Letters: Following Faraday
The article ‘Faraday by any other name’ gives the impression that the
Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology is managing the Postgraduate
Training Partnership scheme (Forum, 12 February).
In fact, the scheme is managed by Mark Downs at the Department of Trade
and Industry on behalf of the sponsors, the DTI and the Science and Engineering
Research Council. CEST is maintaining a close interest in the PTP scheme,
hence our recent assessment which found that it is a great success.
I also believe that DTI and SERC are contributing several times the
拢1.5 million mentioned.
I hope that the seeds planted can be encouraged to grow to embrace the
full Faraday principles, as the White Paper surely intends.
R. C. Whelan Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology London
Letters: Caring chickens
We read with interest Gail Vines’ article ‘The emotional chicken’ (22
January). She outlined experiments conducted by Norma Bubier where hens
were asked to squeeze through very narrow gaps – something they dislike
doing – ‘to show how much they care about what is on the other side of the
gap’.
It was rightly reported that hens will squeeze through these gaps in
order to gain access to a nest box when they are about to lay (and they
therefore place a high priority on nest boxes in their environment). It
was also reported that hens squeeze through gaps to gain access to floors
made of peat and wood shavings and that these substrates were suitable for
scratching and dust bathing.
While this is certainly the case, further examinations of the findings
of Bubier reveal that while hens spend a ‘fixed’ amount of time each day
pecking and scratching in litter (regardless of whether food is present
in woodchip litter), the amount of time spent dust bathing varies. Thus
‘pecking and scratching’ appears to be a behaviour that changes little between
different conditions and is of high priority to hens, while dust bathing
changes considerably between conditions.
Thus the high priority hens attach to peat and woodchips appears to
be due to a high priority ‘need’ to peck and scratch in these substances
and not necessarily a ‘need’ to dust bathe. While we write in support of
Vines’ original article, we believe the finding that pecking and scratching
is relatively ‘inelastic’ and dust bathing relatively ‘elastic’ merits clarification,
since this finding has important implications for the welfare of laying
hens.
Harry Bradshaw and Norma Bubier University of Cambridge
Letters: Higher degrees
My 27 November issue of New 杏吧原创 just arrived and I note in the
article entitled ‘Ancient forests muddy global warming models’ (This Week)
that you attribute to Jim Basinger of the University of Saskatchewan that
the average maximum temperature in Yellowknife, northern Canada, is 28 掳C.
In fact, the annual mean maximum temperature in Yellowknife is -0.8 掳C.
The July mean maximum is only 20.8 掳C.
I would suggest that Basinger was not correctly quoted, as he would
certainly know that a mean maximum of 28 掳C would truly delight the
residents of that northern city.
Julian Kinisky Alberta, Canada
Letters: Leaky room
Over fifty years ago a radical group tested the officially recommended
method of gas-proofing rooms. As a result, The Daily Worker castigated the
British government for deceiving the public – the room, apparently, leaked
like a sieve.
Only later was it discovered that the ‘leakage’ was due to the same
effect now responsible for the disappearance of carbon dioxide from inside
Biosphere 2 (This Week, 5 February). The gas was used as the tracer in the
tests, being cheap, harmless, and readily estimated by katharometer. Unfortunately
it was also readily absorbed by the walls of the room – presumably fairly
fresh plaster. Reds with red faces. I believe that J. B. S. Haldane was
involved, possibly the only boob in a distinguished career.
Tom Nash Sherborne, Dorset
Letters: Alienated
I wonder what Messrs Hewlett, Packard, Moore and Allen have to gain
by throwing (presumably) large sums of money into the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence (This Week, 29 January). Do they know something we don’t? Is
a breakthrough just around the corner? Has some alien artefact been found
and its origin needs to be discovered?
Maybe it’s a coincidence that the major donors are connected with the
computer business, and any comprehensive search for ET could not be done
without sophisticated computer technology. And maybe any positive results
would have a monetary value beyond our wildest dreams, since without public
funding they would not be public property.
Or maybe I’m just a cynic.
Tony Holkham Chichester, West Sussex
Letters: Solstice solution
The question of sunrise and sunset times and their relationship to the
solstices (Letters, 5 February and 5 March) has been very nicely explained
by Sheffield astronomer David Hughes in an article in the December issue
of the Horological Journal. A free copy of the December issue is available
on request from the British Horological Institute, Upton Hall, Upton NG23
5TN. Please send an address label and a 43p stamp.
Timothy Treffry Horological Journal, Upton, Nottinghamshire
Letters: Historical crank
Regarding your mention of the book A Budget of Trisections (Feedback,
19 February), you might care to note that this title is a clear echo of
A Budget of Paradoxes by Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871). The latter volume
contained reviews of numerous cranky publications, including those by angle-trisectors
and circle-squarers.
De Morgan was first, third and fifth professor of mathematics at University
College London (he kept resigning on principle). His book is a gem, and
a worthy source of interesting quotes (De Morgan was very cutting). If nothing
else, his book shows that the existence of cranks is not a recent phenomenon.
De Morgan was also very sexist, and told his pupil, Ada Byron (only legitimate
child of Lord Byron, later Lady Lovelace, and accomplice of Charles Babbage
in his work) that mathematical exertions were beyond the female brain. To
which extent, he was a crank in his own right.
