Whingeing about whales
Mate, your editorial on the need for more whale killing is right off
(4 August, p 3).
It’s one thing for whingeing Poms to sit in some office in London
and pontificate about the killing of our whales and our kangaroos, but it is
another to equate the two.
For one thing, there is no known way to “humanely kill” a whale. The only way
I know to kill one is to blast a harpoon into its gut and let it bleed to death
over about six hours. In any event, the killing of roos doesn’t justify
whaling.
The Japanese never had a tradition of eating whale meat. Get real, cobber,
poor people in Japan only ate whale meat when they couldn’t afford anything else
except cockroaches.
Your editorial showed all the sensitivity that you would expect from some
solipsistic aesthete who’s never shot a roo and consequently has never
discovered that it is only a continuum that distances us animals from one
another. You may reckon you’ve got some divine spark and therefore have the
right to kill, eat and generally exploit other creatures, but I reckon you have
to earn your humanity.
One more thing: the grossly chauvinistic bit about the Japanese and
Westerners in the last paragraph鈥攇ood one, you whingeing Pommy
bastard.
Changing iris
Cambridge University’s John Daugman believes that human iris patterns change
negligibly over time
(11 August, p 16). The plastic eye I now use, made 20 years
ago when I was 38 years old, is still a perfect match for my biological eye. But
the previous prosthetic eye had to be replaced after 13 years because the iris
of my remaining eye had changed after I was 25. And the plastic eye that I got
when I was 16 lasted only nine years before it got out of synch with my
biological iris.
It may be that iris scans of teenagers, or even of under-thirties, may have
to be retaken at regular intervals. If my experience is typical, the makers of
artificial eyes may have some useful information for Daugman.
Letter
I’ve just read some of what’s going on with therapeutic cloning and I felt
like crying.
I have been in a wheelchair for almost five years now and I’m still only 19
years old. I have a son who I take care of who is a year and a half old and I
would give anything for my son to see me to walk and be a normal Mom. It’s very
hard being in a chair and I wish people who can walk wouldn’t take it for
granted.
I can’t believe the politicians are even questioning whether this technology
should be tested or not. It would mean the world to people who are in my
position. Please let the technology develop because the doctors told me this
would give me my only chance of walking.
Too samey
There are good scientific reasons for being opposed to human cloning
(11 August, p 17).
In the first chapter of every college-level biology book, two principles are
stated: humans evolve through natural selection, and survival in varying
environmental conditions requires genetic variation.
By cloning humans, we are eliminating the genetic variation that is required
for survival. So, besides all the potential mutation problems and various gene
expression problems which may or may not exist, human cloning contradicts one of
the fundamental premises of the science that created it.
There is really no scientific purpose to it and there is no need to further
develop the technology at this point.
Cut the salt
The vision of turning “barren, salt-laden soils” into “lush farmland” by
growing genetically modified plants whose leaves accumulate sodium has one flaw
(4 August, p 13). What happens to the sodium as the leaves decompose back into
the soil? To regenerate saline soils, surely these leaves would need to be
removed to enable a net removal of salt.
Pulsed perception
Carolyn Drake and Mari Reiss Jones theorised that the world is perceived in
pulses, rather than a steady stream
(4 August, p 32). If this theory is valid,
it could explain how the world seems to slow down during moments of intense
danger. Perhaps in response to extreme stress, the brain is able to increase the
frequency at which it samples its environment, thus creating a slow-motion
effect in the same way that increasing the number of frames per second in a cine
camera does.
It may also explain why some people are better than others at sports
requiring eye-hand coordination. Top players like Pat Rafter and Lance Klusener
may have a naturally faster sampling rate, allowing them to track a fast-moving
ball better than others. If this is the case, it would be interesting to see if
there is some way of training this ability.
Only negotiate
I agree with much of Steve Wright’s review of non-lethal weaponry, but his
analysis fails to provide a very obvious solution to the problem of non-lethal
weapons
(11 August, p 10).
Wright ends by saying that we need to find an
alternative to the use of force. This alternative already exists. It has been
used increasingly by police forces and similar agencies throughout the West and
beyond, over the past thirty years. It is negotiation.
Almost everywhere in the West, the vast majority of protest is concluded not
only peacefully, but with the minimum of disruption. In research covering nearly
a hundred major incidents in London where keeping public order was involved, I
observed how the police routinely assisted and advised protesters, achieving
control through agreement rather than confrontation.
This is clearly the preferred strategy, but states do have a monopoly of
legitimate force over their citizens, and the custodians of that monopoly are
the police. It takes two to tango as well as to negotiate. If those who reject
negotiation and opt instead for violent confrontations prevail, then the state
has lost its monopoly. No state can tolerate that and survive.
