Easy thieving
The “shocking” idea that you can program a 3Com PalmIII to open your (or
someone else’s) car door is hardly news
(This Week, 5 December, p 11).
Three years ago my 12-year-old brother was able to do the same thing with a
拢30 Casio watch which was intended to act as a universal remote-control
for the TV.
Similarly, I would have thought that most of the programmable universal
remotes on the market for TVs can open car doors (and they cost next-to-nothing,
compared to the 拢300 PalmIII).
Drug rape
Your article on drug rape and Rohypnol needs some clarification
(This Week, 12 December, p 4).
Many people are quick to conclude that any sexual assault in which the victim
cannot remember what happened is “probably” due to Rohypnol. As of 6 November
1998, ElSohly Laboratories had conducted gas chromatography and mass
spectroscopy tests on 1598 samples from cases of sexual assault in which drug
involvement was suspected.
Almost 650 contained alcohol, 292 contained marijuana, 218 contained
benzodiazepines other than Rohypnol, 137 contained cocaine and 115 contained
amphetamines. Only 7 contained Rohypnol, and four of those, like 35 per cent of
the other positive samples, contained other substances as well. Clearly, the
focus on Rohypnol is overstated and misplaced, and does a disservice to those
trying to protect themselves against sexual assault.
Please note also that the Roche US information line is 1-800-720-1076. The
number you listed on your website is the line for the police, hospital emergency
departments and rape crisis centres to get authorisation to submit samples for
testing under the US programme.
Art first
I am amazed that “for decades, archaeologists have assumed that cave artists
were intelligent and communicative” because they could create spectacular rock art
(This Week, 12 December, p 10).
For many years I have been teaching children with learning difficulties to
make animated movies. Though such children have problems expressing themselves
verbally or literally, almost without exception they can draw recognisable
images, and can do so without any training.
Drawing is basically mapping images, so it is an ability we need for finding
our way around. As humans are not helped by smell, this facility for visualising
space would need to be highly developed. Expressing ideas visually would be
useful for hunters or nomadic people, and simple signs would be an obvious
development.
There is no necessity at all for art to have evolved from an intelligent
culture. It certainly does not require the development of language, and there
are many cases of autistic and dyslexic children who are extremely talented
artists.
I believe that drawing is as natural as speaking. On the other hand, reading
and writing are not natural, and words themselves impose constraints upon our
thoughts.
It is interesting that the British culture minister Janet Anderson has just
announced government funding to train people in visualising for the IT
industries. The general trend in IT is towards visual presentation. Perhaps
written language is just a blip in the communication process.
Get it young
Further to Michael Day’s excellent article on herpes simplex
(This Week, 12 December, p 24),
indeed there has been a steady increase in genital herpes
simplex in the US. However, the pattern has not been repeated in Britain.
New cases recorded by genitourinary clinics in Britain have remained static
for around three years at around 15 000 per annum and as far as we know, new
cases seen at GPs’ surgeries remain at about 2.4 patients per GP per year,
making up a total of around 90 000. Interestingly, an increasing proportion of
genital infection is caused by type 1 virus, traditionally associated with
facial symptoms.
The reason for the difference between the American and British experience is
that the acquisition of the type 1 virus in childhood is higher in Britain than
in the US. The antibodies developed prevent later genital infection by type 1
virus and give partial protection against type 2.
The moral is clear. As with most infections, herpes simplex is best caught
when you are young and your immune system is fresh. Symptoms are more likely to
be mild or non-existent and you will be less likely to catch another strain of
the virus on another site when you are older.
We would also ask you to correct what could be misunderstood in Day’s
article. While we agree that there has been hype over the usually harmless
herpes simplex virus, as a charity we are not allowed to campaign about it. We
merely give advice and information about herpes viruses to patients, medical
professionals and the public.
Cancel the debts
Debora MacKenzie wrote movingly of the plight of people in Honduras and Nicaragua
(Opinion, 12 December, p 57).
These are two of the poorest, most indebted countries in the world. Each year
Honduras pays $564 million, which is $1.55 million a day, towards
a total debt of $4.453 billion: a third of its budget goes on debt
repayment.
Each year Nicaragua pays $221 million, which is $605 479 a day,
towards a total debt of $5.929 billion鈥�40 per cent of its budget
goes on debt repayment. The debt per person is 拢800, the highest in the
world.
But in December the British government, along with other Western governments,
refused to cancel these countries’ debts. They told Honduras that any debt
relief depended on it agreeing to an International Monetary Fund Structural
Adjustment Programme. They told Nicaragua that its debts could only be reduced
when its current IMF agreement ended in 2002. (By contrast, Cuba has already
cancelled the $50 million that Nicaragua owed it.)
