For the record
鈥� In “Battle stations” (25 June, p 44), we misspelled Marc Najork’s name; in addition he studies search engine spam at Microsoft Research in Mountain View, California, but does not work for the MSN Search engine as we stated.
Unique climate proposition
Mark Lynas asks us to believe that “treating climate change purely as a scientific issue obscures the real points of contention, which are political and economic” (25 June, p 25).
Why do enthusiasts try to sell me the product “climate change”? Global warming may or may not be true 鈥� the future is unknown. “Cheer up, it may never happen,” is the usual reaction. It would be better to sell me practical improvements with obvious benefits, such as reducing smelly pollution, insulating buildings to save money, avoiding oil-related dependence on the Middle East, and devising ways to help India and China and the rest to get rich without destroying everything.
Change the debate. Concentrate on ideas that improve lives.
Washable gadgets
In an amazing coincidence, my husband had just read your Feedback item in the “washability” of iPods when I managed inadvertently to put my Samsung A800 mobile phone through a 40 掳C full-spin-cycle wash. Six days later, I am delighted to report that it is working fully, albeit with a new backlight design on the screen 鈥� though I haven’t quite plucked up the courage to charge up the battery yet. Should this feature be advertised on the box?
Thank you 鈥� without reading this article I might have been tempted just to throw it in the bin.
The editor writes:
It probably should not be advertised, because you will have to wait a while to see whether corrosion has hit the circuit board. And we have to warn everyone not to plug in anything that might be wet inside.
Empty promises
Kim Kreiger mentions the possibility of cubes containing thousands of movies, rather than the one or two a DVD can hold (2 July, p 44). Would these be marketed by the same companies that sell me “boxed sets” of two to four DVDs when one or two DVDs could hold, respectively, the same amount of information?
Bell's non-paradox
Mark Buchanan mentions Bell’s paradox, which seems to show that Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” is a reality (18 June, p 32). But Bell’s paradox is only observable when the results from the two ends of the experiment are brought together, and the measurements on the separated particles are brought together. It seems to me that given this, there is no need for either faster-than-light communication or the overthrow of free will to explain the results.
When the experimenter carefully measures the orientation of the spin axis of the photon, for example, the experimental apparatus and the experimenter together are thrown into a superposition of states, much like Schr枚dinger’s cat. It is only when the results from the distant ends of the experiment are brought together that the superposition is resolved, and at that point, there is certainly no need for faster-than-light communication.
Now, I can understand that a physicist may not like or appreciate being thrown into a superposition of states, but it is his or her own fault, as the result of creating an experiment that reveals a part of nature that is not normally observed. If Schr枚dinger’s cat, which really had no say in the matter, could get used to it, I don’t see why we can’t.
No end to invention
Robert Adler laments the fact that the number of technological breakthroughs per capita has been declining since the end of the 19th century (2 July, p 26). But for his graph to have continued its pre-20th-century rise, the rate of innovation would need to have risen faster than the spectacular increase in population. This is most unlikely.
Children and the aged are unlikely to feature among the major inventors in Adler’s data set. Nor are the poor and uneducated, nor those without access to capital to realise their inventive ideas. Education and access to capital increased from the Middle Ages through the industrial and capital revolutions to the late 19th century, but the rate of increase has probably levelled off in the 20th century. The trends shown in Adler’s graph could be largely explained by changes in the inventive fraction of the population over time.
From Eric Peters
If innovators were making shirts or picking apples then productivity per person might matter. But innovation isn’t like that. It’s information. One person produces an item of it, and then everyone can have it 鈥� in its entirety, without dilution. And since it’s not diluted, civilisation, or at least technology, advances as the absolute rate of innovation, not by the amount of innovation per person.
Let me propose a counter-argument: innovation counts toward the advance of humankind only when someone uses its fruits. So I would multiply by the size of the population, rather than dividing. The application of innovation is likely to be growing faster than the population as a whole.
Carlisle, Massachusetts, US
From Graham Waters
I believe that most population growth in the last century has been in the Third World, where educational standards have historically been poor. It would therefore seem that, as a proportion of the total, there are fewer well-educated people in the world now than a century ago. It can be argued that innovation springs from a well-educated population; in that case, what does the graph look like if we plot innovation against First World population, not global population? And can we not expect the graph to turn upward again, now that educational standards in China and India are racing ahead?
