Right to know
The report on vanishing twins
(20 October, p 38)
was very sad and I found the prospect that I may have started life with a twin
brother or sister who suddenly disappeared rather disturbing. The part of the
article that disturbed me the most however, was the details of just how many
instances of fetus papyraceus鈥攖he remains of the lost twin which form
a dry, paper-like mass on the placenta鈥攇o unrecorded, with the parents
not being informed.
In the case of miscarriages, if the parents are unaware they have lost a
fetus they are told what happened. They should also be told in this situation.
It is true that being informed about a fetus papyraceus could be very upsetting,
but parents have the right to know.
Crowd control weapon violates international law
Using microwave technology to disperse crowds has frightening implications
for civil liberties in the US and abroad
(27 October, p 26).
While the US claims to renounce the use of torture tactics, the prospect of
manipulating the “ample margin between intolerable pain and causing a burn” on
human (or even non-human) subjects is appalling.
The use of pain to “control” groups of people, whether charged with a crime
or not, as in the case of publicly assembled crowds, is a clear definition of
terrorism. Using such weaponry against common citizens would violate the human
rights protocols of international law. In the hands of other states or groups,
the US would righteously condemn such tactics.
Surely we must hold ourselves to at least the same minimal standard by which
we judge other people. 杏吧原创s must take responsibility for the likely
applications of the technologies that they develop. They cannot hold themselves
above the results of their work any more than a schoolteacher, doctor or lawyer
can. We applied this standard to Hitler’s “medical” researchers. We cannot
escape it ourselves today.
Gone with the clay
There is no need to invoke flooding or a major earthquake to explain the
collapse of the ground beneath Herakleion and eastern Canopus
(20 October, p 42).
The failure is consistent with quick-clay landslides.
Quick clays have relatively high cohesive strength in the undisturbed state,
but when disturbed they have the consistency of thick pea soup. This makes them
very susceptible to rapid and dramatic landslides.
The famous quick-clay landslide at Rissa in Norway, which was recorded on
video, occurred in April 1978 and covered an area of 330,000 square metres. The
slide volume was about 6 million cubic metres and it was triggered by quite
minor works associated with the construction of a new barn near the shore of
Lake Botnen. Areas of land up to 4 hectares moved downhill at speeds of 30 to 40
kilometres per hour, taking intact houses along for the ride.
The article mentions that there was up to 20 metres of soft sediments under
Herakleion and eastern Canopus. It is quite possible those were quick clays and
that the catastrophes that engulfed the cities were, as at Rissa, triggered by
quite minor events, man-made or otherwise.
Alternative toilets
Louise Halestrap is to be commended for the work she is doing in alternative
faecal waste disposal
(27 October, p 48).
Here in Australia鈥攁rguably the driest continent on
Earth鈥攁lternative faecal waste disposal is unfortunately rare. Cities and
towns, large and small, adhere to conventional water-transported waste disposal,
which means that beaches and major rivers are polluted and degraded with
blue-green algae blooms. Even rural councils react with horror and suspicion
when loony “greenies” apply to have composting waterless dunnies installed in
their dwellings.
My wife and I retired to a rural block in Queensland where rain is unreliable
and infrequent. We use creek water for showering and washing, rain water for
drinking and a Clivus composting dunny for faecal and urinal waste removal. The
unit nestles under the dunny alcove 15 centimetres below floor level and faecal
pellets drop less than 40 centimetres to the “pile”, the apex of which is
knocked down monthly.
The unit has been trouble free, for six years apart from a fan replacement,
and unless there is absolute wind calm there is no noticeable odour. I can’t say
the same for our son’s WC in suburban Brisbane. Nor can I say the same for the
pump-out grey water WC septic systems many people in rural areas have installed.
Keep it up, Louise, and maybe humungous amounts of our most precious resource
will one day be saved from just carrying shit.
Detecting civilians
Andrew Brookes says that a machine that chooses its own target “would have to
tell if a truckload of nuns was about to cross a bridge before blowing it up”
(13 October, p 4).
And later in the same article, you state that according to the Geneva Convention if a
weapon cannot make this distinction it is illegal.
Can someone please explain how a cruise missile, fired from a distance of
5000 kilometres, or a bomber at 12,000 metres, can detect a bunch of nuns
crossing a bridge at night?
