State of mind
Laura Spinney reports on an experiment in which one group, told to
concentrate on the face of a bank robber in a video, did worse at picking him
out from seven similar photos than a second group, told to occupy their minds by
naming the US states, Alabama to Wisconsin, thus proving the power of intuition over rationality
(“I had a hunch”, 5 September, p 42).
It makes one wonder what secret powers lie hidden in the minds of those who
are able to go all the way to Wyoming.
Letter
It seems a little odd that scientists should be devoting time to finding out
if nonverbal thinking is a useful tool. Surely we must be the only mammals that
indulge in verbal thinking鈥攖he rest seem to get along perfectly well
without it.
Come again?
Despite being scientifically naive, I still smelt a rat when I read Tam
Dalyell’s “spin” on the use of desiccated mouse sperm to “reduce the number of
animals needed for research”
(Thistle Diary, 5 September, p 54).
To reduce the number of laboratory mice kept only for breeding stock (which
are destroyed once past their reproductive prime) is not to reduce the number of
animals needed for research. Rather, it only reduces the number of animals
needed to breed the animals needed for research. Desiccated mouse sperm will not
eradicate the suffering of the many hundreds of offspring a single pair of
cosseted laboratory mice might produce during their reproductive period.
Instead, it will merely eliminate the cost of providing what must seem to the
aforementioned rodent breeding stock to be heaven.
Given the choice between nonexistence, suffering as an experimental animal,
or being given a cosy home, good food and drink, and the opportunity to have
copious sex, I know which I’d choose.
Come on Tam, keep your eye on the ball. It’s the numbers of mice actually
being used for experiments that must be reduced!
Skin deep
It is not only along seashores where the healing powers of onions are well known
(Feedback, 5 September, p 88). I discovered this in the late 1980s, while
living in a Peruvian village high in the Andes as part of my anthropological
research.
Andean peasants like their parties, and (like many of us) their booze. During
one such event on a cold night, I tried to start my little petrol stove. Because
I was in a questionable condition, my left hand got severely burnt. Some local
women immediately applied thin monocellular skins of red onions that can be
peeled off between the thicker layers, and told me this would help me heal very
quickly. I had to leave them on for at least one night.
And so it happened. Later, back in the Netherlands, I found that yellow and
white onions have a similar effect.
Letter
A common remedy I’ve read of in the Caribbean, for when one gets stung by
jellyfish and the like, is to urinate on it鈥攖he wound, that is, not the
jellyfish.
Now and Zen
As an artist and potter, I was fascinated by the recent scientific studies on
“unconscious awareness” skills
(“Irresistible illusions”, 5 September, p 32).
The “instinctive feel” aspect of perception plays a very important role in areas
that are often attributed, falsely, to some mysterious “talent” that artists are
credited with possessing. In fact, artistic “talent” may simply be an ability to
let the Zombie get on with the job.
For example, several hours of my working week are spent drawing a figure from
life. There are good days, when every mark on the paper goes just where it
should, and bad days when the simplest drawing seems laboured and clumsy. I put
this down to being in or out of “the flow”.
Significantly, “blind” drawing (where one looks only at the model, not at the
paper, while drawing) helps get one in “the flow”. Now we know why.
Similarly, on a more modest level, when throwing a production run of pots, in
order to ensure consistent size, the clay must be weighed for every bowl. A long
cylinder is roughly rolled out, and the necessary amount is twisted off for
weighing. Again, there are good days and bad days in terms of accurately
estimating the desired amount of clay per twist.
Since reading the article on Zombie mind, I’ve experimented by averting my
gaze at the moment of twisting off the clay. Result: immediate improvement. The
clay pieces were within a gram or so of the target weight each time, accurate
enough for a pot.
Doubtless athletes and sportsmen can give similar examples. So let’s dignify
our “Zombie” with the title it was given in a culture which understood its
importance long ago鈥� namely, “Zen mind”.
Toilet tales
It seems that Adam Hart-Davis may have been over-dismissive of Thomas
Crapper’s contributions to domestic plumbing
(Letters, 29 August, p 51).
It is true that “flushing cisterns had been around for hundreds of years”
before Crapper started work, but the problem was that they contained valves
which allowed great quantities of water to be wasted. Many cisterns had flap
valves opened by a cord or chain.
The Metropolis Water Act (1872) was introduced to stop this wastage, among
other things, and encouraged inventors, including Crapper, to devise a “water
waste preventer” cistern. It is not certain that Crapper invented the
siphon-based cistern, which could not leak when not in use, as a solution, but
it seems that his versions came to be regarded as the most reliable and
popular.
Letter
One of the first flushing lavatories was described in 1596 by Sir John
Harington in “A new discourse of a stale subject called the metamorphosis of
Ajax”.
A hilarious and scholarly account of the whole subject is Cleanliness and
Godliness, or, The Further Metamorphosis by Reginald
Reynolds (Allen & Unwin, 1943).
Muck spreader
Logging onto my e-mail after a day out of the office, I was annoyed to find
that among my 40 or so new messages I had received 15 identical copies of a news
update from the Monsanto list server, part of that company’s useful website.
Today I received an apology鈥攁 mere five times.
Do you think there could be a modified genetic algorithm at work here which
has escaped to contaminate neighbouring programs?
Simple truths
I wondered how the young woman on page 26 of the 22 August issue
(“Why God plays dice”) had shaved her armpits.
After reading the accompanying article I realised she must have used Occam’s
razor.
Letter
Correction: We anticipated a patents dispute between AAKI
Semiconductor and Ball Semiconductor, two companies attempting to make spherical
microchips
(This Week, August 22, p 7). This is not the case: AAKI and Ball are
one and the same. AAKI Semiconductor, founded by Akira Ishikawa, has changed its
name to Ball Semiconductor.
