Nanotubes in mind
Your fascinating article on the recently discovered “membrane nanotubes” linking cells (15 November, p 43) immediately led me to a potentially novel hypothesis: perhaps these structures are involved in the generation of consciousness.
There are two rather common medical phenomena that are still somewhat mysterious, which this idea may help explain. The first is concussion.
On the current assumption that conscious processes depend solely on “classical” neuronal synapses, it is hard to envisage how a sharp blow to the head could cause shear stresses on the brain sufficient to disrupt synapses and cause a brief loss of consciousness without causing major tissue damage. If conscious processes were dependent on these tiny, dynamic cell-to-cell interactions 鈥� which are prone to mechanical disruption but quickly repaired 鈥� then this might explain concussion.
The other persistent mystery is how inhaled anaesthetics actually work. The 1965 rule proposed by pharmacologist Hans Meyer and biologist Charles Overton is that anaesthetic effectiveness of inhaled agents is proportional to their solubility in lipids. It is unclear why this is. It has always been assumed that it is because the agents dissolve in membranes and disrupt ion channels, but this is unproven. Perhaps these cell-to-cell connections are easily disrupted by subtle chemical changes and could be involved 鈥� especially as these anaesthetic agents have a predilection for membrane structures.
Science friction
You unearth some problems with modern science fiction (15 November, p 5). Future fiction it is, science it ain’t, often 鈥� if ever sci-fi was based on science, which is debatable. Dominated by dystopias in the mould of the likes of Blade Runner, this is a genre in danger of burning itself out. New writing strives to weave in new physics ideas, but belief is often suspended too long by a hair too fine; and who reads books much today? Or is the problem that new physics itself is treading water? Or that sociology is not a science, at least not one you can write science fiction about?
From Charles Raymond
Science fiction is not about predicting the future. The so-called “failure” of sci-fi to predict the transistor (15 November, p 46) is not so much a failure of sci-fi, but a triumph of real science doing something revolutionary and unexpected.
The entire basis is “what if”. Some recent short stories by Bruce Sterling involve speculation into the not-distant future based on science as we know it now: bedroom-based biohackers, or people practically commanded by their cellphones to do seemingly random tasks.
Perhaps the most valuable thing of all about sci-fi is getting people interested in science, to ask “What is the basis behind this?” or even “I wonder if that could really exist…”
Waddington, New York, US
Small-scale energy
Adam Hockenberry rightly asks why we should continue to use the massive and centralised approach to renewable energy rather than diffuse and small systems (22 November, p 24). The answer is that both government and the power industry need these systems to control and profit from our energy use.
Self-sufficiency can never be a goal for such organisations. If society wishes to change to a self-sufficient energy model it must contrive that not only the suppliers of the technology but also the power industry and government have a viable revenue stream. If that cannot be done, I suspect no effective effort will be made to allow us to harvest our own power. It will remain a cottage industry, tolerated until it becomes too large to ignore 鈥� then taxed.
Choose life
Last year David Cohen reported that “zinc could be used up by 2037” (26 May 2007, p 34). You later introduced Mark Buchanan’s commentary on the recent misery created by the excessive use of credit/leverage within the free market system by saying: “Forget textbook economics, the answer lies elsewhere” (19 July, p 32). Your special issue on resources shows the human population increasing exponentially (18 October, p 40). All this indicates a bubble in the making, and the likely outcome is a crash resulting in misery on a grand scale.
David Suzuki wrote that politicians are “just focused on the next election. When you talk to business people, they’re just focused on the quarterly report” (18 October, p 44). And Gus Speth concluded that “we’re trying to do environmental policy and activism within a system that is simply too powerful” (18 October, p 48). If governments and world institutions cannot provide change from the top down, the only alternative is to work from the bottom up.
A solution to the inevitable failure of the current economic system would be an appeal to the billions of individuals who will decide the future. It would be on the lines of a declaration by those prepared to participate: each individual would agree to live by such means that they would preserve and where possible enhance, by the time of their death, the environmental conditions they inherited at birth.
This is not too much of a sacrifice to make for the benefit of those who will come after us.