Pontypool, Gwent, UK
From Don Braben, Venture Research International
I don’t think that the number of breakthroughs per capita is that significant. But personal incomes are another matter. Robert Solow won the Nobel prize for economics in 1987 for showing that long-term economic growth stems almost entirely from technical change. As I argued in my book Pioneering Research: A risk worth taking (reviewed 12 February, p 49), this is hampered by our institutions’ growing obsessions with bureaucracy and caution.
Per-capita economic growth has declined steadily and globally since the 1970s. Indeed average annual growth between 1951 and 1974 was 2.8 per cent compared with 1.4 per cent for the subsequent 25 years. There has recently been an upturn, but that can be explained by the enormous increase in global property values, a bubble that may be about to deflate if not burst.
Epping, Essex, UK
IQ and TV
Watching too much TV doesn’t necessarily make children stupid (9 July, p 6). Alternative conclusions are that stupid children prefer to watch TV while their brighter friends get out and stimulate their greater intellect and inquisitiveness. Maybe stupid parents are more likely to sit their children in front of TV to keep them quiet rather than stimulate them to perform well at school.
鈥� Jeff Hecht writes:
The New Zealand study of long-term educational achievement did consider intelligence test scores. It found the impact of television viewing was larger on students with average IQs than on those with above or below-average scores. The authors believe students with low test scores are less likely to attend college anyway, while those with high scores are better able to cope. They wrote that children in the middle “may be most vulnerable to harmful influences”.
No Ashkenazi gene
It seems to me that Myriad Genetics may face some problems with its patent on a test that “singles out Ashkenazi Jewish women” (9 July, p 7). Ashkenazi is not a label that denotes a genetic make-up. It refers to the customs and ritual practices of European Jews; as such it does not refer to anything absolute.
If an Ashkenazi girl marries a Sephardi boy 鈥� one who follows the Jewish customs of Spain and the Arab world 鈥� she becomes Sephardi and their children are Sephardi. On the other hand, if a Sephardi girl marries an Ashkenazi boy she becomes Ashkenazi even though her genetic make-up doesn’t change. The same goes for converts to Judaism who adopt Ashkenazi customs.
How then can Myriad charge a different rate for this test depending on what religious customs a patient (or, increasingly these days, their grandparents) follows?
Dangerous defence
What are the failure modes of a missile defence system installed at a civilian airport (25 June, p 29)? Two come to mind. The first is failure to protect a plane from an attack. The second is that the defence system makes a mistake and fires at a crowded airliner.
The problem in defending against very rare events is that the failure modes of any system dominate its effectiveness.
From Mark Weber
I predict that Raytheon’s microwave missile defence system for airliners is likely to down more airliners during false alarms than missiles would. The radio-frequency interference (RFI) at that power level could scramble the computer controls for aircraft in its vicinity. RFI at much lower levels has already been suspected of causing at least two crashes in the last decade in the US and Canada.
West Hills, California, US
Moon dust
George Tedbury raises an interesting point in his letter querying reports of dust on the moon (25 June, p 27). But the properties of the lunar regolith are well understood. It comprises a loose surface layer covering a more cohesive (and much deeper) layer. The loose surface “dust” is what was blown away by the descent engine exhaust plume; this obscured the astronauts’ view of the surface. Because it was mostly forced sideways, it effectively obscured the surface, while leaving a clean site directly beneath the lunar module. There was no dust on the footpads of the LM because the loose dust had been blown away.
I don’t recall anyone ever claiming that Neil Armstrong’s first footstep left much of an impression in the surface. There is a famous photograph of a footprint in the lunar surface (discussed at ): this was made by Buzz Aldrin some distance from the lunar module and some time after both astronauts had emerged from it. This footprint was made specifically for the photograph, in order to record a first impression of the properties of the regolith.
Green generation
Pam Lunn proposes that all new houses must have photovoltaic and wind generators and so forth (4 June, p 28). Without storage, the fluctuation in energy produced by this scheme would exacerbate the need for the centralised generation of power to cope with times of peak demand, which is nowadays usually fuelled by gas, while only the cheaper coal or nuclear base-load generation would be reduced.
A variable price for buy-back of home-generated electricity could motivate householders to invest in enough storage to time their supply to when the grid demands it. The timing could be signalled by the local voltage, which shows the balance of local supply and demand.
Then home generation of power could be maximised according to the strength of the sun and wind, while delaying its resupply to the grid to times of peak demand. In this way peak generation might be reduced. Conceivably the suburbs could contain enough storage and generation capacity to buy power from the grid during periods of low demand and sell it back at peak demand.
