On the bull
I would like to add a small addendum to your article on the best point on a
dart board at which to aim for players with different skill levels
(This Week, 17 April, p 16).
Triple 11 is a good area, particularly for the many players
whose horizontal accuracy is better than their vertical accuracy. The bull only
really suits those who are at real risk of missing the board altogether.
I once produced contour maps of the likely score obtained for different
aiming points and a given level of accuracy. This improved my skill in numerical
integration but did little for my darts playing.
Ocralomania
I suspect that the appearance of “ocrawatt” in place of “megawatt” in
documents from the OCR (formerly MEG) examination board can be blamed on a
specific type of “computer jinx”
(Feedback, 24 April).
I suspect that some careless unfortunate used the global replace function on the
word processor to replace “MEG” with “OCR” without adequate thought.
This sort of thing has happened before鈥攕ome years ago, a British
national newspaper printed an apology to Mr Pollack, an election candidate,
whose name was published as Mr Turnoutack. Somebody had globally replaced “poll”
by “turnout” in the text of the article.
Letter
I have just received a publication entitled Engine Oil Rheology and
Tribology where nearly every reference to the University of Wales has
become the “University of Whales”.
Oil from the sperm whale does have very interesting properties, but somehow I
doubt whether the whales would bother to publish their research.
Pseudoscience
Don’t be too surprised at finding books on pseudoscience on the popular
science shelves of bookshops
(Feedback, 24 April).
While researching a university assignment on science literacy in 1997, I
happened to notice that the popular science shelves of a local bookshop were
similarly crammed with books on everything from UFOs to Celtic myths and legends
and how to interpret a psychic reading. An entire shelf was taken up with books
on individual star signs. What worried me especially was where the bookshop was
located: at the heart of Sydney Institute of Technology’s Ultimo campus, where I
teach ophthalmic optics.
Another example of the increasingly blurred line between legitimate and
unfounded knowledge I encountered at the time was the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation’s reporting of a UFO conference held in Brisbane that year. Since
then I have discovered that our national broadcaster now has a regular astrology
segment鈥攐n a children’s programme.
I have been told that such items are justified on the grounds of impartial
reporting and that just because astrology is not acceptable to science, that
doesn’t mean it isn’t acceptable to other cultures. However, I wonder whether we
should allow our children to be lied to in the interests of tolerance. Cultural
difference is one thing; deceit is another.
Letter
Perhaps Feedback would care to comment about W. H. Smith’s shop at London
Bridge Station where the popular science section starts with various versions of
the Bible.
Veteran victims
Gulf War veterans may be victims, but not “victims of vaccines”
(This Week, 10 April, p 5).
Bob Garry’s research into squalene antibodies is interesting,
but does not merit the conclusions drawn in the article.
Dozens of studies have been conducted on a great number of different symptoms
and possible causes鈥攕qualene being the most recent. Self-selected cases
and self-reported symptoms in place of clinical diagnoses hamper most of the
research.
France may not have vaccinated its troops, but its veterans are certainly not
the only ones free of Gulf War syndrome (GWS)鈥攎any countries’ forces were
deployed in the Gulf, but only the US, Canada and Britain are plagued by GWS
accusations.
At best, Garry’s findings should prompt further research to discover the
extent of this rise in squalene in veterans. Jumping to conclusions only panders
to activists and scares veterans鈥攈urting the people we most want to help.
If it turns out that the chemical increase is found in non-Gulf War veterans,
then it may finally be time to ditch the GWS label and get down to some serious
science.
Space vandalism
I do hope that David Lewis and his colleagues’ research into miniature rocket
propulsion proceeds with a little more concern for the environment
(“Pocket rocket”, 10 April, p 38).
Space environmentalists, like their terrestrially
based counterparts, take a dim view of any engineering systems that pollute.
Lewis’s rockets would be more acceptable if they refrained from ejecting
anything other than gaseous materials into space, rather than adding to the
existing levels of space debris produced by humans.
If Lewis’s devices must use ejectable components, their materials should
readily degrade to form gaseous products on exposure to the space environment.
Alternatively, all components of the rockets should remain tethered to or
captured within the rocket system.
In particular, diaphragms should not be made from brittle materials. They can
be etched to promote a bursting mechanism that does not release diaphragm
fragments.
Macros matter
Eliminating macros from wordprocessing programs is not the answer to macro viruses
(Letters, 24 April, p 54).
Macro viruses are certainly a problem, but
they are relatively easy to detect and disable. And Peter Berrie’s conjecture
that no one would miss macros is false. Macros are used extensively in the
publishing industry to prepare authors’ texts for copy-editing and typesetting,
for example. I cannot imagine wanting to return to the pre-macros Dark
Ages鈥攖hey have improved both quality and productivity substantially.
One way to reduce the effectiveness of macro viruses would be to make the
macro language something that can only be installed and activated after explicit
warnings about the dangers of viruses (and for the macro language to be disabled
if unused after, say, 14 days). Those of us who create and use macros can
probably put up with a specific installation process to permit their use.
Hacker hero
Talking of Kevin Mitnick, Netropolitan says: “For the full story of his
capture, try www.takedown.com“
(This Week, 17 April, p 19).
Perhaps you might wish to point your readers to the other side of the story at
www.kevinmitnick.com.
Although affiliated with www.2600.com鈥�”The Hacker
Quarterly”鈥攜ou should find it informative and reliable. Unlike Takedown,
it relies almost entirely on published documents and offers informed commentary
on them. Also, unlike Takedown, it will not try to sell you anything and raises
important civil liberty questions.
Hot backyard
Alison Bevege says that the green movement should force the nuclear industry
to close by refusing to consider safe nuclear waste disposal
(Letters, 17 April, p 67).
Disposal is going to be costly鈥攕urely it makes greater sense to create
options that force costs back onto producers (and ultimately consumers) so that
conventional political and market forces reduce the industry. It might turn out
to be necessary to have a continuing industry just to fund the disposal
process.
The problem exists now, and though killing the industry might be an
appropriate punishment, it won’t clean up the mess.
The “not in my backyard” argument is weak鈥攑lutonium in your backyard
today might be in mine in a thousand years, with almost all its radioactivity
intact.
Night flight
The special design of the wing of the owl mentioned in your report
(This Week, 6 March, p 10)
was known to Frederick Handley Page and Gustav Lachmann
eighty years ago, and led to the invention of the slotted wing.
One account says that one of them got the idea from seeing an owl in London’s
Natural History Museum.