Duncan Steel Anglo-Australian Observatory Coonabarabran, Australia
Letters: Spotty globe
You may be interested in one addition to the article about Galileo (‘On
the path of genius’, Grand Tours supplement, 19 February). In 1637 he received
a visit from a young English scholar, who later became secretary of foreign
languages to Oliver Cromwell’s Council of State. Years later, when honest
government had been destroyed in England, John Milton wrote about Galileo,
describing Satan’s shield as: ‘like the moon, whose orb/Through optic glass
the Tuscan artist views/At midnight, from the top of Fesole,/Or in Valdarno,
to descry new lands, /Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe.’ (Paradise
Lost)
C. R. Watson Bridgwater, Somerset
Letters: Scraping the barrel
The reason why Danish sounds totally different from both Swedish and
Norwegian (Forum, 22 January) has nothing to do with hot potatoes. Really,
it’s that when God was handing out all the languages, after the collapse
of the Tower of Babel, he eventually came to those peoples living at the
edge of the known world.
He had two languages left, so he gave the Swedes Swedish and the Norwegians
Norwegian: and that was that. Until the delegate from Copenhagen said, ‘Please,
Sir, what about us? We’re different from those two, you know.’ So God looked
into His big barrel again, and, scraping the bottom, came up with an offer.
He said: ‘I was saving this last one for the sea lions – it’s all I have
left, so you will have to share it with them.’
The Danes were delighted. . .or, at least, that’s what my Swedish friends,
who told me this story, said.
Max Jones Leeds
Letters: No adventure
John McCrone’s comments on two books with such different approaches
to schizophrenia (Review, 12 February) intrigued me. He listed the failure
of organic theories but then he presented the opposite possibility in an
even worse light. He seems to quote Jenner et al. as if they were simply
Laingian, feeling schizophrenia was a good struggle ‘to the enlightened
side of the stream’. The quoted sentence eluded me and is not typical of
the book, which certainly sees schizophrenia as a disaster.
More intriguingly, he asserts without any evidence that the organic
roots of schizophrenia must lie in ‘the fine-grained detail’ of development.
The lack of sophistication which treats schizophrenia as homogenous was
not even considered. This shows naivety about the complexity of the subject
matter.
Finally, Jenner’s desire to treat the mentally ill humanely does not
imply that schizophrenia is a ‘bold adventure’. It is rather a plea for
a re-evaluation of what psychiatrists are daily practising clinically, researching
scientifically and taking to be established scientifically.
Man Cheung Chung University of Birmingham
Letters: Hating the body
David King’s review of Andrew Kimbrell’s The Human Body Shop informs
us that ‘it is only within a Christian culture that involves hatred of the
body, as well as all things material and earthy, that the idea of the body
as nothing more than a machine, to be bought and sold, could arise’ (Review,
19 February).
Wherever does King get the idea that Christian culture involves hatred
of the body? The Middle Ages, under the influence of St Augustine’s works,
may have given this impression; but if we don’t judge the sciences on the
basis of medieval scientists, why on earth should he so judge Christianity?
Judaeo-Christian teaching is that when God beholds the whole of creation,
‘it is very good’; and that includes the body. As St Paul wrote, ‘the body
is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body’ and strictures against the ‘sins’
of the flesh are a protest against the defilement of what is naturally a
‘temple of the Holy Spirit’.
I know of no contemporary Christian writer who regards the human body
with hatred. The concept of the body as a machine stems not from Christianity,
but from the way in which science used to look on all nature as a vast
machine, a concept which still lingers.
Bishop Hugh Montefiore London
Letters: Serious sex
Am I naive in expecting, in a journal like New 杏吧原创, to find
a more scientific discussion of sex types and differences than Helen Haste’s
effort (‘The Wife, the Waif, the Warrior and the Warlock’, 12 February),
dependent as it was more on associations with the breathed consonants,
w, hw, and h, than on any seriously researched evidence? Was it meant to
be merely a teasing and topical contribution to the wintry bleakness of
Valentine’s Day?
The current plethora of publications on the subject of gender testify
not only to public interest, but also to a searching for enlightenment,
not discouragement.
Scholarly writing has a place in your magazine, and it would be more
helpful if subsequent contributions showed appreciation of such authorities
as (inter alia) Emma Jung, Irene Claremont de Castilejo, Toni Woolf, Philip
Zabriskie, and Glen Wilson.
Is it not time for an in-depth investigation of what makes a woman
a woman, a man a man? Even if social psychologists like Helen Haste do
not read widely in other disciplines, they could at least be fair to the
poets and not give readers the impression that Shakespeare had no insight
into feminine nature.
Wendy Chiu Wimborne, Dorset
Letters: Cut them down
Your article ‘Where has all the carbon gone?’ (8 January) overlooked
important aspects of the boreal forest. First, they are even-aged forests
initiated after massive forest fires. Secondly, they are now mature or over-mature,
based on the maturation ages of the tree species. At this time, as they
have passed the natural rotation of 200 years or more, John Bryant should
expect insect attacks and forest fires to destroy the decadent forest to
make way for the next forest. Alaska should be harvesting this trapped CO2
and marketing the wood to ensure that the CO2 remains trapped
in forest products for many years.
Debora MacKenzie says in her final paragraph: ‘The people of the north
are used to seeing endless expanses of trees. They, and their politicians,
think of the forest as everlasting. But it may not continue to help humans
put off confronting the effects of their own waste for very much longer.’
The conclusion is irrelevant when viewing massive insect epidemics and
forest fires out of control. The certainty of these events makes harvesting
a must for rapid regeneration of the new forest.
Glen Deacoff Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada