Down the wire
Australia had barbed-wire telephone lines that served many farms up to the late 1960s, just like those you describe in the rural US in the early 20th century (21/28 December 2013, p 76).
The granddaddy of them all was a 700-kilometre-long line in Western Australia. This was a single galvanised iron fencing wire on poles. I once spoke end-to-end over this line, but the weather usually made it necessary to call a farm part way down the line and they would relay the call.
The lines were eventually replaced in 1964 by a microwave radio relay system, for which I was the design engineer.
Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia
Agile thoughts
Michael Brooks is right that we need to produce agile thinkers, not just more and more science and engineering graduates, to drive an innovation economy (21/28 December 2013, p 38). We should all aspire to a tireless variety of thinking and creativity.
The arts and humanities must stop apologising in the face of the political dogma that says only science and engineering are economically worthwhile. As Brooks points out, we must be wary of our children being conned into becoming tech drones in the corporate world.
London, UK
Agile thoughts
In 1978, a friend of mine graduated in philosophy and took a job in IT, where she had a successful career precisely because of the mental agility her degree required. In my experience people with similar degrees these days don’t even make the shortlist for such jobs.
A mediocre qualification in a science subject seems preferable to top class results in other subjects, even if that degree is rigorous, partly because those holding science degrees often don’t understand the rigour involved.
Southampton, Hampshire, UK
Just eat less
Caroline Williams reports on attempts to perfect low-fat chocolate (21/28 December, 2013, p 53). Why do we persist in trying to replace perfectly wholesome foods with products that should probably remain in the lab? Butter being replaced by margarine and other low-fat spreads is probably the most notorious example.
We should focus more attention on our relationship with food. How about eating just half a normal chocolate bar as a cheap and effective solution?
Edinburgh, UK
Born to run
Linda Geddes reports on the discovery of intergenerational memory transfer in mice (7 December 2013, p 10). There may be other examples of the genetic transmission of acquired information.
US researcher Joe Hutto raised 14 wild turkeys, from egg incubation to adulthood (24/31 December 2011, p 37). Despite having no contact with other wild turkeys, the brood had certain innate abilities, for example they could distinguish vocalisations associated with warnings, danger, flight, socialising and so on.
Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia
Group discussion
In your interview with Richard Dawkins (21/28 December 2013, p 40) he says: “I think people want altruism to be a kind of driving force; there’s no such thing as a driving force. They want altruism to be fundamental whereas I want it to be explained.” Quite so, but the only way to do that is to accept that altruism doesn’t exist.
There is a driving force in all life, but it is only ever selfish. Its sole imperative is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. If this is to be the atheist’s prayer, let them speak clearly on it. It brings a measure of clarity generally not found in religions.
Sturminster Newton, Dorset, UK
Group discussion
If Jesus Christ lived today and was educated in a liberal, democratic environment, I think he would be well on board with Dawkins and others of a like mind.
Instead of preaching from the Bible, he would choose Unweaving the Rainbow by Dawkins and The Good Book by philosopher A. C. Grayling as examples of how to think and behave both rationally and ethically.
Albion, Victoria, Australia
Ancient ritual
The letter from Howard Barnes about applying the label “religious” to unexplained ancient buildings (7 December 2013, p 33) brings to mind British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler.
In the 1950s TV show Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Wheeler was asked to explain what a “ritual object” was. He replied that it was a term used by archaeologists to describe something when they had no idea what it was.
Pollen莽a, Mallorca, Spain
Prove it
In his letter, Bruce Dinham does economics a disservice when extolling the definability and measurability of science while alleging the reverse for economics (21/28 December 2013, p 45).
The truth is nearer to a reality where nothing is certain, not even nothing. There is no such proof as scientific proof, and even mathematical proof is debatable.
Bridport, Dorset, UK
Hanging out
The mathematics of urinal etiquette would have been incomprehensible 50 years ago (21/28 December 2013, p 58). Back then, if you walked into the toilets with a friend you automatically peed in a urinal next to each other, so that nobody could interrupt your conversation.
If it was a trough urinal, a newcomer would ask everyone to shuffle up to make space. If overcrowding meant that you peed in a toilet cubicle you would “double up” if required.
If someone happened to see your member, so what? They would see it anyway in the changing room when you played sport or went to the pool. What has made men become so dysfunctional about performing a normal bodily function?
Sydney, Australia
It takes three
Your article on using mitochondrial donation to create a “three-parent baby” to avoid inherited disease (21/28 December 2013, p 32) provides a solution to an old literary conundrum. In the , the titular anti-hero is described as two-thirds divine. How could this be?
The answer, I speculate, is that the goddess Ninsun provided the egg-nucleus and womb; mortal king Lugalbanda the sperm; and a second deity, identity unknown, provided the mitochondria.
San Francisco, California, US
For the record
鈥� Even names can get mangled by the mighty gravity of collapsed stars. Adam Brown is the Stanford University researcher following up William Unruh’s thought experiment on hastening the death of a black hole (7 December 2013, p 14).