Editor's pick: When dementia makes us time travellers
What is dementia like, asks Kayt Sukel (29 April, p 33). It is different for each person. After eight years of caring for my wife, who has Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, I quite agree that “the best way to understand what it is like for a loved one may simply be to ask”, as Sukel writes. Even with more advanced dementia, asking can lead to understanding, for example, the “time travel” experienced with dementia.
The past and the present become conterminous – there are no boundaries in the experience of time. Especially in the late afternoon and evening, the person with dementia often becomes confused in the midst of “sundowning”.
This is not linked to the brightness of the sun that day but to the body clock guiding moods and fears.
To relate well to a person with dementia, one needs to know whether they are experiencing childhood, or being a teenager, a young adult, or are in the present moment.
The best treatment for dementia is simply love, grounded in relationship-centered dementia care.
I write about thinking in no language at all
David Werdegar suggests we should redefine knowledge to include the non-language-based thought processes that are presumably used by animals but not, he supposes, by humans (Letters, 29 April). I suggest that the perception of thinking in language arises in humans simply because, from a very early age, we know we are likely to have to verbalise a thought to share it with someone else, and so the brain just does it automatically, all the time, giving the appearance of needing language to think.
I don't believe my personal stock of knowledge is affected by which language I'm speaking. I recall seeing some magnificent riveted girder-work and thinking, in German, since I'd been over there for some weeks, “that's a fine piece of… umm… er…” The concept was completely clear in my mind, in no language at all.
And a picture often is worth a thousand words.
First class post
Let's just change the agency name to US Chamber of Commerce II, and be done with it…
Bruce Arkwright to “industry experts” on an Environmental Protection Agency science board (13 May, p 7)
Please save an important medical resource
I was interested to read your article on blood from umbilical cords rejuvenating old mouse brains (29 April, p 18). Cord blood is a rich source of valuable stem cells, which are freely available, yet are too often just thrown away after childbirth.
Stem cells from them can be grown into organs and nerve cells, used for research and can help patients with blood disorders. There is no discomfort involved in saving them – unlike extracting bone marrow from a donor.
Yet this potential isn't widely publicised. Sadly, only a few of the hospitals in England save cords for collection. I believe most new mothers would be willing to donate theirs, if requested. This is a shameful waste of an important medical resource, which is being successfully used in many countries, including the US.
Picking politicians and perfecting policy
Dave Levitan (22 April, p 24), and Alice Klein (p 25) rightly deplore politicians such as Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull, who disregard scientific evidence in favour of policies chosen for short-term electoral advantage or to further special interests. But the problem is a consequence of the electoral system itself, which repeatedly brings to power people unfit to use it.
Since the 18th century we have assumed that elections are both necessary and sufficient for democracy, and that without them tyranny results. Yet the Greeks of Aristotle's day knew that elections could lead to oligarchy, not democracy, and that a democratic alternative existed.
Athenian democracy selected decision-makers by lot to get a statistically representative sample of the whole community: this is called ““. It is perfectly feasible to design a system with the means to ensure that those chosen are well informed on each issue that comes before them.
Sortition would end the reign of big money, greatly reduce corruption and allow intelligent decisions, taking into account the interests of all. It's high time we abandoned the myth that elections equal democracy.
These are not in fact the robins you seek
I am disappointed to see that the photograph accompanying your report on “perfect husband” robins is of a species from the wrong continent (29 April, p 17). New Zealand robins may not have the red breast of their European or American namesakes but they are beautiful birds that deserve a splash in 快猫短视频.
The editor writes:
• We have replaced the photo in the online versions of this report with one of the species studied, the North Island New Zealand robin, Petroica longipes – sadly, not feeding its mate.
Atheism doesn't exist, bar the born-again
As someone who likes to consider the big picture before diving into analysis, I was dismayed by Graham Lawton's article on atheism (15 April, p 32). What makes him think atheism is real? There's no word for people who disbelieve, even vociferously, in dragons, unicorns or fairies (would that be an a-fée-ist?). So why one for religion? Believers invented the whole concept of atheism to make non-belief seem perverse and unnatural.
Religion is entirely cultural; some people are conditioned by their family and community to believe strange things while others are not. An atheist is just someone who was spared this unwanted conditioning while their brain was maturing. Do they really need to be explained?
Atheism doesn't exist, bar the born-again
I am a born-again atheist. I was born with no belief in God, strayed from that path as a child, then as a young adult returned to the true path. In truth, the first and third stages are quite different.
I was born with no mental models of how the universe works. As a child, I was taught a religious mental model of how reality works; and then as an adult came to understand that the religious model was so severely flawed it couldn't predict anything. In other words, anything can happen if God wills it, including the violation of every assurance by the supposed agents of God and the violation of every law of physics.
A universe with God in it is thus a universe with no rules at all: everything that happens is the whim of an intentionally unpredictable intellect with an intentionally incomprehensible plan that may result in horrors.
My atheism is not a religion, it is the rejection of all models of the universe that contain some intellect capable of literally anything. It is my claim that an incoherent model cannot be how everything works.
Atheism doesn't exist, bar the born-again
Lawton interestingly discusses some similarities and differences between religion and atheism. Another difference is that religion seems to be partly based on sex: there is lots of talk of love and worship, giving oneself to God and so on. This isn't the case with atheism – as far as I know.
I'm way over my allotted number of heartbeats
There is at least one notable exception to Fred Pearce's statement that every mammal can expect to expire after about 1.5 billion heartbeats (22 April, p 44). I have worked out that at an average rate of 72 per minute, my old ticker has already delivered about double that predicted total. Could this be an effect of civilisation, and could it be that pre-civilisation humans could expect a lifespan only in the upper 30s of years?
The editor writes:
• Life expectancy before such developments as drainage and antibiotics was 40 or lower (see for example 11 May 2013, p 48).
Self-driving cars won't cause crashes, but I might
Steve Tunn suggests that self-driving cars may well be pushed beyond their safe operating limit by the free market (Letters, 29 April). I find this unlikely.
Nobody will write code that breaks the Highway Code or the law – a self-driving car will wait all day, if necessary, for there to be a 100-metre gap in traffic before going out of a side road onto a main road or a roundabout. Self-driving cars will not have crashes. It will be people like me who have crashes when we overtake them having been driven to distraction by their infuriating caution.
Breaking the bond so common it has no name
James Mitchell Crow discusses the carbon-hydrogen bond (29 April, p 37). Other entities have names, like carbonyl and sulphydryl, but CH is only ever named by its component atoms. This seems rather a conspicuous omission. Is it that it's just too commonplace to be named, in the same way that there is no name for a person with only one nose?
Arithmetic as the origin of God the Father
Some time ago, it occurred to me that before we could count to 9 months, wasn't it all virgin birth?
So I had T-shirts printed with this question and gave them to friends. Then a poem occurred to me, and was very well received at a local “poetry slam”:
“The first man ever to count to 9 / shouted out: ‘That baby's MINE! / And life's creation is MY claim!’ / ‘Twas then that God became a male name.”
What, if anything, am I missing?
For the record
• The family name of Gustavo, who researches how gravitational waves may propagate through extra dimensions, is Lucena Gómez (6 May, p 8).