Oh no we're not
Far be it from me to try and defend the sorry ways in which we Norwegians, in
general, treat our environment. We have broken our promises on reducing carbon
dioxide emissions, we lag behind in recycling, we overfish, we seriously
underfund public transport 鈥攖he list is long, and we deserve
criticism.
This said, there are fundamental flaws in the World Wide Fund for Nature’s view of us
(This Week, 3 October, p 12).
To consider the use of fish as more
polluting than beef, pork or poultry speaks for itself. The production of meat,
especially in feeding animals with grain, is among the most inefficient and
environmentally questionable industries in our part of the world.
As for the ranking of Norway as having the most impact on the environment
with Britain in 41st place鈥� anyone familiar with them both (as I am) would
easily spot the fallacy鈥擲ellafield, BSE and untreated sewage dumped into
the North Sea, for example. But really, all anyone would have to do would be to
take a stroll around the streets of London during rush-hour, to experience daily
pollution on a grand scale.
As for using cement production as a measure of land use鈥攖his is beyond
silly. Norway is a major producer of cement, but most of it is for export. So,
for that matter, is much of the fish caught in Norwegian waters, Denmark and the
US being major customers.
It is a safe bet that the rest of the report may also deserve this
description: trash.
Sounds in the head
The impression has been that a new bone conduction device provides “tinnitus
cancellation” technology that can cancel, or nullify, tinnitus sounds
(This Week, 8 August, p 6).
Unfortunately, as an audio engineer and masking device
manufacturer, I do not believe this is possible.
The concept of tinnitus cancellation (sometimes referred to as “phase
cancellation”) is based on the seemingly simple principle of applying a sound
wave that is “equal and opposite” to the tinnitus sound, thereby cancelling it
out. However, for this to happen, the sound to be cancelled must exist in the
form of vibrations of the hair fibres in the cochlea.
This occurs when we hear any outside sound, and under such circumstances it
is possible to apply an electronically generated cancellation sound to the ear
in order to nullify the outside sound. Ear-worn noise cancellation devices
operate exactly on that principle.
Tinnitus, however, is perceived by a totally different mechanism. In an
overwhelmingly high percentage of cases, no cochlear hair fibre vibrations are
associated with tinnitus. The tinnitus is instead perceived in the brain, even
if the perception is neurologically triggered by cochlear damage.
Therefore, introducing an external sound to cancel out the tinnitus only
serves to introduce a new source of cochlear neurological stimulation which, if
not implemented properly, can actually exacerbate the level of tinnitus.
When done well, the new sound can either mask or distract from the tinnitus.
These are different processes from tinnitus cancellation and can be extremely
effective. Ironically, systems that claim they cancel tinnitus can provide a
degree of tinnitus masking, although they are not promoted as doing so, but they
offer no inherent advantage over conventional masking techniques.
When a manufacturer promotes tinnitus cancellation effects, experts worry
about the calibre of the unadvertised masking characteristics of the device and
the risk of exacerbating symptoms.
Theory on stage
I was very interested in the article by Robert Matthews on drama theory
(“Don’t get even, get mad”, 10 October, p 26).
It may well be new to mathematicians, but it certainly is not new to dramatists.
As someone who has taught I usually start my students with the “impossible
conflict” that has to be resolved, typically where there is no happy ending.
Making decisions when only a limited amount of information, time or resources
are available is the very basis of drama.
All stories can be described in terms of mathematical models and include
linear (sequential), zigzag (non-sequential), domino (one event sets off others
in a line), ripple (one event spreads out in all directions), shunting (one
event effecting others but indirectly) and bus stop (characters changing as the
story moves along) models. All situations can be seen in these terms, so that
the effect of any decision can be estimated in terms of its eventual impact.
Story analysis consists of seeing how many lines are going on within a story and
where they lead.
The problem with game theory is that it can offer options that require a
intuitive response, and that in turn requires a decision. For many years I have
asked students: “What is the most important decision you have ever made in your
life?” As yet, I have never found anyone who can give me an immediate answer. I
then ask them how they make decisions. Most do not know.
Drama theory is a very interesting development as it takes into account the
way people play games at different levels at the same time (what they say, what
they mean, and what they do). Such levels may not have much consistency,
however.
The essence of game theory is that a game has objectives, rules and
boundaries. Defining those in a life situation is obviously difficult, but
dramatists deal with it by regarding a character’s objective as being the
“game”. The players are divided into those that promote the objective and those
that hinder it.
The mathematics of drama is a welcome development. I look forward to the
analysis of humour as verbal topology.
Power for the poor
Reducing emissions of carbon dioxide through energy efficiency is not just an
economic and technical issue, but also a social equity issue.