So while the first patents on spherical semiconductors were indeed filed
under the name AAKI Semiconductor, they have since been rolled under the name of
Ball Semiconductor. We are happy to set the record straight.
Fertile imaginations
Debora MacKenzie’s article
(“Waste not”, 29 August, p 26) on the problems of
sewage sludge disposal was well researched and correctly highlights the
increasing disposal problems faced by water authorities.
However, some of the photographs accompanying this article are presented in a
misleading manner that could potentially damage the fruit and vegetable
industry. Horticultural producers in Britain do not use sewage waste on
horticultural land for the very reasons highlighted in the article.
Major buyers are well informed about the issues involved. The industry
standards enshrined in the Assured Produce and Nature’s Choice schemes, which
are both independently verified, give a guarantee to consumers that suppliers do
not use sewage sludge in the manner your photographic layout suggests.
Letter
The water companies are trying to persuade me to spread sewage sludge on my
farm. Some farmers will probably opt for this as it is cheap (the water
companies will do it for free, apparently). Surely we know better than this.
Even if the sludge has been treated we have an inborn revulsion to it, mainly
because it contains our own brand of pathogens and parasites.
We know it is better husbandry whenever possible to put cow manure on the
horses’ fields, and vice versa.
Tourist trap
Ian Anderson presents some worrying information on the occurrence of
introduced diseases in Antarctica
(This Week, 5 September, p 4). But the
subheading above the article claims that: “Tourists and scientists could be
bringing deadly diseases to Antarctica’s wildlife”, while the published table
charts the number of tourists visiting the continent each year. This is
misleading, and unfairly implies that much of the blame lies with tourists.
Some years ago, Robert Headland of the Scott Polar Research Institute
estimated the amount of time tourists would actually spend on land in Antarctica
in one year, and compared this with the amount of time spent by members of the
various national Antarctic programmes. He concluded that the effects of the
tourist industry on the Antarctic amounted to just 0.52 per cent of the total
human impact.
Tourist numbers have risen since Headland made his calculations, but the
equivalent figure today would be no more than about 1 per cent of the total
impact. Your own article and editorial cited several instances of alien
organisms being discovered
(Editorial, 5 September, p 3). But all were at
scientific bases鈥擬cMurdo (American), Mawson (Australian), Bird Island in
South Georgia (British, and off limits to tourists), and Hope Bay (site of a
large Argentine base, mostly populated by military personnel and their families,
and seldom visited by tourists).
The vast majority of tourists simply do not take any food ashore, nor do they
defecate ashore. Sewage is properly treated before being discharged from tourist
ships, while poultry waste is stored on board for disposal on shore outside the
Antarctic Treaty area.
Your editorial calls for education campaigns “for scientists and tourists
alike”. As a tourist expedition leader to the Antarctic, I know that tourists
are already given very detailed briefings covering, inter alia, the
danger of introducing diseases. It would be simple to add more detail to these
briefings, if necessary. Tourism in Antarctica is run by environmentally aware
people, and is more tightly regulated than tourism in any other part of the
world. In this case tourists are almost certainly not to blame. Nor is it
necessarily scientists who are to blame, either. On most Antarctic bases,
scientists are greatly outnumbered by support personnel.
Super savers
You take an unduly dim view of energy conservation and carbon taxes
(Editorial, 5 September, p 3 and
This Week, p 18). Energy efficiency can
dramatically lower the unit cost of energy services but has only a small,
second-order effect on energy prices, which are largely determined by
supply-side factors.
The idea is to substitute increased capital expenditure鈥攐n compact
fluorescent lighting, loft insulation and advanced lightweight materials, for
example鈥攆or lower operating expenditure on electricity, gas or petrol. By
conventional appraisal criteria, such capital investments are often
fantastically attractive and will enrich those wise enough to make them while
reducing emissions of greenhouse gas, acid and radioactive pollution.
But it is argued that the cost savings from such investments would reappear
as increased energy consumption. This is very unlikely, as the share of energy
in the gross domestic product is only about 4 per cent for both the individual
and society. In effect, there are plenty of ways to spend the energy
conservation dividend other than on more energy. If people lagged their lofts
and then used their energy savings to buy goods detrimental to the environment,
then the argument would have some force, but they don’t generally do this.
While it is desirable to reduce the economic cost of energy services, its
price is under the partial control of policy makers through taxation levied on
energy and on energy-saving equipment. Carbon/energy taxes stimulate energy
efficiency. They are not, as you imply, an unpalatable alternative. They may not
be universally popular (are any taxes?), but at the level of the whole economy
they redistribute the burden of taxation from good things like labour and
investment to bad things like pollution and waste.
Letter
Any carbon or energy tax introduced in Britain following the current review
by Sir Colin Marshall is likely to be small, at least initially. The government
has also committed itself to making the tax “revenue-neutral” through reduction
in corporation and insurance taxes, for example. As a result, the
carbon-reducing impact, in the absence of other measures, is also likely to be
small. Real-world experience in the Netherlands suggests that if a proportion of
the revenue鈥攕ay, between 10 and 15 per cent鈥攊s recycled towards tax
incentives for energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewable energy, the carbon
savings are up to five times greater for the same level of tax.
Horace Herring’s conclusion that a carbon tax is the critical policy lever is
thus only partially correct. At a time of very low energy prices, a coordinated
government approach is vitally needed to deliver both on the current target to
cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent and the deeper cuts to come.
As well as giving companies and consumers an energy price signal, any such
initiative needs to offer sustained incentives to use the technologies and
approaches that reduce carbon emissions. That includes everything from building
regulations to tax breaks for investment in sustainable energy. If the
government is serious about climate change, action on many fronts will be
needed.