Fat for fuel
On the theory that every little bit helps in trying to close the US oil-for-fuel gap, I suggest we collect the fat obtained from obesity-reducing lipectomies and convert it into biofuel. The idea is a bit icky and weird, I know, but I find the subject does make for some fascinating conversations: on what kind of mileage I might expect to get if I were to turn in the roll of chubbo that rings my own middle, for instance.
Dangerous sex in a pill
I am terrified by Clare Wilson saying an “intelligent and well-informed” gay man “sometimes” has unsafe sex (22 November, p 40). Is that not a contradiction? I do not believe that this kind of behaviour is “not that unusual”.
The editor writes:
鈥� Several surveys have shown that a substantial minority of gay men have unsafe sex. One, a study of men in London, Manchester and Brighton published last year, found that about 1 in 5 had had unprotected anal sex with more than one partner in the past year ().
Not so fast鈥�
Bernhard Hommel found a difference between atheists and adherents of the neocalvinist variety of Protestantism in their speed of identifying small shapes within a larger one (22 November, p 18). You report his speculation 鈥� unsubstantiated 鈥� that the neocalvinists were faster because they were used to separating out influences of education, government and church.
I can think of a number of reasons why there might be differences, including the possibility that the atheists took longer because they were more used to critically assessing evidence rather than jumping to a belief based upon limited samples.
Enhanced brain fodder
The hypothesis that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) can be explained by the brain’s oversensitivity to stimuli is attractive for many reasons (20 September, p 34). It focuses the investigation of causes, explains some of the most common features in a way that makes them predictable, and leads to possible treatment or management options.
I wonder, however, if it is also able to help us understand the huge over-representation of males diagnosed as having autistic spectrum disorder. If it turns out that far from being impaired, ASD brains are enhanced, there will also be an interesting ethical debate.
The speech/song line
My interest in your article on the fine line between speech and song (8 November, p 17) was enriched because I had noticed the inverse transition when learning Mandarin Chinese.
My classmates and I carefully sang the tones that contribute to the meaning of this language, but our Chinese instructor, while clearly forming the same tones, sounded as if speaking.
I eventually succeeded in sounding, at least to myself, as if I was speaking and not singing. I can’t do it consistently, and I am not sure whether I am forming the tones differently some times compared to others, or merely perceiving them differently.
Vicar pause, that is (7)
When my brain is “resting” it isn’t only day-dreaming (8 November, p 28). It is solving problems.
I read through the cryptic crossword clues, doing the odd one. I put the paper down and do something else. When I pick it up again, my brain has solved some of the clues with no conscious effort. How many inventions appear in a similar way?
When I was involved in military equipment procurement I would come across problems to which, often, my brain would provide answers that it had worked out without aid from me.
Now I am old I cannot recall names of people or plants 鈥� but leave the brain idle, and it will come up with them.
From Michael Kellock
I now know how it is that I wake up in the morning with a clear picture of the three extremely difficult words that I couldn’t get in yesterday’s cryptic crossword This happens surprisingly often.
Foster, Victoria, Australia
From Shane Dwyer
I am reminded of the American comic Steven Wright lamenting that he is hopeless at daydreaming. “I just can’t do it. Every time I try it my mind just wanders all over the place”.
Melbourne, Australia
Select * from dream
David Wilks asked whether the nature of our TV-watching affects our dreams (29 November, p 24).
When I was learning website design and practising for hours every day, I used to dream in HTML.
That is, I used to write paragraph breaks, image insertion, links and so forth as the dream went along 鈥� almost like subtitles.
Sad, but true…
The letters editor writes:
鈥� Call that sad? Last month I woke up in the middle of a dream conducted in SQL database queries… and they worked.
For the record
鈥� Peter Barnes’s explanation of why underfilm corrosion lines do not meet should have read: “The potential at the head of a filament would be neutralised were it to encounter the tail of a different filament, so the only way it can propagate is to change direction” (The Last Word, 3 December).
鈥� We accidentally referred to a “stellar sea lion” (29 November, p 6). The featured mammal is a Steller’s sea lion.
Pets' plans
Henry Nicholls struggles with the question of whether animals ponder the past or contemplate the future (1 November, p 32). Do dogs, for example, reconstruct past events in their minds or imagine themselves in future scenarios?
Of course they do. Otherwise, what are we to make of their dreams? When Rover is lying there, making soft woofs and moving his feet, do you suppose he’s just got a need to run in the woods, even though he’s asleep?
