Junk free
On the subject of wasted resources and junk mail, you say: “In the US, the Direct Mail Association can help you get your name off a lot of lists at one go. Elsewhere you may need more patience” (Editorial, 29 August, p 3).
In Britain, we have the Mailing Preference Service. I have found it to be very effective in stopping junk mail being sent to my home. For an application form write to FREEPOST 22, London, W1E 7EZ.
Still unplaced
Your report on communications satellites states: “Iridium’s constellation of 66 working satellites and six orbiting spares was completed last week with the launch of five satellites” (This Week, 19 September, p 16).
Unfortunately, this is not quite correct, since launching five satellites does necessarily place them in their correct positions. The gaps that have appeared in the working network are distributed among several of the six orbital planes occupied by the Iridium satellites.
Getting the replacements to the right positions within those planes is likely to take considerable time and effort.
I expect the 1 November deadline to pass with some locations unfilled and the system only 90 to 95 per cent operational. This is still an achievement, considering it is only 18 months since the first Iridium was launched.
By the …
Now that nominative determinism is exhausted, could we consider people who are attracted to each other by their names? For example, one of my sisters married a Mr Short.
Maggie wasn't there
Ian Gammie (Letters, 10 October, p 54) has badly misled readers who might have liked to know more about the Ecu.
The Ecu is not, never has been and now never will be a “currency”. It is a unit of account made up of a basket of currencies.
It was not named in the early 1980s. The Ecu was initially identical to the former European Unit of Account, which was re-christened the Ecu in the course of negotiations in 1978 to set up the European Monetary System, of which it was to be “the centre”.
The name was formally adopted at the European Council in Brussels in December 1978, when the Prime Minister was James Callaghan, not Margaret Thatcher, so Gammie’s whole anecdote is untrue.
It is a matter of opinion whether the earlier ecu was a well-established French coin. It was named after the shield which appeared on the original coin (“ecu” from the Latin “scutum”) and is if anything equivalent to the Portuguese “escudo”.
The double meaning of ecu was widely commented on in Brussels and elsewhere in 1978 and was seen, if anything, as a rather clever device which recalled the desperate efforts of European states in the early 15th century to re-establish credible coinage when currencies were being debased.
Rocks from the Rockies
I can confirm recent rumours that butchers do indeed supplement their income by selling “mountain oysters” (Letters, 10 October, p 54).
After repeated sightings of the Rocky Mountain variety on menus throughout the eponymous region, curiosity took its toll. Worryingly flattened, deep-fried and accompanied with a sweet piquant chilli sauce, these testicles were reassuringly tasteless.
Nude maths
I see that men tend to perform better in maths tests when dressed in less (Feedback, 3 October).
Is this because, with fewer clothes on, they can count on their toes as well as on their fingers?
Ancient joke
Glad to see the old “Wash., Biol., Surv.” joke has reached England (Feedback, 10 October). I first heard it in 1955, as a six-year-old boy in North Carolina, where the letter is attributed to a gentleman living rather far back in the hill country:
“I washed it, bioled and surved it. It tasted awful.”
Once all these jokes are enshrined for ever on Web pages, it’ll become an interesting exercise to try to track their spread in oral tradition by noticing how many different people around the world report where they first learned them鈥� pre-Internet.
Underwater railway
Further to your correspondence on toilet bowls (Letters, 3 October, p 58), what will future archaeologists make of the evidence of an extensive submarine railway system in what is now the English Channel and Western approaches?
We use railway chairs鈥攖he things the rails sit in鈥攖o anchor static fishing gear, and have done for many years, losing them on a regular basis.
They are becoming scarce now, there being very little railway left to uproot, but I would think that Dr Beeching’s entire production has been transferred from branch line to seabed over the past 35 years.
Correction
The article on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sick building syndrome (This Week, 3 October, p 6) mistakenly attributed the opinion that VOCs from tobacco smoke may react with ozone to form irritant chemicals to Peder Wolkoff of the National Institute of Occupational Health in Copenhagen. This should have been attributed to Charles Weschler of Bell Communications Research in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Killing by carbon
Your report on mink’s aversion to carbon dioxide (This Week, 10 October, p 16) is highly topical. Mink in fur factory farms are killed from around mid-November, after their first winter’s moult (when their fur is at its best).
Last year four of Britain’s fur factory farms used carbon dioxide to slaughter their mink.
The clear advice given by the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare is that carbon dioxide “is not a true anaesthetic and NOT suitable for animals larger than guinea-pigs” (UFAW’s emphasis). Most mink bred for their fur are significantly larger (heavier and longer) than guinea pigs.
It is difficult to reconcile the observations of animals “recoiling”, “coughing and spluttering” when encountering the gas with the requirements of the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995 which make it an offence to cause or permit “any avoidable excitement, pain or suffering” to animals.
The government must now implement its promise to ban fur farming, sooner rather than later, as well as banning the use of carbon dioxide as an interim measure.
Out on a limb
Your leader discussed the pros and cons of surgeons’ becoming skilled at transplanting parts of the body, with the recent case of Clint Hallam’s new arm in mind (Editorial, 3 October, p 3). As a left-leg amputee from the Second World War, I’ve often contemplated the day when a “new” flesh-and-blood leg could be fitted if desired. It seems that day has arrived.
Apart from all the techno-medical problems to be overcome, one aspect has always held me back from relishing such a possibility. If someone else’s leg was sewn on to my thigh stump and it worked, could I ever live with looking down and waggling Fred Bloggs’s toes as part of me? Physically it could be a dream come true after 54 years with a prosthesis鈥� but mentally?
Maybe it’s my age. I’ve got thoroughly used to my carbon fibre limb, and I think I would decline any offer to have two living legs once more. That’s just limbs; as for the thought of having someone else’s face . . . no thanks!
All in a line
John and Mary Gribbin’s account (Inside Science, 12 September) of cometary or asteroid impacts may give the impression that the subject is better understood than is actually the case. Jay Melosh, whose work they cite, has recently written on the vexing question of why structures attributed to impacts often seem to lie on the lines of structures of a more obviously geological origin (Nature, vol 393, p 221).
The Vredefort Ring, discussed in detail by the Gribbins, is one of the best examples. The line formed by the individual centres of the Great Dyke in Zimbabwe, the axis of the Bushveld Complex, the granite south of Pretoria, the Vredefort Ring and the Trompsburg Complex could hardly be straighter. It is not a case of selecting those structures that happen to fall on a line鈥攖here are very few other structures of this scale in the region, and the Great Dyke puts tight constraints on the direction of the line.
Does this mean that they are all caused by impacts, then? That conclusion would mean some radical reinterpretation of the other structures. Is Vredefort actually geological, rather than an impact structure? That interpretation would cause problems too, because Vredefort contains shock features such as shatter cones which elsewhere are considered to be unequivocal indicators of impact origin.
Alternatively, the impacts on this line may just be another coincidence. For people who are concerned that their safety is threatened by possible impacts, there could be a partial solution which is much cheaper than the vast pork barrel the Gribbins advocated for astronomers. Avoid living along any known line of igneous structures and you could reduce your chances of being struck.
Better black boxes
I was interested in your story about black box recorders, especially the suggestion that an internal battery should be fitted to these devices (This Week, 3 October, p 4).
I was intrigued by the concept of a “g-switch”, which would cut battery power to the data/voice recorders after a crash, preventing the recording from being overwritten in the loop. Why not double the length of the recording loop to sixty minutes, and incorporate a timer to cut battery power thirty minutes after loss of external power? This would side-step the risk of a g-switch failing to activate or activating prematurely.
Also, it was suggested that in the event of a total power failure, the systems that feed information into the flight data recorder would shut down and prevent further recording. As Albert Reitan suggests, some of the sensors are fed information from low-power instruments that already have battery backup. And some of the sensors could even be installed within the data recorder itself, such as an aircraft attitude sensor.
Rooting for rubbish
Genetically engineered trees might well suck mercury out of the soil and blow it away into the atmosphere (This Week, 3 October, p 11), but will this help old landfills?
You rightly point out that any mercury in them is mostly immobilised (as sulphide) and that converting a relatively localised toxin into a less toxic but globally dispersed one might be a tad contentious.
And it might not work. Roots need to breathe and, in natural soils, even tree roots do not usually go down more than a metre or two. Is there any evidence that they ever “penetrate deep”, even in the looser medium of a settled landfill?
Give them the blues
I would like to correct the misconception in the otherwise interesting piece about ways of improving phototherapy for jaundiced newborn babies (This Week, 19 September, p 13).
Reference is made to treating the babies with UV light. In fact, quite the reverse is true, since steps are taken to cut out all the UV present in the lights which would otherwise damage the baby’s skin.
Although there is still some debate about this, the most effective therapeutic wavelengths are believed to be in the blue or blue-green, and lights are specifically chosen which maximise output in this part of the spectrum.