Living dead
I agree with the suggestion in “Back from the dead”
(4 September, p 4) that
long-dormant viruses in glacial ice may be released from melting ice and might
initiate plagues in the modern world. A similar process could have been
important in the ancient world.
I would like to direct the author’s attention to an article I published in
1975 entitled “Pleistocene plagues?” (Geology, vol 3, p 372), in which
I speculated that melting of glacial ice may have reintroduced long-absent
“bacteria-like microorganisms” during the Pleistocene. These microorganisms may
have initiated plagues and aided extinctions of certain Pleistocene mammals.
Perhaps this is part of the reason that these animals became extinct at a time
when the climate was becoming less severe.
How unique?
Your article on the formation of the Solar System
(11 September, p 17)
states: “If the theory is right, it makes the Solar System more unique than many
scientists would like.” Oh dear鈥攆or a magazine that always argues for
precision in the use of terminology, how did you let that one slip through?
Mayan brickies
In her excellent cartoon strip about bricks
(25 September, p 57) Kate
Charlesworth implied that although the inhabitants of America used adobe before
Columbus arrived, they did not have oven-baked bricks.
One of the earliest Mayan settlements is Comalcalco, about 60 kilometres
north of Villahermosa in Mexico, built more than a thousand years ago. The
federal government managers of the site assert that some of the buildings are
over 2000 years old. Unlike the carved stone structures in other parts of the
Maya region, all the buildings in Comalcalco are made from baked clay bricks:
dark red on the outside and bluish in the middle, just as if they had been made
by the London Brick Company.
A dog's life
Reading the item on exercise treadmills for dogs
(18 September, p 15) set me
thinking about how you would actually persuade a dog to use such a contraption.
Ideas range from a picture of the local postman, a suspended bone or a
virtual-reality image of a stick/ball perpetually thrown just out of reach, to
the possibility of a four-way leash tying the poor animal in place while the
floor is whipped away from under it.
Does the treadmill also come complete with a tree, lamp-post and
“pooper-scooper” to cope with the other important reason for taking the dog for
a walk?
Chitterlings live
Your correspondent Michael Matthews should go to France or Belgium to buy his
pigs’ intestines
(18 September, p 59).
Living in Kent, that should be easy for
him. Most butchers in France, and certainly in the pig-rearing regions like
Brittany, will supply pigs’ intestines, and many restaurants serve them in the
form of andouille, a suspicious-smelling sausage.
In fact, markets in France and Belgium will sell you many items of food not
usually seen in Britain. These countries don’t seem to bow so deeply to the
edicts of the European Union, and don’t impose strict regulations on consumers
in the way Britain does. Take a cool box with you and have a pleasant day’s
shopping.
Letter
I would like to assure Matthews that chitterlings are very much alive and
well, so to speak, and on sale here in Sheffield. Perhaps the ban hasn’t reached
this much maligned and allegedly deprived part of Britain. Besides, what else
would we feed our whippets and ferrets on?
Trade name
There must have been some time in the past when nominative determinism was the norm
(Feedback, 18
and 25 September).
Hence the surnames Smith, Baker, Fletcher, Thatcher, etc.
Gardening
I agree with your correspondent Tony Kendle that the dilemma concerning
“gardening” or “conservation” is an absurd one in Britain
(25 September, p 54).
The notion that anyone could know what the “virgin state” of the countryside
might be is ridiculous. Most of Europe, including Britain, has been visibly
affected by human activity for centuries if not millennia.
As an Australian visitor to Britain, I think I could be excused for gaining
the impression that practically every rock, weed, plant or tree has either been
placed there or consciously permitted to remain where it is by someone. Even in
Australia, there are few genuine “wilderness” areas substantially unaffected by
human activities.
Gardeners we are, whether you realise it or not.
Inconvenient nova
There may be a good reason why the supernova that occurred about the year
1320 was not recorded at the time
(18 September, p 7).
