Same-sex relations
Kate Douglas’s article on same-sex coupling in nature (5 December, p 49) touches on such behaviour in humans, but omits a possibility that relates to the species and not the individual.
In order to replenish a human population in times of disease or disaster, it is important that human sexual desire is collectively always “on”. However, such mating behaviour is not desirable at all times. I posit that the astonishing number of ways for sexual release to be achieved by the human body, where there is no possibility of conception, suggests that we have evolved a social survival strategy that will result in some same-sex pairing.
There is a wide variety of methods of stimulation, whether with a partner or without, and irrelevant of that partner’s gender. For example, the fact that the external clitoris is connected to a mass of erectile tissue within the body adds to the argument that sexual release without conception has evolved for good reason. Why otherwise would we grow so much tissue for an unimportant issue?
This strategy, evolved by the human species, allows for collective adjustment in the frequency of breeding in accordance with ecological pressure and resource availability.
This leads to better control over population size, but also means that sexual preferences and bonds will be formed by some members of any population where conception can never take place. This is not a disadvantage to the larger group, so long as there are enough people who desire heterosexual sex.
From John Hastings
In your editorial you rightly state that we “cannot draw inferences about what is right from what happens in nature. Penguin behaviour tells you nothing about human morality” (5 December, p 5). This begs the question of the source of human morality. You say that “we have no need for fallacious arguments to support basic human rights”, but what would be a non-fallacious argument for basic human rights?
Although we could agree on a code of behaviour that would produce more benefits to people than harm, that would not tell us what is right and wrong. We could logically tell someone to obey the code or be punished, but we could not logically say, “you ought to obey the code”, because there is no justification for such a statement. Any claim that our code of conduct is also a code of morality is just another assertion.
If we encountered intelligent aliens with a different moral code we would have to accept their code as having equal status to our own: asserting that our code is superior would involve making a claim of universal morality.
What is it about human beings that makes us want to say things like, “you ought to be good”, or “people ought to be unselfish”? Whence comes the conviction that we are indeed tapping into some sort of universal code of behaviour, that there really are “basic human rights”?
Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK
Alcohol test
Jim Giles’s summary of the issues surrounding the detection of drinking using the SCRAM skin-monitoring anklet refers to our study of the accuracy of these devices (5 December, p 44). Giles quotes my suggestion that a person detected as having consumed alcohol be notified promptly so he or she could have an independent alcohol biomarker test if they want to dispute the SCRAM evidence. The article then casts doubt on this idea by suggesting that the positive detection might not be transmitted to the makers of the device until hours after the apparent drinking (when the wearer moves into range of the modem in their home), which may be too late for a regular blood-alcohol concentration test.
To clarify, my suggestion was that a person who claims to have been wrongly accused of drinking should be allowed to pay for a $25 urine test for measurement of an alcohol biomarker, such as ethyl glucuronide, or a blood test for phosphatidyl ethanol. These markers can still be measured for 36 to 72 hours after blood-alcohol content has gone to zero.
AMS, the manufacturer of SCRAM, could facilitate the collection, freezing and shipping of specimens to a certified laboratory. In my view, without a confirmatory test, the interpretive algorithm has too much authority. AMS is a responsible company with a good product, but the SCRAM algorithm can be very good without being foolproof because it is based on probability and patterns.
Memory fades
I was disturbed to read in Joerg Heber’s article on computer supermemories that a chip is defined as “stable” if it does not degrade for at least a decade (5 December, p 40). A decade seems a disastrously short time. What possible use is that for one’s entire collection of family photographs or “every book we would ever want to read or refer to”, as he suggests is possible in the rest of the article?
Carved stone will last forever. Ink on paper may last for millennia. Silver deposited in cellulose has proven itself over a century. If we switch wholesale to faster and more compact ways of storing information, then we will also continue to need to store that same information on long-term back-up.
It’s an appealing idea that all my family’s photographs may be held on a piece of plastic no bigger than my little finger, but if it means that we will be able to enjoy them until only 2020, then I’ll be relying on printed copies for some time to come.
