Market for wildlife
Rosaleen Duffy claims the tragic drowning of 23 illegally trafficked cockle-pickers in Morecambe bay, north-west England, “revealed some stark realities about the international wildlife trade 鈥� how it is driven by wealth not poverty” (11 September, p 28).
This problem has existed for decades. Since the 1970s, each surge in the main wildlife markets has resulted in a renewed onslaught on wildlife in producer countries, despite attempts to prevent it. Hundreds of poorly paid, badly equipped wildlife rangers have been killed while attempting to hold back waves of poachers armed with the latest hi-tech equipment. Indeed, almost every week, rhinos are killed in South Africa by helicopter-borne poachers using veterinary tranquillisers. This is driven directly by consumer demand.
Duffy fails to mention that some of the countries that are losing wildlife have for decades shied away from trying to control consumption in the end markets. In fact, some have colluded with governments of consumer countries to keep markets open because these are the main destinations for legal as well as illegal wildlife products.
Contrary to what Duffy suggests, conservation organisations do not tend to blame the poor for the illicit trade in wildlife while ignoring the markets. The , a coalition of over 80 conservation organisations worldwide, has been fighting wildlife consumption in the wealthier countries from its inception. Some members have spent the past 30 years infiltrating the organised crime networks that smuggle ivory, rhino horn, timber and tiger bone, at great risk to themselves. Others have focused on extensive consumer education programmes aimed at stopping the demand.
iHuman
So Google will soon be returning search results before you have finished typing the query, based on what is most likely, and the Yahoo search engine wants to take your sex and age into account (18 September, p 19). Your previous online behaviour, including social networking, might even be used to tailor search results.
The idea of a computer deciding what information to show me based on my demographic fills me with horror. Such a method is only useful if you fit the social expectations built up by the search engine’s database. If you are unclassifiable or are looking for something odd, profile-matching will not help. A solution is to let the search engine build up a better picture of you, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing all my personal details in the hope that it will provide a better answer.
Search engines are what change the internet from a pile of computer components into an incredible resource. People rarely have the patience to go through more than the first few hits, so the way pages are ranked is extremely important in deciding what information people have access to. This is a very subtle method of controlling our information supply.
We are being forced into one of a few easy-to-label groups for the convenience of computers, and if your needs don’t fit in with the majority then you miss out.
I am not a label, I am a human being. I don’t want a search engine to do my thinking for me, any more than I would want an encyclopedia to do it. Computers are still only tools and are much less intelligent than most people give them credit for.
Stage bower
In your article on the optical illusion used by male bowerbirds to get a mate, you write that researcher John Endler noticed that “ornaments were carefully laid out, with objects becoming bigger the further they were from the bower” (18 September, p 16). Could this statement be incorrect?
In the theatre we also use forced perspective, to give an illusion of depth behind the painted backcloth. We do this by painting objects that get smaller as they get further away from the audience. If live actors get too close to this backcloth, they appear very large compared to the diminutive trees and houses on the backcloth. This is just the effect that the male bowerbird should be seeking.
John Endler writes:
鈥� Male bowerbirds use perspective in the opposite way to the stage background Bob Gibson describes. The bowerbird designs his “court” to appear smaller than it is, in order to make himself appear larger, whereas the painted backdrop is intended to make the stage appear bigger than it really is. The bowerbird stays in the position on the court where the illusion persists 鈥� as is the case with an actor positioned correctly on stage. When actors move to the back of the stage, their apparent size is affected, which is a good real-world example of the Ponzo illusion.
Ailing eucalypts
In her article on the premature death of eucalyptus trees, Wendy Zuckerman cites a paper claiming that the eucalypt tree disease Mundulla Yellows (MY) is caused by environmental factors (11 September, p 44).
However, my colleagues and I published a paper in an earlier issue of the same journal which shows that MY is actually a contagious disease of unknown aetiology (). We outlined many clear descriptors that distinguish it from environmental causes of eucalypt yellowing. For example, the disease is defined by a progressive succession of symptoms through clearly described disease stages; it is irreversibly lethal and may affect a single tree in a group of healthy ones. Furthermore, symptoms have been transferred by inoculation from MY-affected trees to healthy eucalypt seedlings.