Amory Lovins says that: “The rebound effect becomes significant only in such
cases as a hovel, where lagging allows previously unheated space to be warmed to
a more tolerable temperature”
(Letters, 10 October, p 52).
Yet this is precisely the state that many homes in Britain are in. The 1996
Scottish House Condition Survey showed that 93 per cent of dwellings in Scotland
do not meet modern energy efficiency standards. Nearly 350 000 (17 per cent)
were rated as poor鈥攖hey scored 2 or less on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10
is high efficiency. Similar statistics also apply to England and Wales.
Many of the energy-inefficient properties are occupied by low-income families
who cannot afford to heat their homes properly (the fuel poor), with knock-on
health, social and financial implications. Where investment is made in the
energy efficiency of these properties, a considerable proportion of the
efficiency gains may be taken up in increased levels of comfort, rather than
reduced energy consumption.
Across Britain as a whole it has been estimated that something like 8 million
households (approximately one-third) can be classified as fuel poor. Take this
into account and the rebound effect does not seem so insignificant.
Letter
How can you debate the ethics of gender selection and new reproductive
technologies without addressing the issue of male babies being perceived as more
desirable in many cultures around the world?
Your Forum article talks of “embryos of the wrong sex鈥攗sually male”.
This is wrong and biases the article into a discussion only about medical
benefits, rather than attempting to look at the whole ethical debate.
Globally and historically, female babies are the “wrong” sex. The number of
female babies mysteriously aborted in, particularly, developing countries is a
huge ethical problem arising from the ability to predict an unborn baby’s sex
scientifically.
You fail to consider the disastrous results of this ability in countries
where females are oppressed and seen as an economic burden.
Letter
“Evolution is dead” yells your cover, referring to the possibility that we
may soon be tinkering with our own germ line. This echoes a common
misconception鈥攖hat natural selection will cease to operate (at least on
us) when we start to edit our own genetic material deliberately. In reality,
reports of evolution’s death are greatly exaggerated.
Evolution requires three things: something that copies itself, a
mechanism鈥攗sually mutation鈥攆or making changes in the copies, and an
environment sufficiently harsh that not all the copies survive to reproduce
successfully.
If we mess with our own germ line, we are just adding more changes to the
copies. Of course those changes would be deliberate, so they are much more
likely to be successful than random mutations. But the replication is still
there, and so is the competitive finite environment.
Evolution will operate as ruthlessly as before. We can analyse how the race
is run, we can use the resulting knowledge to train better and to sabotage the
other competitors, but we will never be able to jog off the track and sit in the
stand as spectators.
Choosing children
My wife and I, who have a 10-month-old baby and are planning more, are among
the 20 per cent of people who would like to alter our children genetically
(“Superhumans”, 3 October, p 24).
There are clear dangers in selecting against or deleting genes that
predispose for illnesses such as schizophrenia. Since these conditions are so
harmful, predisposing genes would swiftly be selected out if they served no
important function. Fiddling with a genetic heritage we do not understand is
surely a royal road to extinction.
The same cannot be said for selecting the brightest child we are capable of
conceiving. A more sophisticated version of the sex screening test for sperm
(Forum, 10 October, p 49) might one day be used to screen for genetic markers of
intelligence, thereby at least increasing our chances of producing brilliant
offspring. I am only sorry it is not likely to happen soon enough for us. Maybe
for our children.
Letter
Forrester wonders how to pronounce the acronym RSPCA. I say “ruspukka”. It is
difficult to pronounce, as such considerations were not thought of when that
society was formed.
What is more surprising is the failure of some modern organisations to choose
their names carefully. One only need think of the Great North Eastern Railway,
whose acronym is at best the sound of a person with a bad cold and a blocked
nose, or at worst an unflattering commentary on the company’s performance
or policies.
Ruspukka rules
Surely John Forrester is wrong in his assertion that an acronym does not have
to be pronounceable
(Letters, 17 October, p 55). It is true that Chambers
defines it as a word formed from initial letters, but The Oxford English
Dictionary defines a word as “a sound or combination of sounds forming a
meaningful element of speech”. An acronym therefore should be able to be
pronounced in order for it to be a word. RSPCA therefore remains a collection of
initial letters while ROSPA and, of course, SCUBA are acronyms.
Midday noon
While I concede that there are many valid reasons for keeping the country on
British Summer Time throughout the year
(This Week, 17 October, p 5), is this
not a case of the tail wagging the dog?
It seems logical to me that noon should happen at midday, that the clocks
should strike twelve when the Sun is at its zenith (as it does in Greenwich Mean
Time), whatever the season. If the changing lengths of daylight affect our
activities, why do we not alter the time at which we carry them out, rather than
shift the clocks’ hands?
