Moral rethink
When it comes to bankers and their errant behaviour, Christopher Boehm asks if our evolved moral instincts have failed us (23 March, p 26). They clearly have not, since we are all outraged, if powerless. What has failed is our collective ability to design and implement a system that achieves a moral outcome.
Corporate entities are not amenable to regulation based on morality, which is a human emotion. It is the individual bankers who need to be regulated. So, instead of pointless moral outrage, let us try a redesign of the system.
Boehm wonders why no bankers have been seriously penalised since the financial crisis erupted, despite public anger. In the UK it is clear: many MPs don’t resent bankers, they are in awe of them.
With our industry outsourced and little economic contribution from agriculture, the British economy is more dependent on its financial sector than any other advanced nation. They have us over a barrel.
Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK
The answer is鈥�
In your look at stupidity, a question illustrating the decision-making cognitive bias known as the ambiguity effect was posed (30 March, p 30): Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
Since we are not told Anne’s marital status I think the answer is “cannot be determined”. However author Sally Adee says the answer is “yes”. Please explain. Other readers may also be puzzled… I hope!
鈥� You are far from alone. To put readers out of their misery, here’s the explanation: knowing whether or not Anne is married isn’t necessary. If Anne is married, it means that she is the married person looking at an unmarried person 鈥� George. If Anne is not married, the answer is still yes: it just means that Jack is the married person looking at an unmarried person, Anne.
Body beautiful
I enjoyed your insightful look at the workings of the human body, including oddities such as yawning (16 March, p 34).
Here’s my it-really-does-work remedy for hiccups 鈥� press-ups. I resorted to this after trying everything else for a severe bout of hiccuping. After 12 to 20 press-ups they’re gone, guaranteed.
You claim that blood travels 19,000 kilometres a day in the body (p 37). That would equate to about 792 kilometres an hour. At that speed, my guess is that your body would be torn apart. Perhaps the figure wrongly assumes all your blood travels through every millimetre of available blood vessels every time it circulates.
Caledon Village, Ontario, Canada
One-way ticket
Your coverage of the Mars One project to set up a human colony on the Red Planet stated: “The trip is one way, as getting back is too difficult…” (16 March, p 12).
Invoking the spirit of Star Trek, British physicist Paul Davies and US geologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch promoted the concept of a one-way mission in an article entitled “ ” in the Journal of Cosmology in 2010 (vol 12, p 3619). They argued it would be little different from early settlers who left Europe for North America with little hope of return. Really? At least they anticipated green grass, blue skies and white clouds.
Numerous scientific benefits were cited by Davies and Schulze-Makuch, all of which I agree with. But if it really is a suicide mission, some questions should be asked. Even if someone volunteers for a one-way mission, is it right? If the colonists know the risks but willingly accept them in a spirit of adventure, does that absolve those who send them? Mars One is an exciting idea… but these ethical questions must be aired.
We are not amused
I was not impressed by Michael Leonard’s letter suggesting readers pay more to save the UK’s Royal Institution (23 March, p 31). Organisations tagged as royal should ask the queen for support. She’s worth a few pennies.
Patent pending
Stephen Ornes raises the vexed issue of software patents (16 March, p 26). Software relies on mathematics, usually considered a discovery rather than an invention, and so is often unpatentable, stifling innovation.
The dilemma could be solved this way: mathematical truths pre-exist informally and are discovered by mathematicians. However, the particular way in which a mathematical truth is formally expressed is an invention, since there are many ways in which such things can be expressed. Hence a particular software implementation of an algorithm is patentable.
Killer coal
In your editorial on the legacy of the Fukushima disaster, you say “relatively few people will suffer serious health effects” as a result (9 March, p 3). Unfortunately, this is not true, but the damage will be done by political rather than radioactive fallout.
If Japan replaces its 53 reactors with a mix of coal and gas-powered plants, research suggests there will be about 20 extra deaths a year, mostly coal miners. Germany and other countries moving away from nuclear will add to this toll.
Earlier spin
It was interesting to read of recent US research on the use of rising vortexes of warm air to generate electricity (9 March, p 23). Earlier work in Canada by Louis Michaud produced similar results in the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, which has advanced to the prototype stage.
Besides exploiting solar warming, Michaud’s engine has been proposed as a way to generate extra electricity using the warm air rising from power station cooling towers.
Ghost writer
Online bookseller Amazon is even stranger than Feedback’s report on very odd prices suggests (23 March). It lists books that never existed, as both “new” and “used”. For example, Kevin Goldstein-Jackson’s Sunday Times Personal Finance Guide To Buying And Selling Shares has seven “new” copies from 拢25.20. A “used” copy, available for 拢32.36, is listed on Amazon in the UK and US, while the Amazon Canada website has three new copies and one used.
However, I know the book does not exist because I am Kevin Goldstein-Jackson. I was a Sunday Times columnist from 1995 to 2000 and was going to write it, but due to pressure of work I was unable to and returned the advance. It was never even written, let alone published.
Web first
You reported the winners of the first Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering: Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Louis Pouzin for developing key tools to transmit data on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee for creating the web itself, and Marc Andreessen for the first browser, NCSA Mosaic (23 March, p 5). However, the first browser was WWW, which I worked on with Berners-Lee at CERN.
Natural defences
Leading medical authorities describe the prospect of existing antibiotics ceasing to be effective as an “apocalyptic” threat (16 March, p 6).
I disagree. Humans have survived perfectly well for thousands of years while exposed to many infections, with nothing to protect them other than their immune systems.
Mitochondrial plea
As a charity dedicated to informing the debate on assisted conception and genetics, we welcome the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s recommendation, after gauging public opinion, that the UK government should consider permitting mitochondrial replacement (23 March, p 6). These are new IVF techniques that can avoid mitochondrial diseases being inherited.
UK politicians can now lead the way in showing how policy and regulation can keep pace with the science, so that people can benefit without delay.
The techniques were given the green light from the last year, and have now won general public approval, so we urge the government not to create unnecessary roadblocks, and to pass appropriate legislation so that families blighted by mitochondrial disease can be helped.
Wrong butterfly
It is the monarch butterflies of eastern North America, all the way up to Canada, that overwinter in Mexico, not those from California as you reported (23 March, p 5). The population west of the Rocky Mountains has its own shorter, altitudinal migration.
Computer virus
Norovirus is described as very contagious: as few as 18 virus particles can infect a person (23 March, p 42). Meanwhile, Feedback in the same edition refers to the use of touchscreens in GP surgeries. Need I say more?
Just an illusion
Could someone please explain the difference between the illusion of a self and a self (23 February, p 34)? Or the difference between an illusion of consciousness and consciousness?
For the record
鈥� Inside out! The Planck telescope’s map of the cosmic microwave background favours the slow-roll model of inflation in the early universe (30 March, p 8). We should have said this is akin to a ball rolling down the outside of an inverted bowl.