What distinguishes liberal democratic states from their less salubrious
counterparts is not that they refuse to use force, but that they regard it as a
last resort. The search for effective, less-lethal weaponry testifies to the
imperative to use only as much force as the situation demands.
Urine is safe
Bob Jasper is correct to state that recent research has discovered the
abnormal isoform of the prion protein in urine of animals suffering from prion
diseases such as BSE
(18 August, p 52). This would indeed be a major national
problem if depositing the prion on pasture grass encouraged the persistence of
BSE in pasture herds.
However, thankfully, the researchers involved in this study have shown that
the urine prion isoform does not produce spongiform degeneration in rodents when
injected into their brains. So urine deposited on pastures by animals with BSE
does not pose a risk.
However, this work shows that the presence of the prion isoform in urine may
lend itself nicely to the development of a non-invasive diagnostic test for
prion disease.
Letter
Duncan Graham-Rowe writes an entertaining report of his attempt to converse
with Hal. Perhaps he might like the 1977 novel The Adolescence of P-1
by Thomas J. Ryan, in which a computer program becomes “alive”. P-1’s response
to “How are you?” was, instead of Graham-Rowe’s 18-month-old daughter’s
delightful “More raisins Daddy”, “Fine. Glad to meet you.” Maybe Turing was
right all along?
Laptop lingo
So “Hal”, a laptop with learning algorithms, is being taught to converse in
English
(11 August, p 34).
Your article outlines what is probably a good
strategy to use in the quest for a talking machine: learn to converse by
practice and error feedback. Currently, however, this approach is seriously
undermined by the fact that the computer science and AI community do not have
any algorithms that exhibit learning behaviour as powerful and flexible as that
of humans, even鈥攐r perhaps especially鈥攈uman infants. AI learning
algorithms are crude, brittle, short-term and severely limited in scope.
Machine learning, like every other aspect of AI, is a science of the
future鈥攁nd probably the distant future at that. Contrary to the claims of
Hal’s designer, there is no paradigm shift evident in what he is doing. Learning
bits and pieces of English grammar from positive examples and negative feedback
has long been the preserve of student projects. The Hal project closely follows
the usual AI paradigm, neatly encapsulated in the word “hopeware”, of
demonstrating the very first steps towards AI coupled with predictions that the
real innovations will emerge in 2, 5 or 10 years. Many years ago someone likened
this strategy to climbing trees as the first step towards reaching the Moon.
Additional weaknesses in this approach concern the fact that the only
“systems” capable of learning human languages鈥攗s, in other
words鈥攁lso interact with the world. So the meaning of words might be
crucially grounded in tactile, visual, emotional and general sensory interaction
with real objects. We also have to think about any innate capabilities for
human-language learning we’re born with. A tabula rasa seems unlikely, but there
are an infinite number of alternatives to nothing, and we have little more than
inklings of what the average newborn brings to bear in facing the challenge of
understanding language, and the world around it.
Finally, does anyone think that a baby isolated in a basement and interacting
only periodically with two adults could learn anything more than a crude and
grotesquely distorted parody of human language?
Idiot proof
In recent months Feedback has often commented on the apparently ridiculous
safety instructions on modern products, but you have not drawn attention to the
real cause of this problem. The latest European Union safety (CE) regulations
are so draconian that failure to warn of any risk, however ludicrous, could
result in the imprisonment of the person in the manufacturing company that
signed the CE certificate.
The situation with CE regulation is now so bad that it is next to impossible
for a small company to produce any electrical product that runs on mains
electricity, and it is almost as bad for any other product. It costs a minimum
of 拢40,000 for the various tests required to grant a product a
certificate.
The safety instructions are part of the certification and if a risk
exists鈥攏o matter how unlikely it is, or how stupid the person would have
to be to incur it鈥攁nd it is not mentioned in the instructions, the
signatory to the certificate is not only civilly but criminally liable for any
injury the idiot receives. This even includes, for example, running a tap over a
mains electric drill while it is plugged in.
Perhaps your scorn might be directed against this over-regulation, which is
throttling small businesses, rather than at us poor chaps who have to lie awake
at night trying to work out all the possible ways our products could injure a
complete twit.
Letter
Roebar talks dismissively of the risk of having mail “gloated over by
salacious bureaucrats”. However, that is not the danger. The danger is your
innocently making some comment that makes the government think you’re a
criminal.
The question isn’t how much freedom we ought to give up to catch criminals.