In that scenario, base generation could be increased in winter and peak generation would need not be a daily event.
Geocaching rules
As admin for geocaching in the UK, could I point out that to bury a cache is strictly against the guidelines of our sport (11 June, p 26). The full guidelines are at .
Half-human condition
James Shreeve’s fine essay on human-animal chimeras brings out not only the scientific and medical importance of such chimeras, but the profound moral, legal and emotional problems their creation may engender (June 25, p 39). While he speaks of The Island of Doctor Moreau, he does not mention the equally remarkable 1944 novel Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, a poetically imaginative “biography” of a neurosurgically produced “super-dog” with human intelligence, aspirations and values, combined with an irrepressible doggy nature.
While Sirius is at first full of the joys of his double life 鈥� the exuberance of a dog, combined with the powers of a man 鈥� he then finds himself hopelessly torn between his two natures, and finally, tormented by finding himself (in Shreeve’s words) “so unspeakably alone in the world”. Human-animal chimeras figure in many science-fiction works, but no one has captured the pain and wonder as delicately as Stapledon.
Unintelligent design
Your editorial considers that argument from “intelligent design” to be other than science (9 July, p 5). On the contrary, it is just as much a part of our knowledge (science) system as any other guess or hypothesis we make about the world outside ourselves. You also assert incorrectly that such a hypothesis when applied to the evolution of life cannot be tested in a meaningful way, nor can one make predictions based on it.
Let me suggest a few meaningful tests. Does intelligent design (ID) consist of the elimination of 70 per cent of the existing species 250 million years ago, and 90 per cent 65 million years ago? Does the development of humans as a viciously competitive species, given to the genocidal elimination of neighbouring or endogenous sects, constitute an “intelligent” design? How come the “intelligent” designer set up humans believing in many different gods, each of whose characteristics included the need to remind their followers that they and they alone were the one and true god?
And here are some predictions. As the “intelligent” designer has produced the human who is different from other life forms and considered the “end” of the creation activity, this species should be stable, unchanging and have infinite longevity as a species. And all humans will eventually turn to and believe in the one and true god.
I do not see why a juxtaposition of hypotheses cannot be brought into education. Although many questions have yet to be answered by those who espouse the natural selection hypothesis, we may sense that research will answer these questions. By contrast, the many questions levelled at ID can only elicit answers that make a nonsense of our concepts of intelligence and cannot therefore provide a reliable scheme that can be used to account for how we came to be what we are.
From Ian Musgrave
It cannot be emphasised too much that ID is a political, not scientific movement, which aims to avoid scientific scrutiny. Indeed, in many ways it is an anti-science movement. A surprising number of ID proponents are also HIV deniers. People who are interested in knowing more about the ID movement should consult the US National Center for Science Education’s website (). A detailed examination of the ID movement and its claims can be found in the book Why Intelligent Design Fails, of which I am a co-author (reviewed 17 July 2004, p 47).
Adelaide, South Australia
From Steve Kirk
If I ever catch up with the gonzo engineer who designed my knees, I’ll sue Him (Her, It) for every penny. If any part of the body fits the description “not fit for purpose”, it’s knees and backs. He (She, It) was obviously having an off day. Goodness knows how it got past the quality assurance inspection.
Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK
From Tony Callaghan
Admittedly the calculation was done on the back of a cigarette packet, but I have just proved that the chances of people stupid enough to believe ID occurring randomly are so infinitesimally small that they are impossible. Therefore, the only reasonable explanation for the existence of ID believers would be some intelligent…er…doh!
Back to the drawing board.
Bootle, Merseyside, UK
From Thomas Groves
For me, the real question posed by creationism is: do we teach children beliefs or do we teach them tools? Because on the one hand we have the moral equivalent of giving someone morphine to treat their broken leg and on the other setting the bone.
The basic point about the theory of creation and the theory of intelligent design is that they have no predictive value. Religion merely makes people contented with reality, but in science we have a tool to take control of it.
Ashford, Kent, UK
From Stanley Whiteford
It is a fact, of course, that many eminent scientists 鈥� notably Einstein and Newton 鈥� have had no difficulty in reconciling their science with the belief in a creator. To some extent that belief indeed motivated their work.
There is an argument for an approach to our understanding of the universe that is rational but not “scientific” in the sense of a rigid mindset. Those who try to make science a substitute for religion (pace Richard Dawkins) are doing no service to real science operating under its proper restraints.
South Petherton, Somerset, UK