A real minefield
Your report on landmines claims: “In 2006, the US is set to belatedly join
139 other countries in agreeing to the Ottawa Convention outlawing
anti-personnel landmines”
(7 April, p 20). This is incorrect.
The Clinton administration committed the US to joining the Ottawa Convention
only if “effective alternatives have been identified and fielded”. This is not
technically feasible and won’t happen. Possibly the Bush administration will
drop the commitment altogether, which would make good humanitarian sense.
The Ottawa Convention is off target. It bans short-duration anti-personnel
mines that are not a humanitarian problem, while permitting long-duration
anti-tank mines that are a terrible humanitarian problem.
The alternatives to anti-personnel mines proposed by the US National Academy
of Sciences would cost a lot more, carry high technical risk, be less effective
and offer no humanitarian advantages over short-duration mines. Their only
purpose is to meet the political goal of joining the Ottawa Convention.
The best humanitarian and military solution is to ban all long-duration
landmines, thus going far beyond the Ottawa Convention while still protecting
troops. The US could begin by unilaterally becoming the first nation to do this.
It could then forget about the Ottawa Convention.
Is broccoli best?
Is there some real reason for identifying and isolating
the chemicals that prevent cancer
(7 April, p 4)?
Why not simply consume the basic food source with
the secure knowledge that there are probably a hundred or a thousand other
beneficial chemicals in that food as well?
You would probably have to eat nothing but broccoli to get the optimum
effect. It makes sense to either breed strains that make more of these
chemicals, or to isolate the chemicals and use them to fortify food. The other
reason for isolating the chemicals is to study how they work, how much you need
to take and whether there are any side effects鈥擡d
Blame it on soil
President Bush might be right after all
(7 April, p 3
and 11).
Estimates of humic substances in the soils of the world suggest a total of 14
to 15 脳 1017 grams of carbon,
with about 120 脳 1015 grams of carbon fixed by
plants annually and about 60 脳 1015 grams
respired from the soil. Fossil fuels
pump about 6 脳 1015 grams of carbon
into the atmosphere every year, which
represents only 10 per cent of that respired by humic substances in soil.
If the Kyoto cuts were implemented, the changes would be of the order of 1 or
2 per cent of the total carbon respired by soil. The errors in estimation are
likely to be greater than this. These figures are given as a quantitative
summary of the carbon cycle on page 3 of Humic Substances, Peats and
Sludges; Health and Environmental Aspects (M. H. B. Hayes and W. S. Wilson,
Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 1997).
If correct, these figures show that we can only influence climate change by
composting waste organic material, since we are unlikely to stop using fossil
fuels entirely. Also, we have destroyed the British coal industry for no reason.
My belief is that we should minimise fossil fuel use by increasing efficiency of
combustion and conserving energy through new technology.
Paying the polluter
I cannot help but draw parallels between the dispersal of GM-modified crops
(7 April, p 3
and 13)
and persistent pollutants such as organochlorines, smog
and heavy metals.
Should residents of Los Angeles pay car companies for the privilege of
breathing nitrous oxides?
Letter
If Monsanto can collect fees from farmers who find their fields contaminated
with GM crops, should computer users pay licence fees to the writers of computer
viruses?
Letter
I have a great idea for Monsanto to make money. They should patent the genome
for a strain of flu, and then sue everyone who catches it for infringement of
their intellectual property rights.
E-mmunity
After drawing a number of provocative analogies between digital infestations
and their biological counterparts, Clive Davidson concludes that the malicious
development of a computer immunodeficiency virus might be the ultimate
consequence
(31 March, p 34).
Scary stuff. But there’s another biological parallel that scares me even
more. A properly functioning immune system is a wonderful thing, but what’s to
stop some proactive defence software from developing an autoimmune reaction to
my files? As if computer operating systems aren’t flaky enough already. Given
the level of damage such a rogue system could do (no doubt with full authority
to access all drives and network machines), I think I’d prefer to take my
chances with the viruses.
Letter
A pity Davidson didn’t mention another similarity between biological and
computer systems鈥攖he benefits of genetic diversity. The near-universality
of Microsoft software makes life very easy for the PC virus writer/hacker.
I use Eudora to handle my e-mail, and it does not reside on my C drive. It’s
difficult to prove, but I reckon these two little differences from the norm have
probably saved me, and those in my address book, from a number of
“infections”.
Superman knew
The concept of mechanical wave lensing or diffraction effects within
geological formations is clearly possible
(7 April, p 30). The physics is
essentially similar to ultrasound scanning and impulsive geological sonar. So
why are geologists so surprised鈥攐r worse, sceptical鈥攖hat it
exists?
They should try reading the DC Superman comics of the 1960s and 1970s.
Superman would frequently catastrophically immobilise a fleeing car full of
crooks by a strategic ground stomp which focused seismic waves where they were
needed, without breaking a window in between.
Linguistic lack
For many years people have been trying to simplify the process of
programming, without much success
(7 April, p 21).
High-level languages such as
Fortran, Pascal and Cobol did have a positive effect, but mostly because the
languages take care of all the little housekeeping details that computers will
insist are correct.
The lack of success of English-like programming schemes is down to the fact
that most major software problems are caused by incorrect specifications, not by
the comparatively trivial problems of getting programming language syntax
correct.
There is a very old programming proverb that applies: “Make it possible to
write programs in English and you will quickly discover that programmers do not
know how to write in English.”
Jumbled conducting
A conductor’s “right arm signalling volume and the left arm beating time” is
fine as long as you stand in front of a mirror
(31 March, p 21). Do it in front
of an orchestra and you won’t get very far.
Don't walk
The solution to the problems of the “Bridge of Sways”
(31 March, p 38) is
surely to prevent people from walking across it. This could be achieved in a
number of ways. You could install a moving platform as used in airports, or
provide electric wheelchairs. Or you might install a chair system, such as is
used by disabled people on stairs.
Not this way
Regarding the Queensland “negative directionalism” signs Tony Caldersmith told
Feedback (24 March)
about, there is one such sign you will never see:
“This road does not lead to Rome.”
Particle shopping
In addition to the help Hugh MacDiarmid received in his search for prions
(Feedback, 10 March),
AltaVista gave me some tips: “Searching for Higgs boson?
Find it at Casino-On-Net.com. Find Higgs boson and millions of other cool items
at eBay!”
It's dam dangerous in the Three Gorges
Your interview with Dai Qing
(7 April, p 42)
made no mention of what may
well turn out to be the worst of all the threats presented by the Three Gorges
Dam鈥攄am-induced seismic activity.
Last month I spent ten days in Chongqing as a guest of the local university,
where I met members of staff from the department of civil engineering. They told
me that Chongqing lies in a seismically active zone.
Knowing that seismic activity often follows the construction of large
dams鈥攅ven in areas where there are no records of any previous seismic
activity鈥擨 asked my hosts what level of dam-induced seismic activity was
expected, and what measures had been taken to mitigate its effects. I
particularly wanted to find out about any safety plans for the older parts of
Chongqing, where crumbling, grossly overcrowded blocks of flats would be heavily
damaged by even minor earthquake shocks.
I suspect my questions touched a politically sensitive nerve,
because鈥攖hough I repeated them on several different occasions鈥攖hey
were, very politely, never answered.