Spare legs
Having seen your item on the British government’s Action 2000 group
(Feedback, 13 March),
I happened to see one of its adverts. It features a logo
of an insect鈥攚ith 8 legs.
Is this an example of Action 2000’s scrupulous attention to detail?
Me and my memes
Memes are not needed and, since they are unreal, they cannot be useful in
explanation. To understand what influences affect people we need to grasp their
actual needs and motives. This is often hard, but imaginary quasi-viruses are
merely a distraction from attempting it.
Morally, Susan Blackmore
(“Meme, Myself, I”, 13 March, p 40)
supports memification by appealing to the Humean and Buddhist doctrine that the self is a
series of shifting experiences rather than a solid substance. But this reputable
view cannot possibly be combined with treating that self as a set of solid,
substantial memes or as a product of such memes.
Substances of this kind are quite foreign to Humean and Buddhist thought,
even more so than they are to common sense. And, morally speaking, the only
possible effect of taking these sinister entities seriously would surely be a
helpless fatalism.
Eroding America
Worldwide biodiversity loss and consequent desertification are one of the the
greatest threats to humankind. With this in mind I was sorry to see you state:
“In the US, farmland wildlife is not such an emotive issue because most of the
nation’s biodiversity is locked up in vast national parks like Yosemite”
(Editorial, 27 February, p 3).
The only thing more alarming than the continuing loss of biodiversity over
most of the US is the almost universal ignorance about this matter. You are
expressing the prevailing thinking in most environmental and scientific
circles.
In addition to the serious desertification of much of the US, the nation is
experiencing an ever-increasing frequency and severity of flooding of the
Mississippi as well as rivers in Texas and California. Soil erosion, itself a
symptom of biodiversity loss, is rampant all over the US croplands and
rangelands鈥攈ence all the flooding.
Even if it were true that most of the nation’s biodiversity was in its
national parks, there would still be a problem, as all the national parks I have
seen are themselves showing serious decline associated with biodiversity
loss.
Big is bad
I hate to have to say this, but I find the proposal to spend
$1 billion of European money on a new super-telescope
(“Galactic visionaries”, 20 February, p 36)
somewhat obscene.
I am as in awe of the beauty and intricacy of our physical Universe as the
next person, and avidly read the many cosmological and astronomical articles in
New 杏吧原创. In an ideal world, the pursuit of scientific truth would
be unfettered by budgets since science is as much of a cultural activity as
opera, association football, or the Millennium Dome.
However, we do not live in an ideal world. That $1 billion would keep
me and over 200 other environmental biologists, in fully funded (and fully
salaried) research for our entire careers. The reality is that spending on
environmental research in Europe nowhere near approaches that figure.
Why is it that the physical sciences do so much better than the biological
sciences (especially if you take “sexy” biotechnology out of the equation)? One
reason may be the “little boys with big toys syndrome”. Particle accelerators
are certainly more macho than quadrats. By funding high-profile, high-tech
projects, are governments simply finding yet another way to flex their
muscles?
An even less palatable hypothesis is that the funding imbalance is due to
apathy. Do governments care so little for the planet’s shrinking biodiversity
that they can’t be bothered to fund its study and ultimate conservation?
Before we spend billions peering through the next-door neighbours’ curtains
with new and better ESTAs (Extra Sexy Technical Arrays), shouldn’t we be putting
our own ecological house in order? We can only do this with well-funded and
researched studies into the ecological and evolutionary relationships between
living organisms. We have the choice, and it isn’t too late to make the right
one.
Marcus Chown writes: Without wishing to undermine Mick Hanley’s argument, it
should be pointed out that the cost of the OverWhelmingly Large telescope, if it
happens, will be spread over 15 years and divided among many European
countries鈥攎aking it rather less spectacularly expensive than, for example,
the international space station ($95 billion).
Land without mice
A dunnart is not a mouse and there are no marsupial mice in Australia
(In Brief, 27 February, p 27).
The dunnart belongs to the family of Dayuridae, which includes quolls,
antechinuses, planigales, ninganis and Tasmanian devils. Dasyurids, meaning
hairy-tailed animals, are marsupial carnivores or insectivores. But all native
Australian rodents, mice and rates, are placental mammals. See The
Australian Museum’s Complete Book of Australian Mammals.