Taking into account these descriptors, environmental yellowing by definition is not MY, and continued use of the term for a whole range of disorders has been a cause for much time-wasting and futile discussions.
Eyes for art
As a painter, I was interested to read Jessica Griggs’s article on optical tricks used by artists (18 September, p 34). However, I was surprised to learn that a study of 90,000 people in the UK found that they preferred impressionist paintings over some other forms of art.
The explanation reported in the article 鈥� that the ambiguity of the images allows the brain to interpret the pictures in a more personal way 鈥� may only be part of the story. The preference could also be a product of contemporary cultural tastes.
When the impressionists first showed their paintings, most Parisians found them absolutely horrible, as their taste was formed by other images and different values and subject matter. They, like the 90,000 UK subjects, had an amygdala region of the brain. If the effect on that area is the sole cause of people’s appreciation of impressionist art, they too should have responded enthusiastically to those paintings, but they did not.
For my own part, although I find Renaissance painting magnificent, it is culturally and visually so distant that I feel closer to Monet and fellow painters than to Raphael or D眉rer. In the same way, people living in the 1500s would probably have preferred their artists to the impressionists we love so much today.
Geographical diversity could also play a part. Japanese people may well prefer their traditional styles to others forms of art, although they share the same brain structure as people in the UK.
Endless possibility
I fully agree with David Eagleman (25 September, p 34) that true science should really occupy the probabilistic, evidentially consistent middle ground between God and atheism, and indeed between false certainties everywhere. But why does he have to label this sort of thinking “possibilian”? What’s wrong with “Bayesian”? It is equivalent, older, beautifully quantifies the probabilities and trips off the tongue rather more readily.
From Tim Wilkinson
Eagleman allocates atheism, eastern religions and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition just a single point each in his possibility space. However, all his infinite possibilities are compatible with both the existence and non-existence of God or gods.
Atheism and theism are not isolated points in the space of all possible worlds, they are much bigger propositions, both of which envelop every possible configuration of reality. Properly understood, God is either single-handedly responsible for the whole edifice of creation, or He is not there at all. Either way, He should not be confused with some mere pan-dimensional universe-building alien.
It is very easy for atheists to remain open to the unlimited possibilities of the cosmos, but so can theists, provided of course that they avoid painting themselves into a metaphysical corner with the parochial thinking and man-made absurdities of organised religion.
Eagleman has underestimated the magnitude of the claims being made by both sides in the debate, but in so doing has managed the considerable achievement of delivering something on which atheists and theists can agree: the question runs much deeper than he thinks.
Houghton le Spring, Tyne and Wear, UK
Silent soundtrack
Your recent article on “The voice of reason” was of particular interest to my wife and me (4 September, p 30).
My wife does not have the inner voice that everyone is supposed to have. The closest she comes is sometimes muttering quietly to herself as she works at a task, but the fairly constant unvocalised voice running around in her head is simply not there.
When she reads stories, she sees the actions played out and “hears” only the words spoken by the characters. Possibly related to this, she also never has a tune running in her head of its own accord.
It was many years before she realised exactly what other people meant by the inner voice or by the tune they couldn’t get rid of. I wonder how many other people lack these internal soundtracks.
For the record
鈥� We incorrectly stated that New Orleans was fortified by cement levees (4 September, p 6). In fact, the levees are made of concrete, of which cement is a component.
鈥� The carbon-capturing algae facility on the Hawaiian island of Maui is being built by HR BioPetroleum, not by Cellana as we incorrectly stated (25 September, p 48).
鈥� We incorrectly named the “Space Based Space Surveillance” (SBSS) satellite in our article on space junk (2 October, p 5).
鈥� We got our venues confused in our article about science careers at the 2012 Olympics site in our UK edition. The picture we identified as the Olympic stadium was actually of the velodrome (2 October, p 44).