Letters: Write back
Interestingly, doing this again after so long, the letters I hesitate over
and sometimes do in reverse are precisely the ones I used to get wrong when
learning to write in the first place.
Daphne Briggs
Oxford
Letters: Write back
I am right-handed and, as a child, I used to write backwards for fun. At the
same time, I decided to try to write with my feet (just in case). I found
that it was a lot easier to write backwards than forwards with the left
foot.
Eira Hughes
Hyde, Cheshire
Letters: Write back
One can achieve mirror writing by putting a suitable writing instrument in
the left hand and then writing in the ordinary way with the right, allowing
the left hand to mimic the right hand’s movements. This it will do
automatically because if both hands are used simultaneously, one will mirror
the movements of the other, unless constrained.
This simple trick may help left handers to use right-handed implements but,
in my experience, is little known. It has many applications.
Robert Fairthorne
Farnborough, Hampshire
Letters: Write back
I’d like to share my ‘Cheat’s guide to mirror writing’. Take a sheet of
paper, stick it to the underside of your desk, and, using a pencil (pens
tend to run out in these upside-down conditions), get writing. Detach the
paper from the desk and be amazed; for what you have just written is back to
front.
Like all skills this takes practice.
Angela Lucas
Cambridge
Letters: Write back
I believe that I discovered this odd ability when I was about 12; it was all
part of that wartime urge for little boys to write in code.
John Cunningham
Waterlooville, Hampshire
Letters: Write back
I learnt the trick a year ago when I was 16. My friend and I decided to keep
diaries in mirror writing.
Celia Bridgewater
Curtin, ACT
Australia
Letters: Write back
Despite being right-handed, I discovered my ability to switch into reverse
writing as a child. What interests me is that my mirror-writing has not
matured in keeping with my normal writing and, seen in the mirror, still
looks like the script of a ten-year-old.
David Haines
Teignmouth, Devon
Letters: React with caution
The science community, of which MSF, the union for skilled and professional
people is part, has rightly reacted with caution to the government’s new
science White Paper. The paper fails to address properly the question of
funding, or the means by which technology can be transferred to the
marketplace, or the rapid dissipation of our highly skilled research teams
from the defence industries.
Although a Council of Science and Technology is proposed, it is nowhere near
enough to bring effective co-ordination to this vital area. It is a pity
the recent Cabinet shuffle did not include the creation of a Secretary of
State for Science with the backing of a full department. That would have
indicated real government commitment to science.
However, we notice that the White Paper does mark a change in rhetoric and
the government’s new commitment to give greater strategic direction to the
nation’s scientific effort can only be welcomed by this union. We have been
arguing for such an approach for more than a decade.
I am sure that the 120 000 scientific workers which MSF presently represents
will be sceptical about the promises contained within the White Paper. They
have heard before about government conversion to the need for an industrial
strategy. And they have colleagues in Leyland DAF and Swan Hunter who have
bitter experience of past government pronouncements.
We therefore hope that this paper will be the start of the evolution of a
science strategy for Britain and mark a decisive break from the anti-science
dogma of the last 14 years.
Roger Lyons
MSF
London
Letters: Hedging bets
Re ‘Kill a badger, save a cow?’ (Focus, 24 April). The South West of England
contains a beautiful patchwork of robust field boundaries which the
professor of environmental Science at the University of Bristol, Stephen
Harris, now proposes to damage seriously. What is more annoying is that this
has been suggested at a time when conservation bodies like Plantlife UK
have a hedge preservation campaign in full swing.
One would have thought that this most drastic suggestion would have been
made after extensive scientific studies had been done, but it appears that
the suggestion is being made because Harris ‘thinks’ that hedges ‘may’ have
some role to play in the transmission of tuberculosis. He suggests that
badgers urinate in dense field boundaries – that is, hedges – and recommends
removal of such features. We have yet to learn where badgers urinate when
there are no hedges. Do they hold on and head for the nearest WC?
J. M. Barry
Cork, Ireland
Letters: Controlling aliens
Australian swamp stonecrop and its rapidly increasing threat to shallow
waters and streams (This Week, 22 May) has been studied at the Institute of
Freshwater Ecology in Dorset. Natural and herbicide methods of controlling
this and another alien aquatic invaders continue to be evaluated.
The current recommendations of Crassula control are available in a leaflet
produced jointly with English Nature and are available from Dr. F. H.
Dawson, River Laboratory, East Stoke, Wareham, Dorset BH20 6BB.
Hugh Dawson
Institute of Freshwater Ecology
Wareham, Dorset
Letters: Electronic Africa
Considering the case of the hypothetical yam farmer in the article ‘Down and
out in the global village’, (8 May), it is hoped that the electronic article
on pest resistance would have been captured by the international
agricultural abstracting services such as CABI and FAO-AGRIS. In that case,
at least in Malawi, the content would be accessible to the local farmer
through the well-publicised government/university agricultural information
system. Agricultural CD-ROM databases have been available here since 1987.
Not only do these give access to international information but, in the case
of FAO-AGRIS, publications resulting from national research are input
locally, and appear on the CD-ROM within about 3 months, encouraging
South-South exchange.
Some may claim that Africa is the lost continent of the information
technologies. But a number of tertiary education institutions in the region
are providing training in computing skills at a variety of levels, from
degree courses in computer science to computer applications proficiency
courses, using up-to-date hardware and software. South-South and
North-South collaboration using e-mail is now possible in the region since
access to the Internet connection at Rhodes University, South Africa, has
been made available by the Director of its Computer Centre, Mike Lawrie.
