Food for thought
Your investigation into whether alcohol-laced foods can make you drunk was very interesting, and carries a rather sobering warning that goes beyond driving while tipsy (20/27 December 2014, p 73).
A number of drugs don’t interact well with alcohol. My wife’s epilepsy medication, her doctor warns, is essentially destroyed by alcohol (presumably the alcohol somehow either inactivates it or causes the body to metabolise it faster). She is careful not to drink anything alcoholic, but we have not been watching out for alcohol in foods because we assumed that it is “burned off” during cooking.
Your story could explain an otherwise puzzling seizure she had after dining at an Italian restaurant that cooked with wine.
Auburndale, Massachusetts, US
Our calculating mind
Mark Bishop proposes that computers will never replicate human consciousness because they are mere calculating machines (newscientist.com/article/dn26716).
But if we start from the axiom that humans are themselves calculating machines 鈥� albeit phenomenally complex ones 鈥� his reasoning permits only two possible conclusions: either that human consciousness arises from calculations, or that our consciousness does not exist and is an illusion. Neither conclusion creates any barrier to sufficiently advanced machines being able to reproduce the human state of consciousness.
To come to any other conclusion, we would have to suppose that our consciousness is not entirely the product of the activity of the body, and that at least in part, consciousness exists independently of the workings of the entity that exhibits it.
Narberth, Pembrokeshire, UK
Babies versus beasts
In an otherwise excellent article by Adam Roberts on animal rights (20/27 December 2014, p 78), he brings up the old chestnut that there cannot be rights without responsibilities, and would therefore deny animals rights. Would he similarly deny babies any rights by this logic?
Lewes, East Sussex, UK
Babies versus beasts
It’s an interesting question. The thing about babies is that they eventually become grown-ups (except in those few and genuinely tragic circumstances we all hope to avoid); animals, on the other hand, are animals their whole life long. If a world existed in which babies never grew up, I suppose we might wonder whether they would have the same expectation of absolute human rights.
I have two young kids of my own. Does the fact that I and my wife cared for them when they were too young to look after themselves mean that they have a duty to look out for us when we become old and incapable? I’d like to think so. They might disagree, I suppose.
Elf lore pondered
In your article about Stephen Fry’s team of “elves”, who dig out facts for the QI quiz show, James Harkin mentions that he “read in 快猫短视频 that the corona of the sun is hotter than the centre” (20/27 December 2014, p 40).
I’m not sure which article he was referring to, but the temperature of the sun’s core is about 15 million 掳C, whereas the corona 鈥� the outer atmospheric layer 鈥� is at around 5 million 掳C. It is true, however, that the corona is much hotter than the surface of the sun, which is only in the thousands of degrees. I believe that is what Harkin meant.
Why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than the surface is still a mystery.
Poquoson, Virginia, US
Elf lore pondered
QI elf Andrew Hunter Murray’s assertion that elephants can differentiate between different human languages reminds me of the power of prosody, the patterns of stress and intonation in language.
I often hear visitors to Edinburgh chatting in supermarkets. Even when they are too far for the words to be clear, the “tunes” of speech are often enough to give away that they are new arrivals. Could this be akin to what elephants do?
Edinburgh, UK
Get a load of this
Readers of your brief report on the watt balance made from Lego (20/27 December 2014, p 14) might be interested to see the video of the original Lego balance I made last year with my then 11-year-old grandson Lucas and a colleague, Richard Davis ().
We showed it at the Royal Society Summer Science exhibition in London in 2013 and published an account in Physics Education (). Lucas constructed the Lego part on his dining room table, I made the rest in my basement and Richard honed the intellectual firepower of the three of us.
Our version inspired the much-improved Lego balance that you describe, built by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
S猫vres, France
Beaver non-believer
Rowan Hooper’s article on beavers making a comeback in Europe extols their contribution to carbon sequestration (6 December 2014, p 27).
As a Canadian farmer with a beaver-inhabited creek on my land, I have a less appreciative view of the animals.
