Snapped
“Sadly, no British publisher has snapped it up,” you say in your excellent review of Ken Croswell’s Alchemy of the Heavens (Review, 25 November). I am delighted to let you know that Oxford University Press has had this title under contract as a paperback for some months. We publish on 4 April 1996 at 拢7.99.
Sex on the Moon
If evidence is needed for the value of a classical education to scientists, consider the apparently serious suggestion that the Moon will become a sex resort due to reduced gravity (Review, 11 November).
Anyone who has seen astronauts undergoing weightlessness training in swimming pools should be reminded of the advice in the Kama Sutra that “the more difficult positions are best essayed in water”. Even in these days of privatised utilities this must be cheaper than a trip to the Moon.
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Dirty hands?
Ian Stewart recommends a chemistry book on chemical matters as suitable reading after Christmas dinner, accompanied by an Erlenmeyer flask containing mulled wine (Review, 18 November).
He mentions the book’s praise of Fritz Haber, “who perfected the art of synthesising ammonia”, this being the first essential step to the manufacture of synthetic fertiliser.
That is not the only use and purpose of ammonia. Explosives also require ammonia, and without the timely invention of the Haber-Bosch process the German grenade industry may well have ground to a halt during the First World War.
Haber received the Nobel prize for Chemistry and came to Britain after 1918. However, when E. (later Lord) Rutherford met him, he refused to shake hands with him, holding him responsible for prolonging the slaughter.
This was told to me and my fellow students by Professor L. S. Palmer at Hull University College shortly after the Second World War.
First architects
Your review of The Microprocessor: A Biography needs to mention the origin of the architecture of the processors in PCs (Review, 4 November and Letters, 2 December). Three of us created it in 1969 at Datapoint, Harry Pyle and Victor Poor designing the architecture and I doing the simulator.
One of the first programs written for it was Pyle’s morse code decoder and teletype emulator for our three respective hamshacks. A contract was let to both TI and Intel to make the Datapoint 2200’s processor into one or two chips. The first desktop PC (Keyboard, CRT, Processor, Mass storage, I/O channel, Serial port, etc) to the EXACT 8008 architecture was shown in April 1970 at the American banking convention in San Francisco, running an operating system and business applications.
Intel was able to “chippify” the processor over a year later after huge numbers had been sold by Datapoint (then Computer Terminal Corp).
British satellite
A. G. Rogers says that the only British satellite was launched by a Black Arrow in 1971 (Letters, 4 November). That is incorrect. The first all-British satellite was UK3 (renamed Ariel 3 when in orbit), launched by a NASA Scout rocket in May 1967. UK3 (of which I was contractors’ project manager) was the first satellite to be entirely designed and constructed in Britain. No doubt your correspondent meant that X3 (as we knew it at the time) was the first British satellite to be launched by a British launch vehicle (Black Arrow) but these are not his words.
His suggestion of reusing the Black Arrow museum exhibit is no doubt facetious, but it is quite impracticable because a large amount of ground test equipment and extensive launch facilities would have to be reconstructed, the original gear having, no doubt, been scrapped. And spares for the Black Arrow would no longer be available.
Come to that, there’s a spare UK3 languishing in some Ministry of Defence store, but who would want to perform its scientific experiments again?
Drunken sailor
Vivienne Perry commented on your correction of the confusion between red valarian (Centranthus ruber) and common valarian (Valeriana officinalis), but she has added to the muddle by identifying common valarian as an umbellifer (Letters, 25 November). This is incorrect; both C. ruber and V. officinalis belong to the family Valerianaceae.
Might it be relevant that red valarian is also called “drunken sailor”, presumably from its habit of clinging to walls?
War and peace
On the basis of what research does N. P. E. Wheeler assert that “if you want peace, prepare for war” is still true (Letters, 18 November)? The easing of tension between the US and Russia was accompanied by a decrease in arms, which contradicts the saying. And, if it were true, it would predict that countries with the fewest weapons are the most war-prone, which does not appear to be the case.
Beattie's minder
The problem with BT’s Call Minder may be less to do with accents from north of Watford Gap and more with BT’s enthusiasm about signing up users for the service without providing detailed instructions (Feedback, 11 November).
Although my request for this service was efficiently processed, it took quite some effort to obtain the detailed instruction leaflet for using Call Minder. When Feedback’s friend gets this document he will find that instead of “yes” he can key 1 and for “no” key 2. Also he could find out how to enter his PIN via the keypad under guidance from the voice prompt system. The “Minders from Martlesham” have considered problems with bucolic tones differing from Auntie Beattie’s and made provision.
Whys and wherefores
The caption “Juliet, Juliet, wherefore art thou?” to your picture of the endangered diademed sifaka, Romeo, for whom a mate is being sought (In Brief, 18 November) perpetuates a common misconception. “Wherefore?” is not a longer Shakespearean version of “where?” as your caption-writer, like countless writers of comedy sketches, appears to believe. It means “why?”.
