En root
I was interested to read in the article on Einstein and airport departures that the time taken to board an aircraft is proportional to the square root of the number of passengers (29 July, p 42).
It seems to me that this can only hold true for relatively small aircraft. For large aircraft there will inevitably be a linear term which will eventually dominate. From a rough calculation based on the 747 loading time quoted in the article and an estimate of a “saturation flow” through the door of one person every 2 seconds, the linear factor could start to dominate for planes with more than 900 seats.
Seen it all before
Maybe it does not compare with the memories of a Galapagos tortoise, but Jay Pasachoff’s letter about Harriet reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandmother in 1986 (12 August, p 19). I asked her if she would like to go into the garden and look for Halley’s comet. “No thank you, dear,” she said. “I saw it last time.”
That, of course, was in 1910.
For the record
鈥� Our Upfront article on reassessing recreational drugs referred to the 20 drugs looked at by the UK Science and Technology Select Committee as “stimulants” (5 August, p 5). While cocaine and speed are stimulants, alcohol, heroin and tranquilisers are generally regarded as depressants, and LSD and magic mushrooms are classed as hallucinogens. Cannabis is both a depressant and a hallucinogen, and ecstasy is both a stimulant and hallucinogen.
Where is the card number?
Feedback laughs at the Harvard Business Review for explaining that a credit card number is “the large numbers across the middle of the card” (5 August).
Oh, but they are right! On my card, issued by HSBC, you will find along the bottom edge something labelled “card number”. The number that needs to be quoted for transactions is not this but “the large numbers across the middle of the card”. I have been caught out by this.
Stem cell hypocrisy
President Bush’s hypocrisy on the embryonic stem cell (ESC) issue extends far beyond his unwillingness to ban outright all ESC research (29 July, p 3). He is on the record as supporting in vitro fertilisation (IVF), even though that process typically creates multiple embryos, and leaves many in the freezer where they will inevitably die. And although he has recently supported an “embryo adoption” programme precisely to address the issue of leftover frozen embryos, Bush has not made any move to stop the public funding of IVF research.
Furthermore, Bush’s rationale against ESC research directly contradicts his rationale for upholding the death penalty (which was implemented 131 times while he was governor of Texas, more than in any other state). In his 25 May 2005 column in Slate magazine, William Saletan compared quotes in which Bush attacks ESC research (“No human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another”) with those where Bush upheld the death penalty (“I happen to believe that the death penalty, when properly applied, saves lives of others”). It would be invidious to discuss here how this moral calculus, or lack thereof, extends to the Iraq war.
Of course, moral hypocrisy is not the preserve of President Bush. I know vegan cell biologists who won’t so much as wear a leather Birkenstock, but don’t bat an eyelid at culturing cells with 10 per cent fetal bovine serum, which, by definition, is obtained from fetal calves discovered when their mothers are butchered. Peter Singer, the Princeton bioethicist, would argue that all pro-life meat-eaters are hypocrites because an adult pig or cow certainly has more capacity for self-awareness than a human embryo.
On an issue with less serious consequences: I revile the industrial food system, yet on my limited graduate student stipend often find myself opening a box of processed macaroni and cheese for dinner.
For most of us, the euphemism for hypocrisy is pragmatism, which means going about your business and looking the other way. As you point out, for President Bush, that pragmatism lies in satisfying the ever-hungry maw of the electoral machine: you got to dance with them what brung ya.
From Harold Rohlik
It has been established that 30 to 50 per cent of all conceptions end in miscarriage. The embryos involved are generally flushed away down the toilet or discarded as medical waste, with no concerns about human life or souls.
Brunswick, Ohio, US
Didn't women count?
Congratulations to your predecessors from July 1970 who so accurately predicted the revolution in cashless payments (29 July, p 15). They were also pretty spot-on in anticipating many of the challenges in terms of high volumes and security.
Unfortunately, anticipating the challenges would need to be tackled by “the ablest, most experienced computing men in the country” suggests rather less prescience in terms of females’ ability to trouble their pretty little heads with such matters.
Is Pammy art?
John Hyman criticises Vilayanur Ramachandran’s theory of art because it fails to distinguish between images of big-breasted women such as Hindu statues of goddesses and actual big-breasted women such as Pamela Anderson (5 August, p 44). Works of art differ from other things, Hyman says, in being made using “specific tools, materials and techniques”.
In fact, this does not create the distinction he wants. The appearance of an actress such as Anderson is deliberately created using the specific techniques of plastic surgery, diet, exercise, make-up, clothing and photography. Like a work of art as described by Ramachandran’s analysis, it is created for a purpose: to evoke particular feelings in the viewer.
I do agree with Hyman that art has no single purpose, but most art, I contend, is consistent with Ramachandran’s analysis because it is intended to evoke emotion; indeed, it is successful to the degree that it does evoke the intended emotions. This is true of representations of both real and imagined things. Pictures of the Christian heaven, for instance, are not mere portrayals but attempts to intensify believers’ faith and commitment, and they show exaggerations of experiences such as pleasure and awe.