The question is how many innocent individuals will be considered criminals.
Abuses of early DNA evidence have shown just how real this danger is.
A few crooks to keep us free
Joe Roeber believes the desires of the few outweigh the rights of the
many鈥攊n other words, it’s OK for the majority of people to have their
privacy invaded just so the police have a marginally easier time catching the
few criminals out there
(11 August, p 52).
Be careful what you wish for, Joe.
At a time when personal privacy and identity are becoming ever more important
to us, they’re also becoming harder to protect. How would you feel if your
hospital suggested that a donation to its directors’ retirement fund might
prevent it from having to sell its records of you, including last year’s
stomach-pumping after the Christmas party, to an insurance company hungry to
raise your premiums? If booking a trip to New York resulted in 500 recorded
phone calls from restaurants in Manhattan? If regular purchases from your wine
club marked you down as an alcoholic? All these things, and far worse, could
happen.
Detecting criminals isn’t supposed to be easy. Yes, you can have zero crime,
but only in a society with zero privacy and zero human rights. The prevention is
far worse than the cure.
Sorry, Joe, but if politicians and police are asserting their right to use
technology to invade my privacy, I’ve got every right to use the same
tools鈥攊n my case, 2048-bit encryption on my hard disc鈥攖o protect it.
Privacy is not a privilege, it’s a basic right.
Long-distance arias
I was fascinated by Feedback telling us the tale of a long-distance Pavarotti
“broadcast”
(4 August). Especially because I happened to hear the same concert
at 6 am New Zealand time, via my daughter’s mobile. From around 18,500
kilometres away, I was treated to Pavarotti and a lovely soprano singing Puccini
arias, with my daughter’s excited commentary in between. Alas! The credit on her
cellphone ran out all too soon.
Mean to men
In reply to Bob Sacher’s letter regarding management consultants and the
saying “Treat ’em mean to keep ’em keen”
(28 July, p 73)鈥攁s far as I’m
concerned鈥攖he saying has much more practical beginnings.
My girlfriends and I often used the maxim as the number one strategy for
keeping the more fickle sex in line, and that was from the early 1990s. Come to
think of it, I suppose it could be seen as a “management” strategy at that.
Letter
Westminster Diary
(11 August, p 51) reports that “drowsiness could be a
factor in about 10 per cent of accidents on Britain’s road”. In what percentage
of editorial oversights could drowsiness be a factor?
Motes and beams
I always look forward to Feedback’s reports on the unintended inaccuracies in
the press and on labelling.
Today
(18 August) Feedback tells us that when choosing a password most users
(47 per cent) fall into the family category. Now I’m waiting for Feedback to
point out that this means that in fact most users (53 per cent) do not fall into
this category.
Offshore husbandry
I was interested by your article about human overexploitation of marine
species. I agree that refuges are needed where fishing is banned, to maintain
core breeding stocks and nurseries for their young to get a good start in life
(4 August, p 14).
The problem with this scenario is that small local fishing
vessels, which do less damage anyway, would lose their most profitable
grounds.
This difficulty could be partly addressed if environmentally benign husbandry
were allowed in the protected fallow zones. For example, sedentary
filter-feeders which convert phytoplankton directly into human food could be
grown in seabed cages.
Those of us who pioneered commercial shellfish hatcheries in the 1960s
envisioned such a system. But we were overtaken by several catastrophic events,
including the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy, which encouraged
everyone to take what they could before supposedly less responsible foreigners
could get to it. This left no possibility for experimentation with offshore
husbandry. Also, total bans are blunt instruments and wasteful of responsible
fishing opportunities, which, with the fishing industry in such a parlous state,
are desperately needed.
Fisheries will probably never be properly run until fishermen, like most
farmers, get proper title to the grounds they exploit, because the exploitation
of common land is always wasteful, inefficient, over-regulated and fraught with
potential conflict.
Let it rain
The ability to eliminate a danger as great as a hurricane by dispersing
clouds would be more than welcome
(4 August, p 7). However, some major issues
need to be considered first.
The story implies that a gel formed as clouds wet a powder will fall
majestically to earth. But if 4000 kilograms of flakes, each absorbing 2000
times their own weight in water, fall to earth, there’ll be 8000 tonnes of gel
falling鈥攑ossibly on someone’s head. Let’s hope that it all happens over
the sea, thus avoiding excessive insurance claims or lawsuits for damages, and
that the gel dissolves nicely in salt water.
But what then happens to the water cycle if large rain clouds are prevented
from travelling over land? Rain is one of English cricket’s main weapons. If we
guarantee sunshine we’ll lose every test match we play.