Letters : Pleasure is addictive
Sheffield
The news that Prozac may be addictive
(This Week, 6 December, p 14) is
surprising only in that it has arrived so soon鈥攊t took about 25 years for
the benzodiazepines to be widely recognised as addictive.
When will the medical profession relinquish its fond belief in the existence
of a non-addictive psychotropic drug? Psychologists have known for decades that
anything that makes you feel good or stops you feeling bad can be addictive.
This applies as much to behaviour as to drugs, which is why some people can
become addicted to gambling, pornography or surfing the Internet.
This is quite independent of the fact that many drugs also compound the
problem by inducing physical dependence, which produces withdrawal symptoms. The
only drug which cannot be addictive will be one which has no perceptible
effects, or which can actually make you feel bad, such as the painkiller
pentazocine.
Letters : Correction
The details of Martin Pickford’s book were omitted from
Douglas Palmer’s review titled “The African rift”
in the 20/27 December edition. The book’s title is: Louis S. B. Leakey
(Janus Publishing, 拢12, ISBN 1857563964).
Letters : Horticultural theft
Chichester, West Sussex
In response to Feedback’s list of people with names appropriate to their
professions (13 December),
I write to put on record that I am not, and never
have been, engaged in shoplifting at a florist’s.
Letters : Error unearthed?
Alnwick, Northumberland
I think there was a spelling mistake in the review “Clovis’s last stand”
(13 December, p 47).
Of the sceptical archaeologists, surely Paul Bahn meant to
write: “All but the most fanatical doubters have thrown in the trowel.”
Letters : Rotting rituals
Aberdeen
With respect, Dan Cogan does not know what he is talking about
(Feedback, 6 December).
In my experience, a backyard compost heap can happily swallow up anything
organic, and produce beautiful well-structured, sweet-smelling compost. I have
put in meat, bones, egg-shells, mussel shells, woody garden clippings . . . the
lot.
It is easy to construct a robust wooden bin that totally excludes dogs, rats
and other animals. On rare occasions I have had mice, but the cat has
effortlessly dispatched them.
In the system I use, I add whatever is available at the time of year. Roughly
once a year, I take out the top, incompletely digested layer and sieve the
remainder. The sieved material is ready-to-use compost. Bones and whatever else
is left in the sieve goes back in the bin to start the next batch.
I have one extra holding bin for garden cuttings, from which a portion is
taken as needed to add to the compost bin (somewhat more in volume than the
kitchen scraps).
The meat disappears without trace over the year; hard material takes longer,
but so what?
Letters : Lunar commercials
Vashon, Washington
With regard to advertising on the surface of the Moon
(Feedback, 22 November and
3 January),
in the 1950s Robert Heinlein wrote a story called The Man
Who Sold the Moon. His hero entrepreneur approached the president of a soft
drinks company, offering to sell him exclusive rights to blazon his logo across
the Moon’s face鈥攐therwise he would go to his competitor. The president was
appalled by the idea of seeing the other company’s logo in the sky every night,
but did not want his own company to be guilty of defacing the Moon.
The entrepreneur said that the idea wasn’t for them to actually put their
logo on the Moon, but only to license the right. Every one of their
advertisements would then send the message that by not exercising their right,
his company was responsible for keeping the face of the Moon in its pristine
state.
Fifty years later, does anyone think that corporate vandals, if given half a
chance, would balk at scribbling their graffiti across the face of the Moon?
Letters : No smoking
Roade, Northamptonshire
Over a lifetime, our tissues may accrue significant dioxin concentrations. As
cremation is the generally preferred method of disposal I wonder if the
possibility of downwind pollution from crematoria has been considered. Are
oxidation temperatures sufficient to guarantee breakdown of the material, or are
the flues equipped with filters?
If not “Smoking can seriously damage your health” takes an entirely new
meaning. Perhaps one of New 杏吧原创’s funeral director readers can
set our minds at rest.
Letters : . . . . .
Redmarley d’Abitot, Gloucestershire
I don’t know just why “ninthly”, as opposed to some other amount, but this
same joke appeared as a delightful cartoon by Fougasse in a pre-war Punch.
The picture showed two gowned and earnest dons deep in conversation striding
obliviously through wind, rain and autumn leaves in the quad, over the caption
“and ninthly . . . “. I don’t suppose the joke was new even then.
Letters : Nthly
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
And ninthly? Not very far down the list for a really tortuous argument, is
it? Even Nils Grande
(Letters, 13 December, p 57) said he would only go as far
as “and twenty-fifthly”, and that was with his back to the wall.
The record for this style of donnish enumeration reaches comfortably into
four figures. According to John Betjeman, it was established earlier this
century by the late Lord Mount Prospect, an Irish nobleman who belonged to an
obscure religious sect known as the Ember Day Bryanites.
He died while preaching a very long sermon, and I can do no better than to
quote this macabre account from Betjeman’s The Society for the Discovery of
Obscure Peers.
“Then: oh horror! A black-gowned figure, whose head was a skull off which all
but the spectacles had withered, whose arm rested on a pile of papers, and whose
fleshless finger kept a place . . . Some time passed of clicking silence before
anyone ventured near the sight. When the bravest did so, it was only to see that
the papers were all a discourse, and that the fingers rested at the phrase `and
three thousand, two hundred and thirty secondly . . . ‘”.
Letters : Killing kangaroos
Gabrielle Tindall suggests that Australia’s fledgling kangaroo meat export
industry has been derailed in Britain by “misguided animal liberationists”. But
the reality is that the British public has recoiled from eating cruelly
harvested exotic meats (Letters, 29 November, p 62).
Most kangaroo shoots take place at night and, according to the Kangaroo
Protection Cooperative, based in Sydney, “killing in the field is not supervised
and most commercial kangaroo shooters are part-time operators. Even for
professional shooters a head shot at night is a difficult target. It would also
be difficult to find a wounded animal in the dark, so it could lie in pain for
many hours. Shooters kill the joey by bashing it against a wheel brace, by using
a crowbar or by crushing it underfoot.”
The cooperative further maintains that unsupervised mass slaughter of any
native animal imperils it. In drought, kangaroos cease breeding and begin dying.
In severe drought, on average, over half the kangaroos in any one area will die.
The derailing of this fledgling trade in animal suffering is most welcome.
Letters : Titan summer
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire
I was intrigued to read of the Arizona University team which has shown that,
as the Sun becomes a red giant, Saturn’s moon Titan could become warm enough for
life (This Week, 29 November, p 28).
In my recent science fiction novel Titan
(reviewed by Ian Stewart, 13 September, p 50)
revived astronauts explore just such a far-future “Titan
summer”, in which exotic ammonia-based life forms flourish briefly under Titan’s
green (methane-laden) sky.
In fact, I speculate, Titan may already be primed for such an awakening. The
moon had an early “warm and wet” period, which might have been long enough for
life of some form to evolve鈥攐nly to be sent into a 10-billion-year deep
freeze. As a science fiction author, it’s nice to outguess the scientists
sometimes.
On the other hand, there are other predictions in Titan鈥攍ike
the destruction of humanity in 2015鈥� I’ll be quite happy to have
disproved.
Letters : Peace and prosperity
London
Fred Pearce (Forum, 13 December, p 53)
rightly salutes the work done by
Africa’s farmers in developing agricultural techniques, giving the lie to those
who claimed that climatic change, population pressure, endemic corruption and
inappropriate agricultural techniques spelled doom for the continent. All these
problems remain but, as Pearce implies, they are kept at bay by the constant
creativity of farmers.
They have never been the primary cause of famine. In the 1990s, the African
country with the worst famine has been Somalia. In the 1980s, Mozambique and
Ethiopia suffered. In the 1960s, famine killed thousands in the fertile
south-western part of Nigeria. In all of these countries, civil war caused many
more deaths from famine than from gunfire.