Letter
The claim is that such beams are nowhere near as penetrating as longer
wavelengths.
Does this mean that lining your clothes with aluminium foil, and possibly
covering your head with wire mesh or a fencing mask, would be enough to allow
you to continue unhindered by the beam as long as it was set at “safe”
levels?
To disperse such hard-line rioters, would the beam have to be set at a level
that would be potentially quite harmful to an unprotected person?
Letter
Most critics are concerned about the cornea. That may be worrisome for the
average protester, but I am more interested in what can happen to a person with
a pacemaker.
Letter
Who is this technology going to be used against? Why is this needed?
I think we need to seriously watch our government and the new technology for
“crowd control”. The new anti-terrorism bills passing into law are shattering
our constitutional rights. Perhaps the day of Big Brother is not so far
away.
Technology is a great tool to be used to benefit humankind, not enslave
it.
Not quite a kite
Marcus Chown is correct that Egyptologists cannot say with certainty how the
pyramids were built
(27 October, p 40).
Nor can we prove that the ancient Egyptians did not use kites. There is no harm in
Maureen Clemmons experimenting with kites, but it is a pity that her inspiration
for doing so should be based on a complete misunderstanding of the picture that
she saw in a book on Egyptian monuments.
The picture, reproduced on p 42, shows a relief depicting a deity (it seems
to be the ram-headed god, Khnum) flanked on either side by a row of men with
their arms raised in the typical ancient Egyptian gesture of adoration. These
men are worshipping Khnum; they are not holding the strings of kites.
The vertical lines above the heads of the men are in fact guidelines between
which hieroglyphs would have been drawn or sculpted if the relief had been
completed. The “giant bird in the sky” is not a bird at all but the disc of the
Sun equipped with a pair of wings, a motif often used in ancient Egyptian art.
The winged disc is most famously connected with the falcon-god, Horus, who
according to one mythological story once took on the form of a great winged
Sun-disc and shone so fiercely upon the enemies of the Sun-god Ra, that they
were blinded and killed one another in panic.
Defeating the droop
Cut flowers droop because of bacteria which clog their vessels
(3 November, p 59).
Adding a mild sterilising agent containing aspirin or common bleach, if
heavily diluted, can help. A very effective solution that lasts a long time is
25 parts per million silver nitrate plus a buffer of 75 parts per million citric
acid.
The addition of sugar to a preservative mixture in amounts varying from 2 per
cent to as much as 8 per cent will help to open buds, and sometimes prolong the
life of flowers.
See
www.umass.edu/umext/programs/agro/floriculture/floral_facts/presvcut.htm
for a useful account.
Strap on your mask
The picture on p 4 of your 3 November issue seems to show a US postal worker
wearing a 3M filtering face piece (FFP) as protection against the threat of
anthrax. The mask is being worn with the bottom strap cut off or dangling.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but here are eight to redress the
balance: “If there’s only one strap, it’s probably crap.”
I work for Britain’s Health and Safety Executive. I am sick of pointing out
to employers and factory workers that the pictures on the pack clearly tell them
how to put on the FFP with both straps to hold the mask closely to the face.
A mask with only one (top) strap hangs forward off the lower face, leaves a
big gap to breathe through, and will be rotten protection against anthrax or
respirable dust of any kind. Unfortunately, some cheap and ineffective masks are
only manufactured with one strap. See the 3M pack and British Standard 4275 for
more information.
Safety unproven
Rejecting the possibility that milk might be contaminated with BSE
(20 October, p 60),
Jill Elsberg of the Dairy Council, supplies a typical response from a trade
association鈥攖he absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Letter
Am I missing the point? Surely the pulleys are the important feature. With
them, a team of men pulling on the rope will easily achieve what the kites can
do, so why bother with the vagaries of wind power?
Corrections
The Swiss Peace Foundation does not monitor currencies at risk
as stated in “Countdown to crisis”
(27 October, p 10).
It uses the “conflict carrying capacity” index along with conventional country
information and their own field reporting system to monitor conflict in a range
of countries, including central Asia.
