Mind without thought
Who can say for sure that living beings without brains are not conscious? Jamie Shreeve says, “Wherever consciousness resides in our minds, it is almost certainly not on the cellular level, but rather in the vastly complex interactions that take place in the unique architecture of the human brain” (25 June, p 39). I find this a very dangerous assumption, especially when people use it, as Michael S. Gazzaniga does, to determine up to which moment to do research on embryos (11 June, p 48).
I can imagine insects, bacteria and even single cells having a consciousness and feeling pain, hunger and pleasure. Since we know close to nothing about consciousness, how can we be so sure about this? Why should the human brain be so special?
Buddhist monks, for instance, spend a lot of time meditating to clear their minds of all thoughts and attain a state of “pure consciousness”. For them, human thought is not a prerequisite for consciousness.
It is also high time we stopped seeing ourselves as superior beings and started caring more for other animals. Shreeve says that it would be unethical to do stem cell research that creates part-human chimeras but sees no problem doing it with other animals. Suppose that alien beings with an intelligence far superior to ours decided that rather stupid human beings are an ideal test subject for their stem cell research, as it would of course be unethical to do this on their own kind.
Fur not flying
Though she surely doesn’t mean to, Ros Clubb reinforces a blatant marketing exercise by the fur trade (18 June, p 22). Having lost the animal welfare arguments, the fur trade has concentrated on economics and fashion to promote itself, and is trying to convince us all that “fur is back”. If it can persuade consumers that fur goods are leaping off the shelves, the theory goes, more people will buy its wares.
The fur trade is not back, particularly in the UK, where the London department store Selfridges recently announced that it will not stock any items made from real fur in any of its stores from now on, citing “a decline in demand for fur-related products”. The figures do not support the increase suggested.
However, demand is undoubtedly growing in emerging markets such as Russia and China. To meet the demands of the international fur trade, an animal is killed every second. Anti-fur groups like ourselves have our work cut out to try to counter this particular form of cruelty. We should not be killing animals for trivial and unnecessary purposes.
Look on the bright side
The Torino Scale, which attempts to quantify the risk of potential impacts, was developed by Rick Binzel at MIT (25 June, p 34). He has put great effort into public awareness of the level of threat from comets and asteroids.
You also fail to point out that it might be possible to exploit detection of the “keyholes” through which an asteroid must pass if it is going to hit us next time round. Ex-astronaut Rusty Schweickart has pointed out that when 2004 MN4 flies by us in 2029, the keyhole will be only 600 metres across. This means that deflecting the asteroid by only a few hundred metres could ensure that it missed us in 2036 or beyond, were it found to be on a collision course.
Finally, Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona has pointed out to me that painting an asteroid white, or wrapping it in aluminium foil, produces thrust from sunlight in the least helpful direction. The best deflection direction is along the orbital path.
From Ed Lyden
It seems to me that MN4 is the greatest gift mankind could ever get. A 300-metre hunk of metal comes within 26,000 kilometres. Does that ring the dinner bell? You have 25 years to get space tugs ready to pull it into a near-Earth orbit or to the L5 Lagrange position. Then you have trillions of dollars’ worth of metal ready to be transformed into a floating city. If humans can’t see this as a once-in-a-millennium opportunity then we don’t deserve to have a future.
Katy, Texas, US
杏吧原创s have spoken
Mark Lynas has an interesting view of climate scientists and their role in public policy debate on climate change (25 June, p 25). He claims that we are not fulfilling our “moral responsibility” to help solve climate change, and that we are being intimidated into silence.
Far from it. It was climate scientists who first brought the issue into the public arena. It is scientists who continue to make progress in defining exactly what risks society is facing through our reliance on a carbon energy economy. It is scientists who have opened up a range of new low-carbon energy technologies. It is scientists (environmental economists in fact) who have drawn attention to the value of stabilising climate.
But you are living in the wrong century if you think it is scientists who can tell society or politicians what the appropriate solutions and policies must be. And the “philosopher king” model of governance went out of fashion more than two millennia ago.
It is as though Lynas, and some other frantic environmentalists, having in turn blamed George Bush, the UK government, the multinational corporations and the recalcitrant public for lack of appropriate response to climate change, have now turned on climate scientists and made them the scapegoat for behavioural, social and political inertia.
First tool tale?
Nick Sibbett recalls a record of tool use by a chimpanzee dating from the 1920s (2 July, p 22). I remember reading as a child about an orang-utan that bent a piece of wire to pick the lock on its cage. It was in a Children’s Encyclopaedia 鈥� I think the 1910 edition handed down by my father. Does any reader happen to know the exact reference?
Terrifying discovery
You report that violent games seem to shut down emotional parts of the brain (25 June, p 10). This will undoubtedly inspire even more moral panic and calls for censorship of games.
In the same issue you also report that “women’s orgasms are a turn-off for the brain” (p 14) 鈥� apparently referring to the same brain regions. In light of this terrifying discovery, it is obvious that female orgasms must be forbidden, regulated or at least labelled with prominent warnings.
They told you so
Surprise, surprise. The big bang is in trouble (2 July, p 30). For decades, a group of scientists that included the late Fred Hoyle, Jayant Narlikar, Geoffrey Burbidge and Chandra Wickramasinghe have been trying to convince the scientific establishment of the error of their ways on the big bang, a term itself coined in derision by Hoyle.
We see again how “big science”, by not listening to dissent of this quality, has allowed itself to become lazy and arrogant.
On being a bird
Your review suggests that birds sing for pleasure, and that their song is beautiful because birds like beauty (18 June, p 51). This may be true, but there are many birds whose song is not beautiful to our ears. So what justification is there for a theory based only on carefully selected bird species?