Honduras owes the British government 拢2.19 million. Nicaragua owes it
拢1.37 million. We in Britain must press the government to cancel these
debts at once, so that Nicaragua and Honduras can use the money to rebuild their
shattered economies and damaged societies.
The creditor nations agreed in Paris before Christmas that neither Nicaragua
nor Honduras needs to pay interest on their debts for three years. But the debts
谤别尘补颈苍鈥抬诲
Blindingly silly
The idea of using a slave flash to defeat speed cameras has been around as
long as speed cameras themselves
(This Week, 12 December, p 19).
As I understand the law, however, not only is speeding an offence but so too is actively
avoiding being caught. Otherwise we could have a real technology race between
the offenders and the enforcers.
Should slave flashes become popular for avoiding capture by a speed camera,
the camera manufacturers will just modify their technology. An obvious next step
is for the camera flash to occupy a very narrow band (spectrally) and use a
filter over the camera. There could be many bands in use so that the offender’s
slave unit could not be similarly set up unless it was powerful enough to cover
the whole spectrum.
Perhaps a better method would be for the speed cameras to do away with the
flash altogether. An image intensifier could be used to obtain good images in
poor light. This would also avoid blinding the oncoming motorist who has done
nothing wrong but may be severely distracted by the flashes, as I have been.
This may be fun, but at the heart of it is the loss of life from automobile
accidents. It is a shame that all the people with these ideas cannot put them to
some better use.
Batphobia?
Ian Anderson’s article reads like the fear and loathing campaigns regularly
launched by Australian rural lobby groups ever since fruit bats became protected species
(“Bats out of hell”, 5 December, p 40).
Anderson’s assertion that “Australia is suffering from a rash of `zoonoses’
. . . in almost every case, a bat features somewhere in the story” is astonishing.
The Commonwealth Health Department’s Synopsis of Zoonoses in Australia
lists 85 zoonoses, only two of which are associated with bats.
In contrast, there are 25 diseases which people can catch from cattle, and
yet they are allowed to wallow and defecate in watercourses throughout the
country with massive outcries from farmers whenever legislation to prevent this
is suggested.
There is a large flying fox colony in Bellingen; there are also thousands of
cattle. No one has suffered illness from the bats, yet cattle-related diseases
are rife. It is very disappointing that New 杏吧原创 has added weight
to the propaganda campaign that has meant farmers are once again allowed to
shoot the bats.
Letter
I first demonstrated this to friends some 8 years ago, using an HP 95 LX. Not
only did we manage to record and open the locks of three Renault 19s and two
Renault 21s; once we had the format of the codes, it was easy to write a small
program that cycled through various iterations and popped the locks of further
Renault cars. I sent a letter to Renault at the time of the discovery but never
heard anything back.
Letter
I bought a learning remote from Radio Shack about 10 years ago. Not only did
it have a learning capability but the ability to send the infrared signal on a
timer. This way the thief could put the remote aside and set it to unlock the
door at a specific time for a quicker break-in.
Letter
A year or two ago, I saw a programme on German speed limit breakers who were
using precisely the same tactic. The German authorities reacted by modifying the
cameras to emit a sequence of flashes before the camera shutter opened to
discharge any slave flashes on the target vehicle. Perhaps the people at the
Home Office should ask their German counterparts for advice.
Pomp rock
I believe that the confusion caused by using a couple of keyboards on the same desk
(This Week, 21 November, p 11)
is called “Rick Wakeman Syndrome”.
Naming high
No American parent would give their child the name Jefferson without some
thought that the child might become president
(Letters, 28 November, p 58).
I think the proper phrase for this intent is “determinative nominism”.
Biobot terror
So a group of scientists has been able to make simple node connections that
reproduce the complicated neuron reactions of creatures such as laboratory rats,
grasshoppers and ants
(“March of the biobots”, 5 December, p 26).
Although this new technology looks interesting, it may have some unwanted
repercussions. When these little computers become more and more sophisticated,
they will become more and more sentient. The computers will reach a point where
they behave like their real counterparts.
Activist groups may challenge this research, saying that the researchers are
being inhumane to this new sentient breed. Although this field is still in its
infancy, the researchers should prepare for this eventuality.
There is another problem, perhaps even more menacing. What would happen if
these mechanical crickets escaped? It’s bad enough to have to put up with real
crickets chirping away at night. I don’t know if I could handle mechanically
enhanced ones.
Protracted bargaining
Investors will do well to steer clear of John Walker’s SETI scheme which, he
says, may offer instant wealth to those “downloading” high-grade alien
intellectual property
(Letters, 5 December, p 54).
