Mars Attacks!
The loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter was caused by human error
(9 October, p 6)
and is one more reason why NASA and the French and Italian space agencies
should postpone their plans to return Martian soil samples in 2008. If a similar
error occurred on a sample return vehicle, what guarantees do we have that the
Martian soil samples won’t end up in our oceans or on a mountainside?
When our entire biosphere hangs in the balance, it is unwise to bring Martian
soil that might contain microorganisms鈥攁s discussed in Rachel Nowak’s
feature (18 September, p 44) 鈥攂ack to Earth. Unless we can rule out the
chance that it might do harm, we should not embark on such a course.
Letter
Rather than landing in Utah, the probe with the soil samples should land in
Kansas. You see, there is no evolution there, so presumably any microorganisms
on Mars would be the same as those in Kansas and thus pose no threat.
On second thoughts, no life would ever have evolved on Mars by KD (Kansas
Definition), so all of us American taxpayers, not to mention the French and
Italians, could save a bundle in taxes if the project was dropped.
Glad to be grey
Your article on falling birth rates
(2 October, p 20) ends by saying that
many futurists “fear that such rampant ageing, combined with a decline in the
overall population, will sap nations’ energy . . . starving businesses of
innovative ideas and dynamism, and creating a grey, conformist, society. In
other words, the decline and fall of the human empire.”
Would an elderly society be like that? I doubt it. During the golden age of
Greek civilisation, there were no inventions of note for around three hundred
years. Inventions were not needed in a society where slaves did the work. If the
robotic slaves now being developed work as hoped, why bother inventing anything
further?
Are elderly people conformist and unimaginative? Well, at 69, I recently
received a millennium award for teaching children to make animated movies. And I
am more than 20 years younger than the oldest recipient of this award.
Jack Nicholson, who is over 60, says “we are the new old”. Stars like Sean
Connery and Clint Eastwood, both 70, still play action men. They may well
represent what the future will be like. I certainly have a number of friends of
my own age who play tennis, skin dive, ski and climb mountains.
I would imagine that a society in which the majority of people were elderly
would be stable, peaceful, relaxed and compassionate. The young would have many
to turn to in times of need, and would be cherished and nurtured. Education
would be for its own sake, and material wealth would be a secondary
consideration of the ambitious.
So the “decline and fall of the human empire” doesn’t sound that bad.
Letter
Those of us who see overpopulation as a major threat to human existence will
draw some comfort from projections that the world population will peak around
2040 and then begin to fall.
However, even if the population plummets to 3.6 billion people by 2150, if
everyone demands US-type lifestyles there will still be enormous pressure on the
environment. Let us play safe and continue to listen to the doom mongers.
Global lobbyists
I had to laugh at Michael Jefferson’s review
(2 October, p 54) of Jeremy
Leggett’s book on global warming, The Carbon War.
Jefferson claims that opponents and sceptics of global warming are
“aggressive industry lobbyists” and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC)鈥攚hich promotes the global warming scare鈥攊s “the
international scientific panel assessing the world’s climate”. But, in reality,
the IPCC is not the only scientific group assessing the world’s climate.
Many other scientific groups are assessing the world’s climate, and most get
funds from private industries because many industries’ activities are affected
by climate. Politicians establish intergovernmental bodies for their own
political reasons. 杏吧原创s have no ability to establish, fund or operate
governmental and intergovernmental bodies.
Importantly, politicians “approve” and “amend” IPCC reports prior to their
publication. Simply put, the IPCC is an aggressive political lobby.
Unfriendly breed
Your article on genetically modified crops in the US
(25 September, p 18),
mentions the fact that the American company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) will
require suppliers to segregate GM from non-GM crops. However, it failed to point
out that ADM has been offering a premium of 18 cents a bushel (about 4 per cent
more than the normal price) to farmers who grow Synchrony soya beans.
Synchrony varieties were developed by DuPont, through conventional breeding,
to tolerate the sulphonylurea herbicides used to control annual broadleaf weeds,
but well known for leading to the development of resistant weeds and for having
some residual environmental toxicity.