The relative success of the 1990s can be thus attributed to the end of proxy
wars as much as to any technological breakthrough鈥攁nd the real message is
that given peace, Africans can create their own prosperity.
Letters : Same difference
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
As one who has always had difficulty grappling with probabilities, may I
suggest that the difficulties experienced in explaining the pitfalls of DNA
evidence to juries
(This Week, 13 December, p 18)
might be much more easily resolved than it seems to be at present.
It is easy to understand that any two items can be proved to be different
from each other, provided that they are indeed so and that we have the necessary
means of measuring the difference, but no two items can ever be proved to be
identical because we can never be sure that our means of measurement are
sufficient.
Therefore, DNA evidence alone can be used with confidence to prove that two
samples of DNA are from different sources, but cannot prove such samples have
the same origin, however likely it may seem.
Letters : Seismic sea changes
I write in response to recent published research by Bill McGuire of the
Seabolt Research Collaborative Project strongly suggesting a link between
sea-level changes and raised levels of volcanic activity
(“Blowing hot and cold”, 11 October 1997, p 32).
The conclusions appear to be very much in line
with a framework hypothesis originally developed in 1989 by myself and a civil
engineering colleague, Patrick Reynolds
(Letters, 20 July 1996, p 51).
The “geological Gaia theory” suggests that raised sea levels, such as would
result from rapid melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, would generate major
coastal erosion, crustal loading and warping, leading to increased subduction,
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions along continental margins, notably along the
Pacific coasts of North and South America. This would in turn precipitate global
cooling in a form of negative feedback loop, which could be catastrophic.
We concluded that one line of evidence would be microfossil data and
widespread ash deposits in undisturbed ocean floor sediments in the Pacific or
Atlantic鈥攏ow confirmed by Seabolt in the Mediterranean鈥攁long with
recent results from ice core analyses and studies of ancient eruptions following
rapid ice melt, notably 12 000 years ago. However, of more immediate interest,
and an obvious way of testing the theory, is research into the seismic and
volcanic consequences of shorter term sea-level changes such as occur off
Ecuador, Peru and Chile during El Ni帽o Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
events.
A comparison of volcanic and earthquake data with significant ENSOs since
1700 suggests a strong positive correlation, and there is growing evidence ENSOs
are altering in both severity and duration with global warming.
It appears that a whole series of major eruptions over the last two centuries
are associated with strong El Ni帽o oceanic events: Montserrat (ongoing),
El Chich贸n, Mexico (1982/83), Mount Pinatubo, Philippines (1991), Mount
Pel茅e, Martinique (1902), Mount Tambora, Indonesia (1815/16, “the
year without a summer”), Cotopaxi, Ecuador (1877), Krakatoa (1883), Mount Unzen,
Japan (1792, 1991), to name a few.
Examination of earthquake frequency in relation to El Ni帽o, and also
cool water anomalies (“La Ni帽a” events) for South America between 1900
and 1981, where the theory would suggest a clear relationship, yields even more
striking results. While data from early years, as the seismic monitoring network
grew rapidly, is unlikely to provide a clear picture, strong positive anomalies
associated with ENSOs occurred in: 1932/34, 1939/40, 1942, 1957/58, 1965, 1970,
1973, and 1976/77. More recently, 1991 was marked by major surges in earthquake
activity.
While increased earthquake activity marked almost every ENSO episode over the
period, a number of lesser quake events were marked by cold water anomalies and
lower sea level: 1924, 1928, 1970 (all cold, while 1970 was also an ENSO year).
A few of these were also associated with minor volcanic activity in the
region.
Quiescent earthquake periods mostly seemed to fall between warm and cold
episodes, as predicted. This is particularly striking between 1943 and 1949, an
unusually long quiescent period, from which cold and warm anomalies were
completely absent. Only raised quake activity during 1960/61, and 1967 seemed
not to be associated with either warm or cold anomalies.