Smoke more nicotine
I find it easy to believe that “Cigarette manufacturers abandoned dozens of
technologies that could have reduced the death toll from their products”
(This Week, 6 March, p 4)
and I have absolutely no sympathy for cigarette
manufacturers. But it is interesting to note that they have been maligned in the
US Congress and elsewhere for their efforts to produce tobacco with a higher
nicotine content.
The lethal constituents of tobacco consist of nicotine, “tars” (an enormous
variety of carcinogens) and toxic gases, mainly carbon monoxide. The nicotine
appears to be the main cause of the cardiac effects of tobacco smoke and the
tars appear to be the main cause of various cancers.
Experience with cigarettes containing reduced amounts of nicotine has shown
that smokers tend to smoke a constant amount of nicotine鈥攊f they are given
low-nicotine cigarettes, they smoke more of them. Thus, if they smoke low-nicotine
cigarettes, they are not exposed to less nicotine, but they are exposed to more tars
and toxic gases.
It follows that the risk of dying from smoking cigarettes should fall as the
nicotine content of cigarettes rises. People only smoke enough to maintain their
regular nicotine intake. The higher the nicotine content of cigarettes, the
fewer cigarettes people will need to smoke to maintain their intake, reducing
the risk from tars and gases.
And, of course, (here’s where my self-interest becomes manifest) smokers of
high-nicotine cigarettes will expose innocent bystanders to less smoke.
More Minamata
Your article on mercury poisoning states that Minamata disease has now been
diagnosed in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil
(This Week, 6 February, p 4, and
Letters, 27 February, p 54).
The article also says that it was the first time the disease had been diagnosed outside Minamata.
This information is incorrect. Minamata disease was diagnosed in 1975 among a
group of aboriginal people living on two reserves in northwestern Ontario,
Canada.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), of which we are members, was very
closely involved at that time with those living in the area, who also had the
support of a Quaker doctor living and working with them. Two doctors working
with Minamata disease in Japan travelled to the reserves to examine the
residents themselves. They conducted tests and confirmed that this was indeed
Minamata disease.
That this unfortunate disease has occurred in another place is regrettable
evidence that the problems of mercury pollution and the causes of it have not
been sufficiently publicised or heeded.
Virulent vitamin
Further to your article on the risks of taking large doses of vitamins
(This Week, 27 February, p 18),
beta-carotene has been studied in the prevention of
oral cancer (New England Journal of Medicine, vol 328, p 15). In this
experiment, patients with oral leukoplakia, a condition that can become
malignant, were given either isotretinoin, a vitamin A analogue, or
beta-carotene and then followed up for 28 months. The results were interpreted
as showing better response in the isotretinoin group.
However, there was neither a control group of untreated cases nor a placebo
group for comparison and it is difficult to maintain that there were fewer
cancers than would be predicted from other studies which examined malignant
transformation in untreated leukoplakia. A more prudent interpretation of these
data would suggest that the isotretinoin had no beneficial effect, while
beta-carotene was associated with a surprisingly high rate of malignant
transformation.
These results would seem to confirm the extreme care needed in advising
patients that beta-carotene supplementation will reduce cancer risks.
Letter
Your Editorial
(p 3)
ends with the observation that it “can only be a matter
of time before a convicted murderer stands up in court and claims it wasn’t him
or his genes that did it, it was his memes”.
As usual, the US, land of the lawsuit, is already ahead of the pack. Benjamin
Darrius and Sarah Edmondson, who are on trial for the murder of a Mississippi
man, are suing movie director Oliver Stone. Stone, together with the
distributors of the film Natural Born Killers, could have to pay up to
$20 million for, basically, incitement to violence.
This looks very much like a memetic defence to me, and of a more insidious
order that the “my memes made me do it” variety. It’s more “your memes made me
do it”.
Correction
There was an omission from
“Total Control” (20 February, p 40).
The article failed to mention the extensive and pioneering efforts of the
CSIRO group in Melbourne headed by Ezio Rizzardo and David Solomon鈥攖he
team who both discovered and laid the groundwork for the control of free radical
polymerisation by stable nitroxides.
Blind to Tritium?
Agriculture minister Jeff Rooker’s reply on Cardiff’s tritium problem
(Thistle Diary, 13 February, p 53)
demonstrates the blind-eye syndrome that afflicts officialdom. The minister
did not inquire why his office was wrong by “several hundred times”
(This Week, 31 October 1998, p 10)
over tritium levels in fish in the sea off Cardiff.
