Copying the copies
I am confused as to what precisely Sony intends its new CD protection hardware to accomplish (12 August, p 21). The radio-frequency ID chip will surely not prevent customers from copying the CD once, and then making more copies 鈥� “too many” as described by Sony 鈥� from this original copy, which naturally would be devoid of any such protection. So unscrupulous individuals will still be able to pirate CDs, while consumers will be forced to pay additional money for an unnecessary extra security feature.
Near dead do rise
I contest your statement that the “so-called ‘Lazarus phenomenon’ has never been documented in brain-dead patients” (5 August, p 6). If a flat electroencephalogram is taken as an indication of brain death, then there are documented cases. An article in December 2001 in The Lancet (vol 358, p 2039) refers to the case of a young woman “who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat. After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep NDE [near death experience]”. This included an out-of-body experience, during which she observed things that happened during the period of the flat EEG and that were subsequently verified.
European ignorance
Regarding your article on the attitude of Americans to evolution, I was shocked to find that 24 per cent of my fellow Irish answered “false” (19 August, p 11).
In the US at least, the issue is political and gets discussed in the news, so people can have a chance of learning both sides of the argument. But in many European countries we have a much larger problem with ignorance than we thought.
In their pockets?
Since you chose to publish an article on antioxidants from a writer associated with a drug company, when can we expect articles on global warming from an oil company and on forest conservation from a timber company (5 August, p 40)? Is New 杏吧原创 that much in need of drug companies’ advertising dollars and euros?
The editor writes:
鈥� The Novartis Foundation is a scientific and educational charity formed in 1947 by the Swiss company Ciba (now Novartis). Although Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, provides financial support, the foundation has no ties with the company’s business and is operationally independent.
From Clare Marsh
I was surprised to see that selenium had been included in the list of supposed antioxidants. The mechanism of selenium is fairly well understood. It acts as a cofactor for enzymes involved in the immune response.
Glasgow, UK
Bug free? Impossible
Richard Day says that writing computer programs without bothering to iron out the bugs is like a surgeon not sewing up a patient after an operation (12 August, p 18). As a professional programmer, I find it incredible that a reader of your magazine could even consider that analogy to be fair. A bug-free program of any real purpose (ie not a five-line example, but a mature application) is just as likely to be created as a bug-free human is to be reared, and would be just as hard to maintain in that pristine state once released to interact with the world.
Any experienced programmer will tell you that it is impossible to produce bug-free code. All one can do is strive towards bug-resistant code. To return to a more apt medical analogy: one cannot permanently cure a human of all disease, but one can improve the human’s disease-resistance.
Bili ape myths
Two points in your article about our work on Bili’s “giant apes” require correction (1 July, p 14). It is an exaggeration to say that the chimps’ skulls have a sagittal crest. Only one skull has been found with a small sagittal crest. You also state that recordings exist of the Bili apes howling at the moon. If these recordings exist, we would very much like to hear them. It must be stated very clearly: the Bili apes do not howl at the moon.
One of the main goals of this study has been to puncture the myths surrounding the Bili apes and paint a more realistic portrait of the genetics, behaviour and ecology of these chimpanzees, which, it is now clear, are not a hybrid or a new species.
Social collapse
I am very disillusioned with your presentation of the article about Easter Island (29 July, p 30). Your description of a few new archaeological findings that raise new theories of what caused the collapse of civilisation on Easter Island has no bearing on “The truth about civilisation” as you proclaimed on your cover. In no way do they represent a conclusive rejection of the theories put forward about mankind’s current headlong rush to the potential collapse of civilisation.
In his book Collapse Jared Diamond cites examples of the collapse of many societies in the world and highlights the progress of our global society towards a major collapse that may be triggered by a number of potential threats. For example, global warming causing water and food shortages and thus bringing mass starvation is one prominent threat and atomic warfare between different belief systems is another.