The preliminary conclusion is that ENSOs and to a lesser extent La
Ni帽a events could well be the “smoking guns” explaining a major part of
the frequency distribution of intense earthquake episodes in South America, and
to a significant degree on a global scale. Volcanic eruptions are obviously
related to seismic events, but also seem to be associated less directly with
cold and warm anomalies, with major eruptions more strongly associated.
The implications of rapidly rising sea levels for inactive fault
lines鈥攁nd the possible creation of new ones鈥攃ould be serious. The
North Sea basin, English Channel and Gulf of Mexico, could yet spring some
surprises, particularly where oil and gas extraction have already raised
relative sea level.
I believe this area of research holds the key not only to better climate
change modelling, but to a new era of hazard prediction, including improved
earthquake, volcanic, landslide and tsunami warning systems.
Letters : . . . . .
Morley, Australia
On behalf of all fair-minded Australians I apologise for our government’s
behaviour at the Kyoto greenhouse emissions conference.
Their strategy was brutally simple: we are a relatively small population
of high polluters and we are quite prepared to scuttle this conference if we are
not given an unreasonable licence to pollute. This government has been
bloody-minded on a number of sensitive issues and hopefully they will reap their
just rewards at next year’s election.
Letters : Global icing
Barry, Glamorgan
It is comforting to know that whatever the eventual outcome of the agreement
reached at Kyoto, it will have almost no effect on global warming.
Twenty years ago, we were warned about the coming ice age. Extrapolating from
the evidence of ice cores, seafloor sediments and peat bogs, we are at the end
of the current interglacial, and a new ice age could start anytime. The
requisite temperature drop could happen in as little as 50 years. The greenhouse
effect is the only conceivable remedy that we have and, considering other
contests of humanity versus the forces of nature, probably a slender one.
It may do no more than buy us a bit of extra time, but there is a hopeful
possibility. Ice ages seem to be runaway instabilities caused by comparatively
small effects. The greenhouse effect may be enough to counter them and keep the
balance where it is.
Suppose the balance could be maintained and even tilts towards a warmer
world? Our descendants would end up living like Mediterraneans, instead of like
Laplanders clinging to the tundra along the South coast.
So, keep those fires stoked and hope for the best.
Letters : . . . . .
Wagga Wagga, New South Wales
Tindall highlights a serious problem that we Australians face from
self-appointed British experts on Australia’s unique fauna.
The actions of animal liberationists in bringing a ban on Britain importing
kangaroo meat has cost my rural compatriots a great deal of money. Yet it will
do nothing to overcome a simple, undeniable problem: Australia is literally
swarming with kangaroos, especially mountain greys and desert reds, the ones
which had been destined for discriminating British palates.
Australia is the driest inhabited landmass on Earth and its flora and fauna
have evolved unique ways of overcoming the vagaries of a quite insane climate.
`Roos, for example, time their breeding to coincide precisely with times of
plentiful water and food. Thus, before the first Britishers arrived, there
simply weren’t all that many kangaroos. But we built dams and weirs, we dug
wells and boreholes, we opened wide the floodgates of artesian basins. And the
kangaroos found paradise, breeding like demented rabbits.
Faced with the choice of farming sheep and cattle or unsaleable kangaroos,
our graziers came down in favour of sheep and cattle. Which meant that the
kangaroo population had to be reduced or the domestic stock (and the graziers)
would have starved.
The opportunity to sell kangaroo meat meant that the marsupial, normally
regarded as a pest second only to the rabbit, suddenly became valuable and,
therefore, graziers had a first-class incentive to protect the wandering
mobs.
You Britishers have certainly ended that. Millions of kangaroos will continue
to be slaughtered each year, for we must maintain our primary industries. But
now, the valuable meat must be left to rot in the Sun.