The idea that gulls ride the winds “for no apparent reason other than love of flight” also seems tenuous. Unlike tree-dwelling birds, gulls have flat webbed feet, which are not well designed for gripping. Consider a gull trying to roost on a slippery wind-blown rock. Being, like all birds, light compared to its volume, it may lose its precarious grip on the rock and be blown about by the wind. It will be much safer on the wing, where it also avoids predators.
Probably far more important to the gull, though, is a high viewpoint, which allows it to see food from afar. Any fisherman will testify how quickly the gulls come screaming when you throw gutting scraps in the sea. That’s not a beautiful song, either.
iPod back-ups
Your article on using iPods to steal information quotes Abe Usher of the security consultancy Sharp Ideas as saying that an iPod plugged into a computer takes just 65 seconds to copy all Excel, PDF and Word files (25 June, p 29).
Can’t we turn this to positive use? It seems to offer a safe and very fast back-up. Spend 65 seconds a day copying all your files 鈥� ideally onto two iPods alternately 鈥� and you can keep all your data separate from your main computer and thus absolutely immune to hackers and other disasters.
A graphologist writes…
You state that “for centuries the writing style for legal and religious documents hardly changed” (25 June, p 54). The main book-hand styles used in the millennium before printing were: uncial, half-uncial, Caroline minuscule, gothic and humanist.
There was also a racy italic called “bastarda”. There were secretary hands (civil service) and chancery hands (legal). Each of the book-hands had distinctive variations across Europe, too: so you can hardly claim the writing styles “hardly changed”.
The styles of illuminations, inks, pens and parchment all went through changes, too. This is just a small section of the fascinating study of palaeography. I’d love to see more of it in New 杏吧原创.
Thick as slime mould
Slime mould intelligence (18 June, p 54)? I wish. The behaviour of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum, which directs growth only towards the oat flakes in the maze, can be much more simply interpreted.
Oat flakes and other dried vegetative material release volatiles, which stimulate vigorous and directed growth responses in fungi from a distance. So rather than sending random threads of hyphal growth in various directions in a maze, fungi will send one multi-stranded rope-like cord of hyphal growth (a cordon) directly toward the dried material from a distance of several centimetres. Such a growth response is unlike the normal growth behaviour of the fungus exploring an environment.
Isn’t this a more likely explanation for the described results than ascribing intelligence to slime mould?
Seeing the light
Feedback was slightly wide of the mark when it poked fun at a message in Braille instructing readers to take note of a flashing light (2 July). Many blind people can distinguish light and dark, and some of those will be able to read the Braille notice.
Compassion and consistency
I was intrigued by Ben Haller’s letter about your “Animals and us” section (25 June, p 26). The more I read it, the less it made sense. He rescues trapped craneflies yet implicitly condones the exploitation (which I presume means killing and eating, etc.) of animals, and then goes on to say that he sees no justification to characterise this attitude as “moral schizophrenia”. Why should a cranefly be worthy of compassion but not a pig or a cow? Well, of course, it’s more inconvenient to be compassionate towards a cow 鈥� you might be rather partial to hamburgers.
He goes on say that “many other animals on the planet are quite comfortable with killing for a living” 鈥� this implies that these animals have the capacity for conscious self-examination, a system of ethics and are omnivorous. While the first two implications are possibly debatable, the fact that some animals are carnivorous and have no choice about what they need to eat to survive is quite well documented.
And one could logically ask how Haller knows that they are comfortable with it? This is the old “it is natural to eat meat” or “morality from nature” argument, to which we shall return shortly. Haller’s rebuttal of Gary Francione’s point that “it is not ‘necessary’ in any sense to eat meat” is worthy of a politician 鈥� no rebuttal at all, merely a different statement 鈥� “It is not ‘necessary’ that humanity exist at all.” Both statements are true; one does not invalidate the other.
In the next paragraph Haller states, “The simple fact that we have evolved to be omnivores implies it is moral to be thus.” Why does it imply it is moral to be thus? This is the “morality from nature” argument explicitly stated. If it is morally acceptable to do whatever evolution has equipped us for then murder, infanticide, cannibalism, rape and war would seem to have be included within “morally acceptable” behaviour.
Finally we get the “how do you know plants don’t feel pain?” argument. Well, I think it’s something to do with never having evolved a central nervous system, but I’ll bow to the botanists on that one. I eat meat, I wear leather shoes, I even rescue craneflies, woodlice and so on, but I am under no illusions as to how morally consistent or compassionate this is.
X-ray spex for whom?
A new portable radar has been invented that can create a map of spaces behind solid walls, with sufficient detail to distinguish between stationary objects and moving people and to tell whether people are standing, sitting or lying down. According to “Gizmo”, it will “soon help emergency services… and free hostages” (18 June, p 27).
Give me a break. This radar will be used much more for police and military actions than for emergency services and hostage rescue. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is perhaps hard to say, but let’s at least try to be honest with ourselves.
Unsound fizz
David King says he will crack open the champagne if G8 produces a commitment to curb climate change (25 June, p 16). Doesn’t he know that the stuff is full of carbon dioxide?
Nowt new under the sea
I wonder whether the patent described in the item “Electric bullets” (22 June, online) may be invalidated by the prior art revealed in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
In the novel, Captain Nemo invites the narrator, Professor Arronax, on an undersea walk and arms him with pneumatic guns equipped with bullets in the form of miniature Leyden jars 鈥� an early form of capacitor, used for storing static electricity.
After him, the deluge
As I write it’s raining up in northern England, and they are letting the water run out to sea. Down here in the south-east of England we have a ban on watering our gardens. Isn’t it time the government did something useful, like starting to build a national distribution grid system for water?
It might be criticised as the kind of grandiose scheme beloved of megalomaniacs, but I’m sure Blair could do it.