Ramsgate at the double
Feedback reported on the London train that divides at Ashford International sending four coaches to Ramsgate, with the other four continuing to Ramsgate (25 February). Sadly there is no beam-splitter at Ashford International station; the answer is rather more prosaic. The train does divide, with one section heading east to Ramsgate via Canterbury. The other half heads south-east to Ramsgate via Folkestone, Dover and Sandwich. Passengers need to sincerely hope both halves arrive out of phase, since they have to use the same platform at Ramsgate. In practice, the coastal route takes up to 40 minutes longer so this catastrophe never arises.
For the record
鈥� In our reproduction of the “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction in the 2001 IPCC report (18 March, p 43), an error led to the blue lines being misaligned relative to the rest of the graph. They should, of course, have been centred on the black line.
We shall overcome
Andrew Simms reviews a book by Lester R. Brown, whose “picture of climate-change-induced chaos is terrifying and convincing. It includes the awful image of the world’s poorest people competing for food with an ever-hungrier biofuels industry” (25 February, p 50). Where have we heard this before? Oh yes, it was in the 1970s, when the Club of Rome and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb predicted global famine for the 1980s. A century earlier, our savants predicted that Manhattan would soon be covered in horse manure as the world plunged into darkness when the supply of whale oil, which was used to make candles at the time, ran out.
Why do these Cassandras of doom persist in underestimating human ingenuity? Simms gives us the answer: the greens aspire to “re-engineering of the global economy…while squeezing all our economic activity”. Millions of dead Russians and Chinese give testimony to the profound unwisdom of allowing a few misguided individuals the power to “re-engineer” things.
I vote for hydrogen-producing alga farms in the desert, as described by Peter Aldhous on page 37 of the same issue, but only if fusion power doesn’t work out.
Computer nurture
The views of Judith Rich Harris on the foundations of personality made me think of something in my own home (25 February, p 48). My partner and I own Macintosh G4 computers. No doubt when they left the assembly line they were identical 鈥� give or take perhaps 0.1 per cent. After a few months’ use, they have a different desktop appearance, run different software and have their files organised in vastly different ways. As for the content, it would be difficult to find anything the same unless you knew just where to look.
Is this very different from any two people, whether siblings or twins? Surely this shows clearly a distinction between nature and nurture.
Good god guide
Francisco Ayala is clearly right that Daniel Dennett’s diagnosis of religions as parasitical memes merely obstructs serious efforts to understand these human attitudes, rather than helping them (4 March, p 48).
But this diagnosis has also a disturbingly irrational and non-scientific aspect. Why do memeticists always apply their methods to doctrines that they dislike, such as religions, or to indifferent ones, rather than to favoured ones such as belief in democracy, Darwinism, or indeed memetics itself? Till that is done, their approach can surely only serve to justify bias.
From Wesley Ludemann
I think Ayala misses the whole point of Dennett’s book. This is that religious belief can and should be studied scientifically.
I found Breaking the Spell one of the most informative and interesting books I have read. I had not realised the vast number of religions there are to choose between, with some 30,000 distinct Christian churches alone. I am looking forward to some day having a “consumer reports” type of listing giving the costs and benefits of the different religions so that I can make an intelligent choice.
Livermore, California, US
From Alex Kasman
Ayala’s review demonstrates one of the defences that religion has evolved: the strong desire in believers to attack those who do not conform or who dare to voice their alternative viewpoints. The interesting question raised by Dennett’s book is whether this is actually to Ayala’s personal benefit, or whether he is merely being used by religion to perpetuate itself, in the kind of way that the lancet fluke uses an ant. The review would have been interesting if Ayala had anything useful to add to the analysis, but instead he merely informs us that he does not want to even see this question discussed.
Charleston, South Carolina, US
Red, red rain
Hazel Muir speculates that the red particles responsible for the episodic discoloration of rain in the Indian state of Kerala in 2001 may be red blood cells from an as yet unidentified, but terrestrial animal (4 March, p 34).
Meteorological analyses of the rainfall events make this unlikely, but there is more direct evidence. Godfrey Louis’s original paper “The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin” () contains an absorption spectrum for the red particles. This shows a major absorption peak at 505 nanometres and a minor one at 600 nm. Fully oxygenated terrestrial haemoglobin has two principal absorption bands centred at 575 nm and 540 nm, whereas deoxygenated hameoglobin has one band centred at about 565 nm.
The precise positions of the bands are species specific, but Louis’s results are not close to the normal haemoglobin absorption bands. A preliminary conclusion, therefore, is that the red particles do not contain terrestrial haemoglobin.