In 1309, the Holy See was
moved from Rome to Avignon, beginning what is known in history as the Babylonian
Captivity. It was an embarrassing event for the Church. So if the heavens
appeared to commemorate it, the clergy, who were the only keepers of records,
would have had strong grounds for pretending not to notice.
A similar event occurred in 1054, when the Papal legate strode into Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople during High Mass and laid on the altar a bull
excommunicating the Patriarch, thus precipitating the separation known in
history as the Great Eastern Schism. The supernova reported in that year by
Oriental sources does not gain mention in Christian chronicles; people like
their marriages to be celebrated, but not their divorces.
Relax, don't do it
The report on the research highlighting the link between stress and failing memory
(25 September, p 12)
is great news for people of all ages. However the
closing quote from researcher Ron McKay, “I actually think that I am going to
get a couple of phone calls from drug companies,” is most worrying.
If ever there was a condition which could be vastly improved upon using
non-chemical therapies, stress must be it. There is a huge range of enormously
effective alternatives to drug therapy for stress. The results uncovered by the
National Institutes of Health team should not be cause for covetous approaches
by the drugs companies. They should, instead, trigger urgent reviews of
government health and education policies, health and safety at work policies,
and our own personal attitudes of the importance of stress management to our
general wellbeing.
In the pink
Mary Midgley asks in her letter for a vaccine against evolutionary just so stories
(25 September, p 55).
The answer is the same as for real viruses: let
her indulge herself frequently with attenuated ones. Not only will they keep out
virulent just so stories, like flamingos’ pink legs being camouflage against
each day’s five minutes of sunset, but she will find them highly enlightening as
well.
Flamingos’ pink legs and plumage are indeed to do with eating shrimps, but
the attenuated just so going with this is far more interesting. The shrimps
harbour the waiting stages of many harmful parasites. The pink flamingo is
saying to neighbours and mates: “I feed every day on this nutritious but
dangerous food: see how I have good genes for resistance.” The pale flamingo who
is scared to feed on them, or who does and gets sick and pale in consequence,
can’t answer that challenge.
Who knows whether this is true? But why not think it and, if you choose, test
it? Might the flamingo’s pink legs be simply due to feeding on red shrimps? No
more chance than that I can get green by eating spinach, I would say.
Radiation specifics
The recent nuclear tragedy in Japan should not stop us correcting
misinformation about the earlier leak of radiactive water at the Tsuruga reactor
in July. Your report on this
(24 July, p 25)
stated that “around 46 000 becquerels of radiation flooded
from . . . a coolant pipe”, leading correspondent Mark Shilton
(4 September, p 54) to suppose the accident was a trivial one.
This is all nonsense. First, as the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information
Centre reports, the contamination was not 46 000 becquerels gross, but 46 000
becquerels per square centimetre on the floor of the unit.
Second, this water came from the primary coolant system, so the radioisotopes
causing the radioactive readings would not have been radon or potassium-40, but
fission and activation products from the reactor itself鈥攑ossibly the whole
gamut from plutonium downwards.
Third, the concept of becquerels is no way to express potential damage to
human health. Since it states nothing more than the number of radioactive decay
events per second, it must be qualified by values for the half-life of the
isotope under discussion, the range and energy of its decay and those of any
daughter isotopes, its propensity (if any) to be localised in specific tissues,
and the chemical or physical form in which it was present.
How true it is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Tested by humans
To discover whether Yvan Dutil’s interstellar message
(18 September, p 36),
or any other message destined for the stars, is decipherable by aliens, surely
it should be tested by humans first.
It would be easy to assemble a group of scientists, give them the intended
message鈥攚ithout any information about what it is鈥攁nd see if they can
decode it. How scientists on Earth fare would give some idea of how well, or
badly, alien scientists are likely to do. This seems an obvious test but there
was no mention of it in the article. Is it done?
Letter
I fear that we will be confusing any aliens that do receive and decipher the
Lincos message. In the supposedly universally logical sequence of numbers from 0
to 15 there is no number 13. I just hope that 13 wasn’t deliberately omitted for
superstitious reasons in a message designed to show that we are an intelligent,
advanced and sophisticated civilisation.