The minister gives no hint鈥攈e may never have been informed鈥攐f the
crisis meeting between the Welsh Office, Environment Agency and MAFF last May,
called after tritium in local shellfish showed 47 000 becquerels per kilogram.
This was the first such measurement since 1992, despite a requirement for
quarterly monitoring.
The minister tells Tam Dalyell that the problem comes from fish and shellfish
feeding near the sewer outfall, yet has no evidence that tritium levels are this
high in the sewage effluent.
His excuse does not of course explain why seaweeds several kilometres away
also demonstrate high tritium levels in data compiled by Friends of the Earth
Cymru.
Official theory鈥攚hich holds that sealife is similarly tritiated to the
seawater it lives in鈥攊s so clearly wrong. A scientist would ask: is
official theory on the passage of tritium through human cells and the human body
also wrong? But MAFF turns a blind eye.
Better sort of elephant
I think you will find that the elephant’s child had, “`satiable curtiosity”
(“The bear essentials” supplement, 6 March, p 2).
You may remember that it was
well brought up as well as curious. I have been unable to put an evolutionary
slant on this unless it is something to do with propagation of errors.
Non-compliant
As suggested in Feedback (13 March),
I went to http://www.sanyousa.com/ products/home_appliance
to look for the Y2K-compliant breadboard.
Someone at Sanyo must have seen your article because the breadboard is no longer
marked as Y2K compliant. Is this a cause for concern? Will Sanyo breadboards
suddenly stop working on January 1 next year?
On the subject, I notice the date gremlins have been at work on Feedback. The
date on the bottom of the page is “13 March, 1998”. Is this a hidden strategy to
delay the Y2K problem? While the rest of the world is crashing planes next year,
Feedback will have an extra year to sort things out.
Letter
This happens in Win98 as well. If you right click a file and open its
properties, the “accessed” attribute is always the current date.
Today is today
Your piece about Novell Netware updating the Date Last Accessed flag when you
check the file is unfair to Novell
(Feedback, 6 March).
It is actually a problem
with the Microsoft client to Netware: if you use the correct Novell utilities it
works as you would expect.
Letter
Your article implies that getting plant and personnel to such heights would
be a major construction problem. I recall seeing a report ten or more years ago
of a British firm building tall buildings from the top down.
The approach was to build the top storey first, then jack it up and build the
penultimate storey progressively down to the ground floor, all the time never
leaving the ground. Surely this would be the best way to erect such a
structure?
Letter
Recently, on business in Saudi Arabia, my father and I “invented” a
solar-powered desalinating electricity generator. The idea was similar to
Schlaich’s but the chimney would be laid up the side of mountains near the coast
and the solar collectors built over shallow lagoons next to the sea.
The air would have extra buoyancy due to its water vapour content and “rain”
would occur thousands of metres up in the mountains. We envisaged a country such
as Yemen or Chile converting desert into rich agricultural plains and earning
foreign currency from a chemical industry based on free salt and cheap
electricity.
The idea is not patented and we only ask for a commemorative plaque and an
invitation to the opening.
Pipe dreams
Someone really is dreaming
(“Electric dreams”, 6 March, p 30).
If we wait until we can build a 1-kilometre high chimney we will never get it off the
ground. For one thing, when was the last time you saw a cement kiln or glass
smelter in the desert鈥攗sing what source of fuel, limestone, sodium
carbonate and reinforcing steel?
How about building a chimney with existing technology, say 500 metres
high鈥攖hen firing a small amount of natural gas up the chimney to increase
the draft by an enormous amount? Or use off-peak electricity (from the chimney)
to make hydrogen and fire that at peak times to double the output of
electricity? Both options would attract investors.
Another idea might be to find a suitable mountain in the desert and run the
chimney as a duct up the side. This would save some of the huge costs and as yet
untested construction methods.
Probing the probe
Am I alone in being totally bemused by James Oberg’s article
“The probe that fell to Earth”? (6 March, p 38).
Surely it is obvious to all why the US government invested time and effort in
retrieving the nuclear-powered Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 954 from northwest
Canada in January 1978, albeit under the guise of a “nuclear cleanup” operation.
It must be equally clear why they are not interested in the remains of a
post-Cold War failed interplanetary Russian probe, no matter how many plutonium
pellets it was carrying.