Margaret Ngwira, DH Mundy
University of Malawi
Letters: Night shift
It can come as no surprise to any mother with children under five years that
‘shift work’ may trigger depression (‘The Big Sleep?’, Mind & Body
supplement, 17 April). I remember watching a TV programme about the Hare
Krishna sect when my twins were a few months old, and hearing a young man
who had left the sect say that they used ‘brain washing’ methods. ‘In what
way?’ asked the presenter. ‘By sleep deprivation,’ was the reply. The young
man explained that they were only allowed to go to bed at midnight, and then
were woken up at 6 am My reaction at the time was: ‘6 hours sleep, wow!’
If a man in a prison was subjected to the sleep disturbances that mothers go
through, he’d be appealing to a court of human rights. There must be many
women whose sleep is disturbed for up to 10 years or so (if they have more
than two children). After this it takes more years for regular sleep
patterns to return.
Surely this, together with the time it takes for hormones to return to
‘normal’ levels after birth, should be taken into account as a major cause
of depression in women. I’m amazed that Ellen Frank only takes into account
shift work, and not the effects of being woken at irregular intervals, night
after night, by infants and young children.
Jacky Heath
Norwich
Letters: Nature's geometry
Re Ian Stewart’s essay ‘Half-life of a dirty book’, (New 杏吧原创, Science,
8 May). It appears self-evident to me, a struggling farmer living close to
the grass roots, that nature works in geometrical ratios, and hence
geometrical series rather than arithmetical ones describe nature best. My
animals certainly grow in geometrical proportion. Chemistry appears to me to
work on ratios (concentrations for instance, and pHs). One could fill your
letters section with examples. If you grant that contention, then Benford’s
Law stares at you out of the scale of an old-fashioned 10 inch slide rule:
The interval 1 to 2, covering all the numbers that start with digit 1,
occupies 3.01 inches, and it is the largest interval because it is the
largest ratio, 2:1. The interval 2 to 3, covering all the numbers starting
with digit 2, is the next, but is smaller, occupying 1.76 inches, a ratio of
3:2, and so on. Those distances on the slide rule are proportional to the
ordinates of the Benford’s Law graph given in the article. Now if a fly is
to select a number by spitting on a randomly chosen spot on my slide rule,
then it is more likely to do it on the interval 1 to 2 than 2 to 3, and so
on, down to 9 to 10, which is the smallest and least probable.
So, if numbers written in a linear scale are to be used to represent a set
of values of a natural physical quantity, where the distribution is
according to a geometric progression (logarithmic), the numbers used to
represent the set must conform with Benford’s Law. Conversely, if we observe
numbers that do follow Benford’s Law, can we infer that they are part of a
logarithmically distributed set?
Alastair Mackenzie
Ararat, Australia
Letters: Epithet auctions
In his mischievous letter ‘Quayle’s potato’ (Letters, 22 May), David Duffy
endorses the suggestion recently advanced by several other taxonomists that
the under-funded discipline of taxonomy could be reinvigorated by
‘privatisation’ of nomenclature – specifically, by selling new Linnean
binomials to the highest bidder. I accept that this cunning scheme could
garner much needed revenue, but believe that the intellectual price paid
would be far too high.
The present hierarchies of taxa, erected over two centuries of painstaking
research, will inevitably be subverted if subjected to market forces.
Rampant ‘splitting’ will result; it is far easier to fragment pre-existing
species than to discover genuinely new species, and the resulting fragments
would be rarer and thus carry higher price tags.
Taxonomic inflation would also undermine higher ranks, as species became
unjustifiably elevated to generic or familial rank in order to increase
their monetary value. Taxonomists who retained their integrity would
retaliate by sinking such unjustifiable purchased epithets into synonymity.
The stage would then be set for legal actions, as disgruntled customers sued
the offending taxonomists, and for divorces, as taxonomists were obliged by
their sponsors to charge their spouses and/or colleagues for the privilege
of potential nomenclatural immortality.
Epithet auctions would also accelerate the already damaging trend of
deliberately enhancing basic description – the discovery and naming of
species (alpha-taxonomy) – at the expense of scientific interpretation –
determining the biological validity and evolutionary relationships of those
species (omega-taxonomy). In short, a greatly increased global list of
species names would be no substitute for real science. If we take Duffy’s
suggestions seriously, we will sell our souls along with our names.
Richard Bateman
University of Oxford
Letters: Write back
As two right-handed readers, we were astonished to read (quite easily,
incidentally) the back-to-front letter from Lucy Riddell (22 May). The
reason for the astonishment is that both of us can write backwards; one of
us with both hands.
We do not think that this is an exclusively left-handed ability – neither of
us had any difficulty when we started, aged 12 and 15.
PS What about the Arabs?
Helen Brewer and Simon Read
Bedford
Letters: Write back
In her mirror letter, Lucy Riddell did not make it clear whether she
mirror-writes with her left hand. As she was enthusing over the lack of
smudging, I assume that she does. If that is correct, her letter is all the
more interesting.
Many years ago, I was introduced to the trick of mirror writing: as a
right-handed person, use the left hand. Indeed, if I write with my left
hand without concentrating too much on forming the letters, legible mirror
writing is the natural result.
I have always understood this to be saying something about the way the brain
operates, although I have never been sure what was the message. If Lucy
finds it easier to write mirror-wise with her left hand than I do with my
right, then the message appears more complex than I had imagined. It would
be interesting to know how she gets on with right-handed writing (mirror and
straight) and with writing using both hands simultaneously.
Peter Harrison
Leatherhead, Surrey