Also, it was stated in the feature “Desert harvest”
(27 October, p 44)
that the UN Environment Programme claims that 900 million Africans face
starvation. In fact, this is the figure for the world as a whole, not just Africa.
txting gener8tion
i fit in2 ur 20-something bracket of “crazy txt msgers” but thnkfully i still
regard my fingrs as fully fnctionl 4 activities such as doorbell pressing
(3 November, p 18).
it seems 2 b quite obvs 2 me why thumbs r used 4 texting. it was not the case
that we all sat down 2 dcide which of r digits allowed us the highest level of
dexterity. it was more that mobiles r well . . . mobile. have u ever tryd 2 hold
a mobile in ur hands + then type with ur index fingrs? highly impossbl just 2
type let alone type quickly [the essence of txting].
surely fingers go round the back 2 stabilise the phone, leaving only the
thumbs free. i’d b more concerned about possbl spelling + grammar loss
amongst the txting gener8tion :) l8ters
Singular distinction
I have been intrigued by recent news of further evidence for the presence of
a large black hole anchoring the centre of our Galaxy. Such an important
celestial object needs, I think, a less awkward name than “The Black Hole at the
Centre of Our Galaxy”.
So I propose that the astronomer credited with locating the Galactic centre,
Harlow Shapley, be associated with this object. Shapley was an American astronomer
who lived from 1885 to 1972, and was awarded the Bruce medal in 1939.
I’m open to alternative suggestions, but my preference is to call it
“Shapley’s Black Hole”.
Who flicked first?
In the description of Franco Caldana’s patent for a device giving quick and
easy access to a mobile phone
(3 November, p 26),
you make reference to Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of the notorious Nazi war
criminal, Christian Szell, who hid a knife up his sleeve that emerged at the
flick of the wrist, in the 1976 film Marathon Man.
However, there is an even closer resemblance to a device that gives quick and
easy access to a handgun, constructed by Robert de Niro’s anti-hero cab driver
and war veteran Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (also 1976). I wonder if
this would count as prior art and thus invalidate Caldana’s claims of novelty.
Hope for lions
All of us involved with lions are delighted at the publicity given to the report
about their dwindling number of lions in west and central Africa鈥攂ut deeply
saddened by the situation
(3 November, p 7).
The published report states that you need populations of between 500 and 1000
lions, with 100 breeding pairs, to avoid inbreeding and its possible damaging
genetic effects. However, many carnivore populations consist of far fewer
individuals, notably the tiger, with most subpopulations having less than 100.
There are many examples of species recovering from very small numbers. A
century ago, overhunting reduced the numbers of the Asiatic lion, found only in
the Gir forest of western India, to fewer than 100鈥攍ocal officials even
said to a dozen. Today, numbers have risen to around 300.
In Russia, the Amur or Siberian tiger was put at 30 to 40 in the 1940s, but a
mid-90s population survey estimated 350 adults plus 100 sub-adults and cubs.
While lion populations of 500 plus are desirable, the fact that many are in
low numbers is not necessarily disastrous. If it were, then we might as well
give up on tigers. Recovery has been shown to be possible, given three firm
actions鈥攑rotection of the species, protection of its prey and protection
of its habitat.
Stonehenge blues
Mike Pitts is quite right that the only reasonable way to dispose of the
Stonehenge road problem is to bury it in a tunnel
(27 October, p 51).
I also agree that we need a proper museum rather than the usually tacky “visitor
centre”.
Another candidate for such a museum is the ill-fated Millennium Bluestone
that Pembrokeshire County Council now admits cost 拢475,000 to drag the few
miles from Mynydd Preseli to Milford Haven, where it sank to the seabed. It now
sits ignominiously in a warehouse, probably as the most expensive chunk of
undressed stone in Britain.
Whilst the fiasco was unfolding, a colleague e-mailed me from Mexico asking
where he could obtain a specimen of the spotted-dolerite bluestone as a memento
of a visit to Stonehenge. The answer was “Nowhere, legally”, but I told him we
had humorously speculated about polishing small fragments of the Millennium
Bluestone and selling them at an exorbitant price to reclaim at least some of
the investment.
I propose that the stone is cut longitudinally and one half exhibited as a
magnificent polished geological specimen. The other half, reduced to fragments
and polished, might be sold at, say 拢50 a time, recouping the investment
by the people of Pembrokeshire and the Lottery Millennium Fund.