Letters: Pyramid power
Concerning ‘Great Little Pyramid’ (In Brief, 29 January). Yes, the Neumuenster
pyramid is a great little pyramid, but it is not the world’s first one.
The first one of its type was built by the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Nature
Conservation Federation of Germany) in Bremervorde, my home town, which
is near Hamburg. For about three years now, the Bremervorde pyramid has
served as an environmental education centre where people can learn about
ecologically sound building construction.
The pyramid shape has been chosen to minimise the surface-to-volume
ratio and thus to decrease heating bills. Unless one wants to build a dome-shaped
house, the pyramid is the shape with the lowest surface-to-volume ratio,
plus it allows for excellent positioning of the solar panels on the outside.
Bruno Walther Merton College, Oxford
Letters: Boozy building
After the festive season I found 18 of those wire clips used to hold
down the corks in fizz bottles. These clips I assembled into a globe, with
24 square sides and 8 hexagonal ones. All of the vertices were triple (thin
wire through the loops) and the symmetry was tetragonal, not cubic.
Is it possible to build up a fully symmetrical globe in this way, after
the basic cube with six clips? And how many more bottles would we have
to drink?
Tom Nash Sherborne, Dorset
Letters: Scum removal
Re the tea scum debate (Feedback, 15 January and Letters, 5 February):
the answer’s a lemon (slice of). Explanations?
Yours tea(r)fully
Ronald Clarke Frinton, Essex
Letters: Factor facts
‘Sunscreens and the protection racket’ (22 January) in Australia is
such a shameful bundle of confusions, almost any comment only adds to it.
However, almost every working day, we determine the protection of sunscreens
from the UVB and A induced sunburn response on human subjects. (We are not
‘supported’ by industry as Brett Wright stated, or by the University – we
run a business, and customers pay for an independent service.)
It is agreed that UV can be a skin carcinogen. A sunscreeen filter (not
a ‘block’) works by reducing the amount of biologically effective UV reaching
the skin. When two sunscreens of unknown SPF (sun protection factor) are
tested together using a light source which closely approximates sunlight
UV emission, and one protects the skin for twice as long (or for the same
time with double the dose) as the other, then the first one gets an SPF
rating of double the second one, on that test subject.
We do this experiment nearly every day, and 2+2 always = 4 rather than
something else, and the UV-transmission of an SPF 30 is always half that
of an SPF 15. Sunscreens on the shelves in Australia range from SPF 4 to
100+, but over 15, the consumer is prevented by law from knowing which are
more protective than others.
Notwithstanding the confounding logic of Marks, and the pessimism of
Reeve, an SPF as determined by an internationally recognised scientific
method and Australian Standard, shows by compelling logic and direct evidence,
for all to see, that sunscreens reduce the effectiveness of biologically
effective UV.
This being the case, it is hardly surprising that there is considerable
published data showing that sunscreens do indeed reduce the risk of skin
cancer in mice and humans, and that there is no published evidence to
the contrary.
Gavin Greenoak The Australian Photobiology Testing Facility Sydney,
Australia
Letters: Thick skinned
I find the concept of therapeutic effects of smoking an interesting
idea (Letters, 15 January), however I was not convinced by the evidence
presented by Mills and Marks in their letter.
They suggest that smokers are less responsive to various stimuli as
a result of their smoking. But, people are not randomly assigned to the
categories of ‘smoker’ and ‘nonsmoker’. Since childhood, I have had a number
of allergies to dust, certain foods, pollen . . . and I get bad headaches
whenever I am in a smoke-filled room. This is certainly one of the reasons
that I have never taken up smoking.
Assuming I am not unique, perhaps, one of the reasons people chose to
be non-smokers is that they are (already) sensitive to irritants, including
those produced by cigarette smoke; smoking is thus a possible result of
lower responsiveness, not a cause.
Anne Burrill European Commission Joint Research Centre Ispra, Italy
Letters: Lucy's problem
Re Martin Gregory’s article ‘How to wrap a rabid rabbit’ (Forum, 22
January). Recently a speaker on London’s LBC Radio swore that because of
the Beatles’ Liverpool accents, for many years he had thought that the line
in one of their songs ‘The girl with kaleidoscope eyes’ was ‘The girl with
colitis goes by’.
Colin Woodward Cookham, Berkshire
Letters: Slurred
‘Life, the Universe and (almost) everything’ (29 January) gave, as far
as I am aware, an accurate description of the process for making whisky.
This is more than can be said for the attempts at Gaelic with which it both
began and, especially, ended.
Whisky is derived from the Gaelic uisge-beatha (water of life); ‘usquebaugh’
is an old Scots (not Gaelic) word for the same, and is an attempt by non-Gaelic
speakers to reproduce the sound of the Gaelic.