Moon days
Gabriel Packard suggests a similarity between the day length on Mars and the
human daily cycle, arguing that the length of this cycle has been determined in
the absence of all external time cues
(Letters, 10 October, p 54).
Work in this field may have failed to eliminate all such cues. Subjects have
been placed in caves, cut off from daylight, the sounds of the world outside,
television and radio, the provision of regular meals, but there is one external
influence that it is impossible to exclude. The Moon passes us at varying
intervals, but with a mean of about 24 hours 50 minutes, close to the figure
Packard quotes.
Although the Moon’s gravity would have only a small effect on our internal
sensors, effects have been observed in molluscs that would normally react to
tides but have been removed far from the ocean. So, we might well respond to the
Moon, even when sequestered in a cave.
While we are subject to such a force, it seems superfluous to attribute the
human diurnal period to the more remote chance that we have an affinity with the
rotation of Mars.
Ineligible potatoes
Robin Oakley-Hill need have no concerns either for the expertise of Britain’s
Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment or for potential problems
arising in his garden due to crossing between his potatoes and other members of
the family Solanaceae
(Letters, 10 October, p 54).
In a recent study published by the OECD, attempts to cross-cultivated
potatoes with either Solanum nigrum or S. dulcamara produced no
viable seeds or plants.
Embryo rescue resulted in hybrids which were found to
be less vital, male-sterile, formed no tubers and showed less female fertility.
After pollination (backcross) no viable seeds were formed.
The recent statement from the Royal Society (Genetically Modified Plants
for Food Use, September 1998) also confirms that potatoes have no sexually
compatible wild relatives in Britain.
Safer sewage?
The issue of using human sewage as manure is cropping up more and
(“Waste not”, 29 August, p 26).
One difficulty that arises is that the possibility of recycling pathogens is
ever present. Would irradiating the sewage prevent this? There should not be the
same objections to irradiation that arise when it is applied to food.
Controlled explosion
Keith Moffatt challenges the model of ball lightning by M. Soler, J. L.
Trueba and myself
(Letters, 17 October, p 54).
His main objection is that helicity conservation does not impede the
expansion process of the linked balls, so they must expand.
However, we do not claim that the ball does not expand. The tangling of the
magnetic lines does not impede the process, but it makes it much slower; the
expansion until the cooling begins is just a few per cent, hardly noticeable by
the witnesses.
Therefore, this cannot be an argument against the model. We maintain all our
conclusions.
Letter
Lists containing no items, or empty lists as they are more commonly known,
are a familiar and useful concept to anyone who has ever used particular
computer languages which are heavily based on list processing, such as Lisp, Tcl
or many functional programming languages.
Empty lists
The idea of a list with no items in it
(Feedback, 17 October, p 92) is a
well-established mathematical concept: the empty list. There is a difference
between a list and the things in the list. It is similar to the number zero.
Zero is still a number even though it could be used in relation to things that
are not there.
Being mathematically well defined does not, however, mean it is common usage,
but the list with nothing in it raises no problems here either. The statement “I
have nothing on my shopping list yet” causes no problems. Neither does “I have
crossed off all the items on my list of things to buy”.
In both cases the lists exist, even though they are empty, and they provide
the useful information that they are, in fact, empty. A bucket is still a bucket
even if it is empty.
Turds for tanners
Feedback talks about uses for turds
(3 October). May I draw your attention to
Henry Mayhew’s work London Labour and the London Poor? Among the trades
he examines is that of the “gatherers of pure”, who had the task of collecting
dog faeces from round the capital.
The fresher they were, the more valuable they were to tanners, who used them
to make a lye for the preparation of fine leathers. Mayhew contemplates the
fancy lady with a fine leather-bound book, and wonders if she is aware of the
details of its manufacture.
Opinion was divided among practitioners of the trade over whether wearing
gloves was a good idea, or if fingers were easier to wash.
I’m not sure I’d use the term “squishy” to describe elephant turds. The only
one I’ve seen had been made into a cigarette lighter. It was on display at
Auckland airport as an example of the sorts of souvenirs intercepted by the
agriculture branch of customs. It seemed a fairly solid ball of half digested
fibrous material: an ideal source for making paper.
I assume the same benefit could be derived from horses, if we can stop rose
growers from wasting the material on their hobby.
Letter
The Department of Transport claims that keeping British clocks in line with
mainland Europe during the winter would “save over 100 lives every year”. Since
enduring the experiment with all-year British Summer Time in the late 1960s, I
have never accepted claims of this kind.
Getting to work on a dark morning is no problem in itself鈥攖he
difficulty arises when it’s coupled with bad, and particularly freezing,
weather. Road surfaces are very unlikely to be as hazardous on a dark evening.
Was this included in the DoT study?