In the balcony scene in the play, Juliet says: “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” She is asking herself not where Romeo is, but why he is Romeo rather than some other suitor who would not be unwelcome because of a feud between their families.
“Wherefore?” and “therefore” are related to each other in exactly the same way as “when?” and “then”.
Shopping to the left
The letter from Adrian Bowyer and the subsequent letters concerning left bias in horses and other creatures were most interesting (Letters, 7 October, 4 November and 2 December). I trained as a fighter pilot in the RAF in the 1950s and we were not told then about the tendency to turn left under stress If it was a well-known tendency then we should have been told about it. Perhaps the Luftwaffe has kept quiet about their discovery.
People under the social stress of entering a strange room, perhaps full of other people to whom they have not been introduced, do tend to turn left and to circulate in a clockwise direction. Perhaps your readers could carry out a survey of this tendency during Christmas cocktail parties.
We make use of this tendency in our retail store. The entrance door is in the middle of one side of a square building and we notice that most customers tend to turn to the left as soon as they enter and then to move round the store in a clockwise direction. We place those items which we are most anxious to sell just to the left of the entrance door. Sure enough, when customers come into the store these items are the first to be examined.
Is this a well-known ploy amongst retailers.
Causal link?
According to John Stather, the National Radiological Protection Board believes that although there may be an association between electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and cancer, “this must be clearly distinguished from causation” (Letters, 11 November).
This is disturbingly complacent. True, association does not prove causation. It is, however, evidence in favour, and anyone who insists that there is no causative link must be able to provide some other convincing reason for the connection.
For example, many of those who denied that smoking causes lung cancer pointed out that the strong correlation might arise if people who are genetically predisposed to lung cancer are also genetically predisposed to the sort of social behaviour that includes smoking. This is indeed a logical possibility, even though the idea was never very plausible and is now generally accepted to be wrong.
It seems unlikely that anyone will argue that people with genetic predispositions to certain forms of cancer are also predisposed to live or work near power lines. If the NRPB cannot come up with a better explanation of the epidemiological evidence, then causation is the only hypothesis we have and we have to take it seriously.
It is right to say that we do not yet have sufficient data to allow us to determine appropriate levels of exposure to EMFs in the same way that we do for ionising radiation. What is alarming is that the NRPB apparently sees this as justification for doing nothing, instead of commissioning research to find out what the dangers are.
There is already laboratory evidence that weak EMFs can affect organisms and theoretical results to suggest how this can happen, so it’s not as if there were no conceivable mechanism. It took far too long to realise how dangerous even low doses of X-rays can be; let’s not make the same mistake with EMFs.
The NRPB’s obsession with causation comes from the traditional belief that cancer triggered by high energy radiation is caused by direct interaction with the DNA molecule. Recent studies by biochemists have shown that the hydroxyl radical, formed by radiolysis of water, is at least as important a cause of DNA strand breakage as is radiolysis of DNA.
The hydroxyl radical is also formed by much less energetic chemical reactions in the biological cell, for example the reduction of hydrogen peroxide and even oxygen by enzymic reducing agents. Recent studies have shown that this “mild” chemistry and its inhibition by endogenous antioxidants is affected by magnetic fields.
Politically, the NRPB seems to be unaware of the concerns of the European Parliament which have led to the recommendation to “limit the exposure of the public to non-ionising electromagnetic radiation, taking account of current scientific results”. The European Parliament also points out that even when the evidence is equivocal, the precautionary principle should be followed, with legislative measures to minimise the exposure of workers and the public to nonionising electromagnetic fields.
Patently secure
Since I used to work in the Patent Office, and used to live in London, I fear many of my acquaintances may think I was behind the letter about patents from someone in London with the same name as me (Letters, 28 October). This is embarrassing since the letter might trap some people into breaking the law.
A British national in this country who applies abroad for a patent, without first gaining security clearance from the Patent office in Britain, breaks the law. Applying for clearance enables the Patent Office to check that there is nothing in the application which endangers security, for example a description of a new weapon.
In my opinion this reinforces the point made by my namesake that the government should withdraw its proposal to privatise the work of the front office of the Patent Office. Patent applications, which all relate to confidential material, and some of which relate to security material, should be dealt with by established civil servants, bound by the Official Secrets Act.
Rabbit hysteria
The hysteria about the “lethal rabbit virus 鈥� gone dramatically wrong” has also infected your magazine with an editorial and several articles (Comment, 21 October and This Week 21 October and 4, 11 and 18 November).
First for some facts. The major disastrous animal introductions, the rabbit and the fox, were not brought into the country by scientists but by gentleman farmers intent on sport. The cane toad was brought in at the insistence of sugar cane farmers, despite warnings by some scientists.
Opponents insist that the tests with the calicivirus should have been carried out on an island much further from the mainland.
Where? Due to long and painstaking work by the wildlife authorities rabbits have been eliminated from islands, even as far as Norfolk Island. And it’s not as if this was an untested virus. It was first seen in China in 1984 and spread from there to Europe and, according to one of your articles, even as far as Mexico. The CSIRO points out that it has shown no evidence of spreading to other animals or humans in the 40 countries where it has been studied. Or is overseas science not applicable to Australia, as claimed by a spokesperson of a friend of animals group?