I am not sure from where the closing expression came. The addled brain
of someone who has indulged in too much of the above, I suspect. I presume
what was meant was Slainte mhath! (‘Cheers!’ or, literally, ‘Good health!’)
Iain MacKinnon Barry, South Glamorgan
Letters: Woody's secret
For those holding their breath for the revelation of the research for
which the scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
were awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion (This Week, 22 January),
I refer them to my Forum article in New 杏吧原创 of 31 August 1991.
In it, I revealed the origin of certain staccato signals intruding on
the short-wave radio bands: they came from a relatively new form of Soviet
radar that could see over the horizon, and they had been popularly dubbed
‘The Woodpecker’.
What is the only clue we are allowed to know about the Lawrence Livermore
research? That it was the Woodpecker Project. But there can’t really be
a connection – can there?
The last sentence in my article read: ‘Of course, the Americans may
be using more sophisticated techniques, like the new, absolutely unsinister
signals I have been picking up around 25 megahertz’.
R. V. Harrowell Codicote, Hertfordshire
Letters: A load of balls?
John Gribbin states that according to the Banach-Tarski theorems: ‘a
solid sphere with unit radius can be cut into five pieces in such a way
that two of the pieces can be reassembled into one solid sphere with unit
radius, while the other three pieces are reassembled into a second solid
sphere with unit radius’.
May I use this opportunity to advertise for a research assistant with
practical experience of the Banach-Tarski theorems to assist us in our research
programme on spheres of gold? (Applicants of proven ability may fix their
own salary.)
John Bishop University of Sheffield
* * *
We will be publishing a full explanation of the Banach-Tarski theorems
in the near future – Ed
Letters: Wrong blob
May I point out that the design shown in your ‘Philosophy at the drawing
board’ (Review, 22 January) is in fact Jan Kaplioky’s ‘The Blob’ entry for
the Grand Buildings competition a few years ago and not one of Eisenman’s
creations?
I am happy to report that the reviewer Hugh Aldersey-Williams and all
other architect readers are now said by their doctors to be in a stable
condition.
Jonathan Stoppi London
Letters: Genetic parenthood
In your editorial of 15 January concerning the use of egg cells from
aborted fetuses in infertility treatment, you state that public opinion
must not be confused with ethics. Quite so. But neither must the wishes
of a small number of infertile couples, however understandable they may
be.
It is an established principle of jurisprudence that those with a vested
interest in a case are less, rather than more qualified to judge. Indeed,
the quoted opinion that ‘someone has to give up a life, and they have given
it to me’ proves no more than that some women will go to almost any lengths,
however unnatural or ethically dubious, to have a child. The person who
makes the ‘gift’ of a life, in this case, is not the person whose life is
lost.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Code of Practice states
that ‘sperm or eggs must not be taken from anyone who is not capable of
giving a valid consent’ (their emphasis). Parental consent is not a valid
substitute, but even if it were, is there not the slightest ethical dilemma
in a parent giving consent for organ donation on behalf of a child, when
the organs are only available because the parent has chosen to have the
child killed?
Your dismissal of the importance of genetic relatedness sits oddly in
a discussion on infertility treatment, in which one of the primary motivations
is the desire to have a child related to at least one parent. If egg donation
allows a couple to have a child related to the man, and if this is thought
to matter to both the man and the child, it is wholly inconsistent to regard
the provenance of the egg as of no consequence. Mere ‘genetic’ parenthood
is enough to saddle a man with maintenance payments for sixteen years. Maybe
you think this is unfair?
The importance of genetic relatedness can be overstated, but it does
matter, to both parents and children, and there are sound biological reasons
for this. The effects upon a child of discovering that she exists only because
her grandmother chose to kill her mother before she was born, are beyond
calculation.
Gareth Williams Blaby, Leicester
Letters: Neural poetry
Once again neural networks do not receive the credit they deserve as
a model for human thinking. I refer to ‘A bard by any other name’ (22 January).
This article described how neural networks are being used to distinguish
between the works of long-dead authors. Neural networks are, as the article
describes, ‘a collection of very simple brain cells’. If this is the case,
then why should we believe the results from these networks over the opinions
of literary scholars who after all are just a larger ‘collection of very
simple brain cells’.
If the results of neural networks’ tests on the passages in question
are the same as the scholars’, then what should we conclude? New 杏吧原创
would have us believe that we now objectively know the authorship of a particular
passage. I consider that a better conclusion would be that we now know how
scholars reach their subjective conclusions and this subjectivity can be
modelled on a computer.