Even if these aliens live as close as 20 light years away, two-way
communications would take 40 years. Besides, the sort of aliens he imagines
would also have a commercial “culture”, so that downloading would involve
haggling about the inevitable quid pro quo, each round of negotiations taking a
further four decades plus the usual legal delays. Get rich quick? Hardly.
Strangely, SETI proponents do not advocate the reverse procedure of sending
information into space rather than merely listening. A hundred transmitters of
100 kilowatts each, directed along the galactic plane, would surely ferret out
all those alien intelligences within a mere 100 years.
Besides, such a project would cost lots to run and be of absolutely no use to
humanity, thereby fulfilling some of the current preconditions of “big”
science.
Have a heart
Your report on “coronary cleanups” is mistaken in saying that heart surgeons
insert metal supporting devices (stents) to open up “blocked heart veins”
(This Week, 12 December, p 23).
Stents are inserted into arteries, which take oxygenated blood to the heart
muscle. The veins take it away. There are important structural differences
between the two sorts of blood vessel, which is partly why one tends to block
rather than the other.
This is correct. The story’s opening should have read “blocked heart vein
grafts”. Physicians often take a piece of vein out of the leg and use it to
bypass blocked arteries to supply blood to the heart. These deteriorating vein
grafts are the ones that would be best suited to the kind of debris-removal
procedure described in the article鈥擡d
Labels in harmony
I have noticed the two letters casting further aspersions on the ingredient
labelling of cosmetics following your Feedback item
(14 November, p 92)
on the obfuscation of labelling water as “aqua”
(Letters, 28 November, p 58
and 5 December, p 53).
Perhaps I can explain.
The safety of cosmetics is indeed regulated by a European directive. At the
request of dermatologists, ingredient labelling was introduced to enable their
patients, who had been diagnosed with allergies, to avoid the ingredients they
were allergic to. Although the numbers of people with true allergies are low,
the affects can be quite unpleasant for them.
A harmonised cosmetics ingredients nomenclature would allow those people to
safely buy cosmetics wherever they might travel in Europe, notwithstanding the
11 official languages of the European Union. The vast majority of ingredients
use internationally recognised chemical nomenclature. The nomenclature for
botanicals and zoologicals is based on a system devised by the botanist Linnaeus
and the few remaining ingredients, including water, are named according to the
European pharmacopoeia.
And those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Botanists,
especially those working at Kew Gardens, should know that if you ask three
botanists for the name of a plant, they will give you three different answers.
Botanical nomenclature is constantly changing.
The point about cosmetics nomenclature is that we don’t want it to change and
it does not matter whether it matches current botanical thinking. The key issue
is that all cosmetics in the European Union use a common system of nomenclature
for the benefit of those with allergies. Dermatologists are well aware of the
published Cosmetics Ingredient Nomenclature.
A final point: si fortasse Latinus adhuc in scholis docerentur, ea
interrogatio numquam exorirentur. Sed id est alia fabula. (If only schools
still taught Latin, maybe this question would never have arisen. But that’s
another story.)
Keep that blood
Alan Bartlett might want to get a second opinion from a haematologist or
transfusion specialist before donating blood to help his blood pressure problem
(Letters, 14 November, p 59).
Regular blood-letting to reduce total body iron is (or was) sometimes a
treatment for patients with polycythaemia rubra vera, a condition where the
marrow, for no good reason, churns out more red cells than it should. The aim of
this was to induce iron deficiency, thus limiting red cell production and
bringing down the total red cell volume.
However, there are other more common causes of polycythaemia. Secondary
polycythaemia due to heart disease is part of a compensatory response to low
tissue oxygen levels, another part of this response being increased cardiac
output, (manifested as hypertension). Thus, trying to control high blood
pressure by venesection (or donating blood) is likely to fail, as any eventual
decrease in total red cell volume will cause a corresponding compensatory
increase in blood pressure.
Also, the negative effects of reducing circulating blood volume by
blood-letting are much more pronounced in hypertensives than in healthy
individuals. This is (one of the reasons) why Bartlett was originally excluded
from being a blood donor.
Although he’s right that blood donors are far less likely to have heart
attacks, this is probably because potential donors with obvious health problems
are eliminated. Thus, actual donors are a healthier subset of the general
population from which they are drawn.
Letter
Alwyn Morris is making an unconscious but wholly justified application to be
invested with the title of mad inventor of the year. He certainly has my vote.
Who, for goodness sake, wants someone alongside them in mixed traffic letting
off dazzling flashes of light so that the selfish perpetrator can indulge in
unpunished speeding? It seems like a guaranteed recipe for road rage.