If non-GM soya sells well in Europe this winter, Synchrony’s benefits will be
very evident to ADM. The actions of anti-GM activists in Europe and the US will
therefore have had the interesting effect of encouraging American farmers to use
an environmentally unfriendly herbicide.
Deaths in custody
You recently published a story suggesting that many people who die in custody
are suffering from excited delirium, a condition caused by the long-term use of
cocaine. In the article, Steven Karch is quoted as arguing that recent increases in
deaths in police custody in Britain are linked to an upsurge in cocaine use
(25 September, p 4).
This is an obscure explanation when there is a more obvious one: the large
increase in the number of people held in custody over the past few years. A
graph showing deaths per 1000 people in prison would have been more
appropriate.
Letter
Laura Spinney says that excited delirium (ED) sufferers “experience a
dangerous rise in body temperature”, that “other experts believe the emphasis
should be on changing police practice to avoid forms of restraint that make it
more likely that ED patients will die” and quotes Steven Karch as saying that
“even with optimum medical care they don’t stand much chance”.
Surely, to prevent ED deaths in custody, the emphasis should be on
identifying ED sufferers so that they can receive “optimum medical care”. This
could be as simple as taking the temperature of detainees who act strangely, and
needn’t be difficult or invasive, as an approximate temperature obtained with a
simple LCD strip on the forehead should be enough to identify high-risk
individuals. This might also identify other health problems that need attention.
Staring at the Sun
Your correspondent Brian Chadderton
(2 October, p 58) traces warnings about
the dangers of looking at the Sun back to the 16th century. In fact, the danger
during eclipses was known to the Greek physician Galen as early as AD 180.
“At the time of an eclipse, many who wish to gain a more accurate
understanding of the phenomenon and so look intently at the Sun have blinded
themselves completely without realising what they were doing.”
(De Usu Partium II, 68).
There’s nothing new under the Sun!
Cursing with reason
Although I am not among the 15 per cent of Touretters who suffer from
coprolalia, your item on Randy Flanagan’s research
(11 September, p 17)
had me cursing fairly uncontrollably.
As a Tourette’s syndrome patient, I was deeply offended by the introduction,
which managed to stereotype all Touretters in the first few words, the final
quote, which implies that understanding “normal” folks may be aided by studying
us abnormal creatures, and everything in between.
Although Randy Flanagan states in his journal article that “current writers
continue to emphasise the `involuntary nature’ of tics”, none of
the references he cites supporting that belief is less than 11 years old.
I thought everyone realised that it has been known for at least a decade that
Tourette’s appears to be caused by the same gene as obsessive-compulsive
disorder and attention deficit disorder, and that Touretters have long reported
that they can “postpone”, “select” or otherwise “control” their tics for brief
periods.
The only enlightening aspect of your story for me was how misunderstood
Tourette’s syndrome is, even by professionals.
Proud to be silly
Feedback
(9 October)
is delighted with my Ig Nobel prize for the physics of
biscuit dunking. So am I. As I pointed out in my acceptance speech at Harvard,
this was the first British win at a Boston Tea Party for over two hundred
years.
A high point of the ceremony was supposed to be the descent of a huge biscuit
into a tap-dancing teacup. Unfortunately the biscuit missed, rather spoiling the
joke.
Without wishing to trample on that joke myself, I must point out that
Feedback, too, has missed the target by failing to mention the main point of the
Ig Nobels, which is to “spur interest in science”.
One way in which they do this is to bring attention to some of the silly
things that are done in the name of science. Another way, spelt out on the Ig
Nobel website, is to “honor the unusual and the imaginative”. Half of the prizes
are awarded in each category.
I leave it to readers to judge what category my work falls into. To give a
clue, its sole intent was to make science more accessible by presenting a
commonplace activity in scientific terms. Judging from the resultant publicity,
the intention seems to have been fulfilled.