Carbon solutions
In his article “Inconspicuous consumption”, David S. Reay suggests that “we can each be part of the solution” to climate change if we drink fewer lattes, wash our clothes less often, and buy different lavatory paper (28 November, p 43). This is dangerous tokenism. While it is true that making small sacrifices can cut carbon emissions, the problem is much bigger.
The unpalatable reality is that to reduce our energy use far enough and fast enough to make a difference, everyone in the developed world needs to make large, rapid and uncomfortable cuts in their standard of living.
No politician will ever be elected with a manifesto of banning most long-haul flights, car journeys and out-of-season food, so the only energy-saving measures they mention in their speeches are at worst mildly inconvenient.
From Ben Haller
Dave S. Reay’s assessment of lesser-known ways we can reduce our carbon footprints was interesting, but also depressing. We should not need to pay attention to such things, and the vast majority of us will not. Urging individuals to act towards the collective good is a waste of time. People are simply too selfish or ignorant for that to be effective.
The free market works; all we need to do is harness its power. We need strong price signals to be sent via a carbon tax. That would result in the targets of Reay’s article 鈥� from coffee to laundry 鈥� becoming more expensive. People would then adjust their behaviour accordingly.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
From Andrew Jonkers
Based on New 杏吧原创 articles, I fully expect airline costing to shift to “equivalent coffee cups per passenger-kilometre” as the new measure of carbon efficiency.
Dave S. Reay’s article tells me that a flight from Rome to London is equivalent to one year of a six-cup-a-day coffee habit. By my calculations, London to New York is a 24-cup-a-day habit. But in Jim Giles’s special report “A low-carbon future” (5 December, p 8), I am assured my bad carbon habits can be solved by, among other things, a 1 per cent increase in food prices. So, assuming a generous 拢2 per cup, fixing my carbon woes for my 24-cup habit will cost me 48 pence per day, or 拢175 over the year. By the magic of coffee-cup equivalence, 拢175 should also assuage my guilt over that London to New York flight.
Why, then, does a London to New York flight in the low-carbon future described in Giles’s special report cost 拢490 more than it does today? Think I’ll stick with the coffee for now.
Bellbowrie, Queensland, Australia
Quantum cover
I was interested to see your coverage of Jonathan Rowles’s letter to The Psychologist on the notion of quantum psychology (Feedback, 28 November).
Before becoming editor of The Psychologist, I spent a few weeks on a placement in the New 杏吧原创 offices, and I will always remember being told that you experienced a spike in sales each time the word “quantum” appeared on the cover.
I’ve realised I missed probably my only opportunity to put this to the test in another publication. The situation made me wonder if there are any words that you feel have been responsible for an actual drop in sales?
The editor writes:
鈥� The only word we can think of is “potato”, though our sample size for that is limited to one.
Plane cemetery
I have just read Feedback’s note about the strange and wonderful residents of the fictional island of “Zero Zero” 鈥� where the prime meridian and the equator intersect (Feedback, 28 October).
I used to be an airline ground mechanic at London’s Heathrow airport. When 747 jumbos were introduced in 1970 I heard Zero Zero jokingly referred to by flight crews as the “jumbo graveyard”. The navigation system in these planes used magnetic core memory and capacity was very limited, so flight crews had to load new waypoints during flight. Once in a while they inadvertently loaded and activated all the zeros as a waypoint and were thereafter alarmed when they headed off in an unexpected direction. Fortunately, the problem was easily corrected once checks had been performed and, like the elephants’ graveyard, this jumbo graveyard remained mythical 鈥� no one ever ended up there.
The real jumbo graveyards are of course in the south-west US, where planes are retired during economic downturns, awaiting their fate as sources of metal when the recovery comes.
Self-heating roads
Paul Marks’s article on electrically heated roads (28 November, p 26) reminded me of an article published in your excellent magazine about an electricity-generating road developed by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa (10 December, p 25). Would it be possible to combine the two ideas to produce a totally self-sufficient heated road?
For the record
鈥� The Solar Impulse was not, as we stated, the first crewed solar aircraft to take off under its own power, rather it was the first to do so while carrying enough batteries to fly through the night on stored solar energy (5 December, p 21).