The art of imagination
What is missing from the discussion of Vilayanur Ramachandran’s theory of art is the role of imagination, which inhabits all art, be it visual, dramatic, poetic or musical (5 August, p 44). I am one of those who believes that it was art that first separated us from the other primates because it not only allowed expression for flights of the imagination, but also allowed us to project our ideas, thoughts and emotions.
Art is distinguished from other forms of expression because it conveys an emotional message as well as an intellectual one. Music epitomises this better than any other medium, but it applies to all art. My own area of expression is writing, and fiction must convey an emotional message or it is dead. It is not just the ability to create or copy scenarios, narratives and characters that distinguishes fiction from non-fiction like this letter, but the necessary conveyance of feelings, sensations and emotions. Without this emotional message in all forms of art, the work of art would only be appreciated by the artist, and not by others. This leads to the idea that art is like the peacock’s tail and was one of the drivers in the evolutionary development of the human brain.
Fog in Fogo
David Riebold, whose project to harvest water from moisture-laden winds of Lanzarote is mentioned in Fred Pearce’s report, need not have looked as far as Chile for an example of this process (5 August, p 37).
On a visit in 2004 to the Cape Verde Islands, not far to the south of Lanzarote, we saw the same technique in use on the volcanic island of Fogo. Simple plastic-netting collectors were in use, but their widespread adoption seems to have been prevented by lack of funds, education and local project ownership.
Composite planes
It should be noted that there is one significant omission from your “composites as a percentage of total aircraft weight” graph (15 July, p 40).
Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde was the first commercial aircraft to use a composite structure 鈥� an aluminium-honeycomb-epoxy composite was manufactured for the elevon and rudder powered control surfaces. Although this pre-dates the more recent “plastic plane” designs of Boeing and Airbus, it does provide a significant case history for the failure modes and the types of in-service fault detection that may be required by a fleet operator.
Concorde experienced a number of composite-structure failures in flight, including multiple delaminations and in some cases the entire loss of large portions of the rudder control surface.
Some failures were traced to water ingress at repair joints on the composite panels, but most failures did not manifest until after several years of normal service with no apparent visual degradation of the external surfaces. As a result, new non-destructive testing techniques (NDT) were developed, including acoustic flaw detection (AFD), water jet “through vibration” ultrasound scans (C-scans) and laser shearography (holographic visual detection).
During the peak period of failures, these NDTs added a significant maintenance workload to the fleet operations. During Concorde’s later life, C-scan testing was performed as frequently as every four flights for repaired sections of composite structures, and AFD every eight flights. After fleet-wide fitment of replacement rudders, the NDT inspection requirements were relaxed to every 50 flying hours, still a significant maintenance workload.
Out of our depth
Talking of the “selves” we create as “useful fictions”, Simon Blackburn says: “The awkward, lurking question of who is the author (and who the audience) of these stories is best left a little vague,” (12 August, p 48). This strikes me as an intellectual cop-out.
Wouldn’t we do better to admit that not only do we “not need to understand ourselves theoretically to get on in the world”, we can’t? What would be the empirical basis of such a theory, beyond an imagination imagining an imagination?
Wouldn’t an admission that we are out of our depth here be a better curb to any mayhem that might arise from our inevitable misunderstandings than leaving the question “a little vague”?
Mnemonic needed
Charon used to be a moon, Ceres was an asteroid and Xena, well she was a foxy warrior princess. Now they might all be planets 鈥� while Pluto isn’t. It’s madness.
No longer will “My Very Excellent Mother Just Send Us Nine Pizzas” or “…Serve Us Nine Pickles”, nor will “Matilda Visit Every Monday, Just Staying Until Noon, Period”, and although “Space Men Vote Earth Most Jolly of the Solar Universe’s Nine Planets”, it won’t help “My Very Easy Method [which] Just Sums Up Nine Planets”.
I need a new mnemonic, something catchy to help me keep tabs on Xena and her aspiring planetary buddies.
Any suggestions?
Imaginary friends
My daughter at 3 knew that Brownie was only a “pretend mouse” 鈥� this was how she used to refer to him (12 August, p 52). One day she spilt a glass of milk and accused Brownie. To my “but I thought he was pretend!”, she told me earnestly that “he’s getting realer and realer”. He was her companion for about four years.