There are, however, representations to which the analysis does not apply. Drawings used to illustrate scientific papers before photography were presumably meant to communicate an actual appearance, though even here some idealisation seems likely. If they were not intended to evoke emotion then Ramachandran’s theory does not require them to be distorted, though it does not forbid it.
All in all, Ramachandran’s theory holds up pretty well, though it does need a definitive list of human emotions that is based on neuroscience.
Whistling windmills
Yet another phenomenon known to our forebears has been “discovered” in modern times (5 August, p 34). In the 19th century, windmillers were sufficiently familiar with wind-generated tones from their mills to give the effect a name: they called it “blowing the horn”. This usually happened in a strong wind at the end of the day’s work, when the shutters along each sail were opened, allowing the wind to blow through the gaps.
When the eight-sailed mill at Heckington in Lincolnshire was restored to full working order in the early 1990s, a tone of about 240 hertz was generated when the mill was at rest in a wind of force 4 or above. This was cured by wrapping a wide-spaced helix of twine around each shutter to disrupt the airflow and allow the village a good night’s sleep.
From Anne Silk
Visiting Malta recently, I walked out of the Hilton hotel towards Portomaso crossing over the small inlet off St Julians Bay. Low metal railings lined the road over the bay. A glorious day, but who or what was singing the strange melody I could hear so loudly? With a professional interest in acoustics and as a choral singer myself, I realised that the wind, funnelling into the inlet, itself surrounded by tall buildings, was producing the strange musical sounds, in the human voice range around 500 hertz. Haunting melodies indeed!
Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, UK
Unconstitutional
You report that “In a snub to President Bush, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and British prime minister Tony Blair signed a pact on 31 July to explore ways to combat global warming” (5 August, p 5).
This was, in fact, a snub to the US constitution, which includes at Article 1, Section 10 that “no state shall, without the consent of Congress…enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power”. Governor Schwarzenegger’s act will not stand up to a legal challenge.
Bible is no textbook
Joan Roughgarden makes several comments relating statements from the Bible to modern scientific thinking, as if such allegedly predictive statements from the remote past “prove” the correctness of the Bible (29 July, p 46). Of course, such partisan exercises are not limited to the Bible. I have seen an entire book devoted to proving that the Koran predicts automobiles, quantum physics and much else in the modern world.
The “eye of faith” could probably make similar predictions from a close reading of the works of Shakespeare. Would this make Shakespeare some sort of divine prophet?
The Bible, the Koran and even Shakespeare are excellent sources of ethical and moral guidance. Let’s use them as such, and not as scientific textbooks.
From A. R. Austin
Roughgarden says that the notion of sexual selection as a driving force for evolution is wrong, and wants to replace it with a broader, social selection. This viewpoint is somewhat limited, however, because her social selection only affects animals that care for their offspring. Many species do not. Only sexual selection explains those interactions in which offspring are produced and left to fend for themselves,
Great Harwood, Lancashire, UK
Take those vitamins
I was saddened to read Lisa Melton’s article on antioxidants (5 August, p 40). I would have expected New 杏吧原创 to deliver an accurate, incisive analysis of the controversy over dietary supplements. Instead, I read the usual biased approach that is promoted by the conventional medical establishment.
The author makes many statements that are incorrect. For instance, she says: “Only one experiment 鈥� the Cambridge heart antioxidant study (CHAOS) 鈥� found a positive effect, a 77 per cent reduced risk of heart attack.” She must not be aware of the Iowa Women’s Health Study, which showed a 47 per cent reduction in cardiac mortality with higher-dose vitamin E supplementation (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol 65, p 190).
There is a common theme running through the articles that have been appearing recently, attempting to cast a negative light on the same dietary supplements that hundreds of previous studies have shown to be beneficial. Big pharma doesn’t want people to take vitamins because they might not take so many drugs over the long term.
From Bob Stout
While my views on this are just as anecdotal as most other people’s, I can’t agree with your article on antioxidants. It may be true of most antioxidants (I would certainly agree about vitamin E), but my own experience has taught me that vitamin C and alpha lipoic acid (ALA) are exceptions. I credit vitamin C with reversing a lifelong pattern of respiratory infections, and ALA with reversing nearly a decade of declining memory.
This does raise a related question which touches on any generalised discussion of the efficacy of drugs. A lot has been written in recent years about tailoring drug regimens to each individual’s body chemistry. This prompts the question of whether such differences could explain why some studies report conflicting results on the value of various drugs and supplements.
I have taken a lot of supplements over the years and most have made little or no difference, but there are a few I swear by. By painting all antioxidants with the same broad brush you are doing a disservice to your readers.
Houston, Texas, US