Beavers make a valuable contribution to water conservation where their dams enable extensive wetlands to exist, particularly in wilderness areas. But when they build their dams across flowing streams, they block migrating fish, which has a negative impact on fisheries.
On my creek their dams raise upstream water levels, drowning protective riparian vegetation. In spring, the break-up of ice in the creek creates gaps in the dams, the water level drops, and we are left with easily eroded mud banks.
We Canadians owe a lot to the beaver, since the pursuit of beaver pelts was a prime mover in the opening up of the country. It would just be nice to keep them away from our streams. I fear that applies to many European waterways, too.
Red Deer County, Alberta, Canada
Schr枚dinger's goat
Your article about probability which featured the Monty Hall problem 鈥� in which you have to pick a door from a choice of three in the hope of winning a car, and are then offered the chance to switch after one of the remaining two is opened to reveal to a goat 鈥� prompted me think about quantum superposition (13 December 2014, p 38).
With three doors, the odds of picking the one with the car are 1 in 3. When Monty Hall opens another door to reveal one of the two goats, switching from your original choice of door increases the odds of getting the car to 2 in 3, even though all other factors remain unchanged.
I can’t help thinking that there’s a link to quantum mechanics, in that an indirect measurement (in this case, opening another door to reveal a goat) can alter the probability of a particular outcome, one that you would assume is predetermined.
Horsham, West Sussex, UK
Schr枚dinger's goat
Your excellent article on probability got me thinking anew about the famously vexing Monty Hall problem. I came up with the following reformulation which I hope makes the solution easier to understand for those who still have doubts.
Once you’ve chosen a door, you can either keep it or you can give it up and have both the other two doors. If you opt for the latter, the host will open one of the two, always revealing a goat. Now it’s your turn, and if the one you open contains the car, you win.
In this scenario, it feels easier to understand that I should opt to foresake my original door.
Sheffield, UK
Schr枚dinger's goat
The Monty Hall problem has a more elegant solution than the one described in your article.
If I don’t switch doors I have a 1 in 3 chance of winning. However, if I do switch I have a 1 in 3 chance of losing.
Nyon, Switzerland
It can't be just us
I was surprised to read Helen Thomson’s article on the first person to report persistent d茅j脿 vu stemming from anxiety rather than a neurological disorder (20/27 December 2014, p 8).
I myself frequently experienced d茅j脿 vu during my high-school years. I didn’t have a neurological disorder, but was rather anxious and stressed at the time.
I do not believe d茅j脿 vu to be a common symptom of stress, but I had thought that people with this combination would have been reported long ago. Perhaps my case was mild; I did, however, often become stressed and then have d茅j脿 vu for several days, either in a row or every other day.
Maybe there are far more unreported cases of this kind?
Kyleakin, Isle of Skye, UK
Helpful robots
In your 2015 preview, Hal Hodson writes about humanoid rescue robots ().
I would suggest giving them four arms and four hands. Such a robot could push down a wall with one pair of arms and clear the rubble with the other set, likely progressing more quickly. Or it could climb or descend slopes to make a rescue with more dexterity along the way.
This would also make them more useful for everyday tasks. When raising my small children I often wished for more arms and hands. Just try pushing a stroller while carrying a few parcels, holding a toddler’s hand and negotiating a street crossing or car park.
A four-armed robot could open doors or gates while carrying parcels, and could be especially useful in helping immobile people. So can someone redesign the helpful robot to be even more handy?
Caringbah, New South Wales, Australia
Worm eaten
So you endorse the view that the early bird catches the worm (20/27 December 2014, p 71). Lest readers draw an inappropriate moral from this, let me point out the corollary that the early worm is caught by the bird.
Prestwood, Buckinghamshire, UK
Worm eaten
Regarding the myth that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the answer is simple 鈥� to a sufficiently old dog, there are no new tricks.
Coolamon, New South Wales, Australia
For the record
鈥� A small error appeared in our article on animal rights (20/27 December 2014, p 78): smallpox is a virus, not a bacterium.
鈥� Bad seed: we misnamed the Global Crop Diversity Trust in our interview with Cary Fowler (3 January, p 23)