Further work should be undertaken to explore the polymer structure (if there is one) of the Kerala red particles by X-ray or electron diffraction studies: the absence of a standard porphyrin ring common to all types of terrestrial haemoglobin would seal the argument.
From Leslie Banks
I was intrigued by the locations of the falls of red rain. They are distributed in a plume along the coastal region of Kerala, with maximum concentration in the south-east and diminishing towards the north-west. Despite the carrying power of winds at medium and high altitudes, no falls are reported anywhere else in Asia over the two-month period when the rain fell. This strongly suggests a local origin, and a local south-easterly wind.
Limassol, Cyprus
Fly like a golf ball
Are plane manufacturers perhaps borrowing some lessons from the humble golf ball in using rough surfaces to reduce air resistance (4 March, p 32)? For over 100 years 鈥� and probably much longer 鈥� the surfaces of golf balls have been covered with dimples or a rough pattern to reduce drag.
Lively libraries
Feedback intends to register a trademark for computer monitors that smell of dusty libraries (11 March). Are you sure you don’t mean dusty archives?
Libraries are not dusty places. They are dynamic, vibrant places as full of electronic resources as of books (and back copies of New 杏吧原创, of course). And librarians or information officers are not the dull, fusty, cardigan-wearing species, stressed out by boredom, that a recent study reported in The Times would have you believe (London, 12 January).
On the contrary, we are well-educated, well-qualified people actively engaged in learning support and information gathering, and definitely not letting the dust settle in our libraries. Welcome to the 21st century!
Set in stone
Whatever happened to Synroc? Reading your report about the problems of disposing of nuclear waste (4 March, p 38), I wondered yet again what had been done with this Australian invention. ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, is reportedly working on it, but no mention ever seems to appear in articles such as this.
The idea, as I recall, is to seal waste within synthetic rock made of a ceramic-type material such that the waste becomes part of the rock. This would circumvent the problems of corroding containers over the millennia, and constitute an improvement over an earlier method involving sealing the waste in glass blocks. Does anyone know why this hasn’t been fully developed and deployed by now?
Old lady time
After a bit of internet searching, I may be able to shed a little light on “the lady who sold time” (25 February, p 52). The article stated that almost nothing is known about Ruth Belville’s mother, Maria, who handed over the time-carrying business to her in 1892. Ruth’s father John Henry Belville married Appolonia Slaney at Greenwich, London, in 1827, when he was about 30 years old. Unfortunately, Appolonia died in early 1851. John then married Maria Elizabeth, a schoolmistress, born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, who was about 17 years his junior. Maria died in early 1900 aged 88. So when she retired from carrying the time, she was about 80 years old herself.
Whose water?
Fred Pearce’s article provides an excellent service in highlighting the chronic problems around the world of excessive groundwater exploitation 鈥� but it may not be taking us much further forward in finding solutions (25 February, p 32).
Rainwater harvesting cannot be regarded as a universal solution and may, in some circumstances, actually compound the problem. In river basins where there are still significant flows to the ocean there may indeed be benefits in installing further water retention measures, including large dams and rainwater harvesting structures. But in India many river basins are now approaching closure: that is, there is no flow to the ocean except in high rainfall years. By installing further rainwater harvesting measures, water is made available to upstream users only at the expense of downstream users 鈥� who might need it for higher-value production, environmental services or domestic uses 鈥� a case of “robbing Geeta’s water to irrigate Ram’s paddy fields”.
Ultimately the solution has to be in finding approaches for managing the demand on groundwater.
From John Balfour
It was encouraging to read of the grassroots movement in India, which is turning back to traditional methods of retaining rainwater in earthen tanks and artifical pools and so replenishing groundwater reserves depleted by over-dependence on pumped tube wells. But there is a serious downside to this development.
Mosquitoes such as Anopheles culicifacies, a rural malaria vector, can be expected to rapidly exploit the breeding opportunities offered by rainwater collection. Another mosquito, A. stephensi, is a serious threat in India’s rapidly expanding towns and cities, as this malaria vector is capable of breeding in organically polluted water. Even raw sewage supports the multiplication of a pest mosquito, the ubiquitous Culex quinquefasciatus, which in addition to being a severe biting nuisance also transmits filariasis.
A future landscape which holds hundreds of thousands of new bodies of water as well as a billion people presents a phenomenal disease-control challenge to all levels of government in India. More widely, greatly increased mosquito breeding rates around population centres in a warmer world will necessitate constant vigilance against outbreaks of mosquito-borne disease, including emerging viruses.
Deepdene, Victoria, Australia