Michael Lewis Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Letters: Neural poetry
For anyone using a brain instead of a computer to recognise a writer’s
style, the actual words used constitute only a small part of the evidence.
In the case of verse (blank or otherwise) a very powerful diagnostic tool
would be to count how many of the lines are end-stopped.
Shakespeare was one of the pioneers in reducing the percentage. Hemingway
could have been identified by this within ten pages until he acquired so
many imitators. Other clues can be found in the average number of subordinate
clauses used, their position in the sentence, and where the main verb comes.
A once trendy journalese style in America was famously satirised by
the observation: ‘Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind’.
Elaine Morgan Mountain Ash, Mid Glamorgan
Letters: A load of balls?
We were fascinated by John Gribbin’s article ‘The prescient power of
mathematics’ (New 杏吧原创, Science, 22 January) concerning the Banach-Tarski
theorums (‘BTT’) and agree that ‘BTT can shed light on other wide-ranging
questions’. Consider, for example, a science writer with one ball. According
to BTT this can be cut into five pieces and re-assembled to produce two
balls identical to the original. Indeed, as Gribbin demonstrates, this can
be repeated indefinitely, producing a lot of balls.
Physics remains central, however, and it may be necessary to generate
an appropriate number of gluons in order to bind the pieces together – it
may even be necessary to invent supergluons for this purpose.
Unfortunately, Gribbin fails to point out that the success of this operation
assumes the validity of the Axiom of Choice. We can of course choose whether
or not to accept this axiom, but in any event our intrepid science writer
may discover to his dismay that the pieces of his original ball can never
be chosen to be (Lebesgue-) measurable, a feature which some people may
find unattractive, even painful.
While he has shown that ‘mathematics is an effective tool for describing
the physical world’, we fear that these considerations show that the direct
application of BTT to restorative medicine is fraught with unexpected dangers.
Brian Williams London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Ekkehard
Kopp University of Hull
Letters: Night monsters
The feature by John McCrone ‘Inner voices, distant memories’ (29 January)
is interesting and has a ring of truth. But it leaves, in the consciousness,
the uneasy feeling that the case is overstated, that the pedestal on which
language is put is too high. And his poor animals, bless them, are harshly
treated; they have no words in which to answer back.
I suspect that McCrone understates the use of symbols in a brain. Nouns
are all symbols, but not all symbols are words. What about our memories
of faces? Of company logos? Of caricatures? They are not words, but they
are cues for memory recall, surely. And who is to say that animals cannot
recognise and work with nonverbal symbols of this sort?
For me, and I suspect for Franz Kafka in his day, consciousness has
a lot to do with the capacity for independent assessment and judgment. It
implies a model of the real world, a set of values or a culture of some
sort, and an agent of free will capable of reaching decisions. In an odd
way, it may not be a property of the entity under discussion at all, but
a property inferred to it by another entity, an external observer. Consciousness
of self, self-awareness, then comes from an observer looking at itself.
A hopelessly circular argument, but not necessarily false.
Looked at in this way, consciousness is not just a property of biologically
living things – though animals are gladly accepted into the fold – it is
also a property of our larger, vaguer but crucially important world of symbols.
So, the government is conscious. A commercial company is conscious.
A legal court, a town council are conscious. Gaia and the Devil are conscious
– to their observers.
And that monstrous tree in the wood that you ran away from one dark
night in your childhood – you knew it had a world model, and you were in
it, it had a set of values and a decision to make – should it chase you?
And wasn’t it conscious, for you, on that dark night?
Tony Key Ipswich, Suffolk
Letters: Paras win JET
I wouldn’t want to take away from Ray Hand the ‘buzz’ he gets ‘when
milestones are passed’ in fusion research (Forum, 22 January), but I would
like to correct his historical perspective. The ‘expertise and reputation’
of Britain’s team at Culham may have helped it to land the JET project,
but there was more to it than that. France and Germany had equally strong
scientific claims. They did not, though, have the SAS.
As Dennis Willson, the Secretary of Culham, described it in his account
of the birth of JET, it is no secret that the storming by the SAS of a hijacked
airliner in Germany nudged Bonn into backing the British bid for JET. Before
this dramatic episode, the project was well and truly stuck on the Brussels
runway.
Perhaps I can correct Hand on another point. I know no one in the fusion
business who would claim that ‘the contamination from neutrons interacting
with the reactor structure is easily managed’. Managed, maybe. Easily, never.
False optimism like that has plagued the whole of the nuclear industry
for far too long.
Fusion may offer energy forever, but an easier way to stretch resources
into the foreseeable future would be to reverse the silly decision to
shut down the breeder reactor at Dounreay which, as Hand points out, is
due to close soon.
Michael Kenward Staplefield, West Sussex