There is some evidence that children who hear many stories also develop a theory of mind earlier than expected 鈥� you have to understand the motivation of characters to be able to understand a plot.
A bit of fluff
In “The word” you castigate map-makers for sanitising names (5 August, p 48). However, I observed the same tendency in a recent article in New 杏吧原创. You likened the agglomeration of stellar dust to “dust bunnies”. This had me puzzled for a time until I realised it referred to bunches of fluff found below beds and the like.
This is “slut’s wool”.
Puzzle answered
I read Stephanie Pain’s article on ancient Chinese mathematics with interest, but I can’t figure out the initial problem about the fox, the wildcat and the dog (29 July, p 50).
What is the answer, and how is it arrived at?
Stephanie Pain writes:
鈥� If the cat’s skin is worth twice the dog’s and the fox’s worth twice the cat’s, then the dog pays one-seventh of the total, the cat two-sevenths and the fox four-sevenths. Divide the total amount owed (“111 cash”) by seven, to give the dog’s share (15 and 6/7ths cash). Multiply this by two to give the cat’s share (31 and 5/7ths cash), and by four for the fox’s (63 and 3/7ths cash).
For the record
鈥� Our story about email software that reminds you to send an attachment (29 July, p 25) failed to note that KMail, Spamnix and Pegasus Mail already have this facility.
鈥� We said that the mammalian super-order Pegasoferae contains horses, cats and dogs, cows, whales and hedgehogs (24 June, p 23). In fact, cows and hedgehogs are not members of this super-order.
鈥� Gravity has a negligible effect on the behaviour of ink drops at the micro-scale shown in our “Second sight” photograph (19 August, p 46). Surface tension and liquid viscosity are the only relevant forces.
Drive with care
“‘Luxembourg has successfully been loaded onto your device,’ Steve Heggie’s satellite navigation system tells him. How do the Luxembourgers feel about this?” (Feedback, 12 August).
Well, I haven’t felt a thing! When did he do it? Maybe we were all asleep.
Has he unloaded us already? If he hasn’t, could you please ask him to drive carefully?
Shingle street myths
The Feedback item on Shingle Street and canine reluctance to venture on the beach was very interesting (19 August). I visited the area earlier this year and bought a book entitled The Bodies On The Beach: Sealion, Shingle Street and the burning sea myth of 1940 by James Hayward. This gives the true account of the efforts of the UK’s Petroleum Warfare Department in 1940 to build and install fire barrages. It also gives the real story of the few genuine German bodies to have washed up on beaches. It covers in detail the propaganda designed to build up the story of a failed invasion and the myths surrounding Shingle Street.
The village was requisitioned in 1940 for invasion defences, and not returned to the original owners until after the war. The reason for not returning it was rather prosaic: the only road out led over a bridge that would be blown up if an invasion were imminent, thus trapping any villagers remaining. No defences or fire barrages were installed there, and the only “secret” experiment carried out was in 1943. The Chemical Defence Research Establishment carried out a trial of a single 500-pound bomb containing explosives and oil of wintergreen. This was intended to investigate the dispersal pattern that could be expected if such bombs were ever used with mustard gas instead of the wintergreen. The trial was a failure.
The book goes into detail about the myths built up over the wartime use of Shingle Street and how the press has managed the story over the years. Two quotes on the cover give a flavour of the book: “In the whole course of the war there was no story which gave me so much trouble as this one of the attempted German invasion, flaming oil on the water and 30,000 burned Germans” (Rear-Admiral George Thomson, Chief Press Censor). “A fascinating analysis of the Shingle Street Myth…Eloquent testimony to the willingness of some journalists to peddle completely bogus stories, and [it] demonstrates how unnecessary secrecy can generate ridiculous ‘history'” (Nigel West).
As no toxic chemicals were used on the beach and there were no massed bodies, just what was it that Feedback’s dog disliked about the place?