The CSIRO has a high reputation in this country and a public opinion poll some years ago showed that it was the most trusted of all organisations.
The scientists concerned took the normal precautions within the limits of their funding, with the additional security of the overseas experience. If it did escape that would be all to the good since that was to be the final extension of their work. If not, what was the point? More time was needed to educate the public and the farming community but the furore of this controversy will only fuel the ignorant suspicion of science.
Most conservationists welcome the work of the CSIRO in trying to deal with rabbits and foxes, two of our major pests not only on farms but also in nature reserves.
Hunting for fun
Fred Pearce may find “absurd” the views of those “urban greens” who condemn hunting, but he ought to get his facts right before reaching such a sweeping conclusion (Forum, 28 October).
He refers to my being “sacked by Greenpeace ten years ago”. In fact I have never been sacked in my life and left Greenpeace amicably to concentrate on the campaign against the cruel fur trade. More importantly, he alludes to Canadian fur trappers as “traditional peoples” and in so doing becomes one of those he later criticises, “who romanticise rural communities in far-off lands”.
In North America 鈥� where most fur is trapped 鈥� the vast majority of people trap for fun. The number of people who make their living by trapping is negligible.
It is not possible to say how many trappers in Canada are “traditional” (that is, native) since this information is not collated nor asked for when trapping licences are distributed. However, the people who could be said to trap animals as part of their subsistence needs live in the north of Canada (the Northwest Territories and the Yukon) and fur production figures for 1992 and 1993 show that fewer than 50 000 animals were trapped in that area each year compared with nearly a million throughout the whole of Canada and more than five million in the US.
Furthermore, the average trapper in the Yukon and Northwest Territories only makes around $400 before costs from a year’s trapping. In 1984 a Northwest Territories Government research paper stated:
“The majority of trappers are part-time; they earn additional cash but generally not enough to cover equipment (snowmobiles, traps, sleds) and operating costs. Trapping is not a major source of cash. Trapping and fishing represents 1 per cent of Territorial Gross Domestic Product.”
It is important to get issues such as trapping in the right perspective and to ask if it is right to allow an industry that involves so much suffering to continue so that a few dollars can trickle back to disadvantaged communities, or if there are other ways in this modern age that such peoples can exist.
Pearce quotes Jonathan Porritt as saying, in BBC Wildlife Magazine two years ago, that unidentified “campaigners” dishonestly argued that a continued ban on hunting minke whales in the North Atlantic was essential to save the species from extinction.
When challenged, Porritt was unable to give a single instance of that silly and false argument having been made. However, I could provide some examples from spokespersons for commercial whalers who love to erect Aunt Sallys; they love, too, to accuse environmentalists of wanting to “save” whales because they are supremely intelligent, while bringing forward scientists who will declare they are not.
Another ridiculous clich茅 trundled out by Pearce is his idea that the memberships of environmental organisations can be divided between mutually exclusive “people lovers” and “whale lovers”. Where would he put those who, like me, worry about future people having little or no wildlife left to enjoy, either gastronomically or spiritually?
Pearce and many other “contrarians” also seem determined to give the impression that it is just “conservationists” and/or animal lovers’ organisations that work to keep the present moratorium on commercial whaling and make it more complete. This serves to disguise the fact that the overwhelming majority of governments take that position.
There are two valid arguments for a continued ban. First, the environmentalists maintain that it is necessary until there is a safe, universal, effectively implemented and monitored management scheme in place for commercial whaling, which is why most governments voted for it in 1982. Then people and agencies concerned for the welfare of wild animals say that the methods used to hunt and kill whales are inhumane, some would say unspeakably cruel.
Finally, Pearce says “whale demographers” argue that the pilot whale hunt in the Faroes is “entirely sustainable”. In fact no one has any idea whether that is so since these whales have not yet been counted, and what we “whale demographers” call their net rate of reproduction and its dependence on population density 鈥� which determines sustainability 鈥� has not been measured or even plausibly guessed.
Arguments against this sort of hunt, which was also “deeply rooted in the culture” of the Scottish islands, are usually put in terms of cruelty, not conservation imperatives. However, if the now generally accepted “precautionary approach” were followed 鈥� implying that there should be no hunt, or at least a much reduced hunt, unless its sustainability can be fairly demonstrated 鈥� then the Faroes hunt would have to stop.
I would like to thank Pearce for his courageous and politically incorrect article. I have one minor objection though: he writes that there are two different kinds of environmentalist: “those whose main concern is animal rights, and those more interested in people and saving the planet for future generations.”
The environmental movement was originally based on ecological concepts. Killing and eating is an integral part of nature. Granting animals the right to life has nothing to do with ecology 鈥� and often conflicts with the concept itself. It is therefore not correct to call animal rights groups environmentalist.
It is the responsibility of real ecologists to separate the sheep from the goats in this mixed bag of people who seek shelter beneath the green umbrella.