publishes the results of many animal experiments without
critical comment (for example, last year’s series ‘Secret life of the brain’),
but usually the experiences the animals have gone through are not described
as they were in this article. In defence of this particular experiment,
the journal in which the paper was published is one which takes its ethical
responsibilities very seriously. Publication in Animal Behaviour required
that the experiment was designed to minimise the number of birds used, that
their housing was reasonable, that the experiment could not have been conducted
in any other way, and that the research was scientifically compelling enough
to warrant the suffering. Whether the experiment should have been conducted
is of course still open to criticism.
This correspondence is now closed. However, New 杏吧原创 will continue
to debate the issue of animal experiments in the future as in the past –
Ed
Georgia Mason Madingley, Cambridge
Letters: Pointless PhDs
My own experience (1st class honours degree, PhD, 18 months unemployed),
the experiences of friends, and correspondence on the prospects of PhD graduates,
leads me to believe that a PhD is a good way to ruin your career.
While the PhD system has served well in the past, it is now failing.
Some of the most able and enthusiastic young scientists available are sucked
in and rendered unemployable. Industry, has little or no requirement for
PhDs and would seem to have a preference for educating its own personnel.
The best that academic institutions can offer is poorly paid postdoc which
will in turn lead to another period of postdoc (and another . . .).
Either the whole PhD system should be reviewed or industry and academia
should think again about employment for people who have a real interest
and enthusiasm for science.
Christian Dowdeswell Rockwell Green, Somerset