We have trained our dogs to tell us what they want. The signal for this is “show me!” They tell us what they want by showing us. For example, if Amy wants food, she’ll take me to her bowl. If she wants out, she’ll take me to the door.
Lately, she’s been trying to get us to go to sleep at about 9 pm, because that’s her vision of what it’s supposed to be like. The right way to do it is for the whole pack to be together for the night. She isn’t happy if either one of us is lingering in the living room.
If I say, “show me”, then she’ll go to where she gets her boost to get on the bed. But if I put her up and then leave, she’ll whine at us until we both come in and go to bed, too. She knows she’s top dog, so she feels like she’s in charge of this and she’s not happy if any of her pack isn’t available for bedding down.
From Dorrie Warren
Some years ago we were in the habit of having guests for tea every Monday. We had a dog who made himself a bit of a nuisance by cadging biscuits. We resolved to foil him and so we shut him out.
The next Monday morning he was nowhere to be found. This did not worry us, since we lived in an area that was safe for dogs to roam.
When tea and biscuits were produced he struggled out from under a very low settee and resumed his cadging. He presumably thought it worth his while to suffer discomfort to attain his ends. Question: how did he know it was Monday? His memory was apparently good for a week.
Wantage, Oxfordshire, UK
Society must act as a society
Why does Marc Kramis think that excessive concentration of power leads to more variables and problems than leaving spending decisions to the individual whims of the multitude (15 November 2008, p 25)? Of course, greater power can lead to greater abuses, but this is because of simplification rather than the reverse; legislatures exist to dilute this tendency.
While I support individuals’ right to donate to the causes they care about the most, and frequently do so myself, I would hate to live in a society where that was the sole source of funding for anything. The number of causes with support might be greater than the number of people, yet the number of causes with enough support to do anything might be minuscule.
The Nobel laureates who endorsed Obama were doing so in the knowledge that in order for a society to achieve much, it must act as a society 鈥� not as a group of sovereign individuals 鈥� on occasion compelling the unwilling to participate for the common good, and in the belief that he would be most likely to make that happen. This is known as civilisation.
Not Higg's Bosun
Feedback refers to “a small kitsch model of a deer” on a cake made to celebrate the firing-up of the LHC, and reports the maker saying it “is, of course, a Higgs boson” (18 October). It occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, it’s actually the even rarer Hoggs bison, and that this may be what the maker intended.
Science friction
As a life-long sci-fi fan, I enjoyed your article on the genre (15 November, p 46), especially as I have just started one of the recognised great sci-fi stories for the first time 鈥� Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is A Harsh Mistress. I am not surprised to see that he identifies the danger of continuously stripping resources 鈥� the great sci-fi writers always considered the long term, from vast stories encompassing long periods of time down to tight cameos of notional human societies with potted histories to explain their present state.
I am astonished, though, that Heinlein specifically raised the issue of the water locked within goods exported to “Terra”. I had understood concern over trade in virtual water to be a modern phenomenon: but Heinlein’s novel was published in 1966.
I hope that some modern writers may equal the insightful and far-seeing qualities of such great early sci-fi writers, yet the paradox is that if their stories are truly far-seeing it may need a perspective of 30 years or more before we can look back and realise how brilliant they are.
From A. Lummox
Clearly, most of the people who voted for “the best” SF have never been exposed to the best SF or even to a significant fraction of SF. I have enjoyed all of your top five books but I would suggest that the “best” now means the best that chain bookshops put on their shelves. You don’t see much Heinlein; Godwhale by T. J. Bass is absent; Edgar Rice Burroughs and Doc Smith never existed; Piers Antony is still there with fantasy stuff but Macroscope has disappeared; even contemporary greats like Stephen Baxter are not prominent and Larry Niven is gradually fading away from the shelves.
I have no idea what criteria the book chains use to select books, but I do know that it has nothing to do with how good the books are.
When I was young I searched the local library for SF: recently I had a conversation with a librarian who told me that very few people under 30 take books out these days. Most go to the library to use computers or to rent DVDs and music CDs. So we are now at the mercy of chain booksellers who have no idea of what is good or bad and who would certainly never stock the thoroughly neglected minority readership masterpieces that were the SF classics of the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK