Editor's pick: Bears could be lottery winners too
Marc Bekoff decries the planned grizzly bear hunt near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in the US (1 September, p 22). He mentions that 21 hunters were licensed by lottery, and that wildlife photographer Thomas Mangelsen won one of the permits to hunt grizzly bears and does not plan to use that prize. Mangelsen thus reduced the number of shooters that will participate by one — should the hunt.
It occurs to me that if tens of thousands of people who care passionately about these bears were also to enter into any future lotteries for a permit, the odds are that some would win and deprive that number of hunters the means to legally kill these magnificent animals.
Some 7000 people applied for the most recent permits. Assuming the number of permits available each year is fixed, if 14,000 additional people entered the lottery, the chances are that only about seven permits would end up in the hands of hunters. Of course, a far better solution would be to not issue any permits at all.
Populism won't wilt without redistribution
Simon Oxenham describes a data analysis suggesting that waves of support for populist politics peak 10 years after financial crises, and asks if it will be same this time as economies recover after the 2008 crash (15 September, p 22). But the recent populist surge may not follow this pattern if a decade after the start of the financial crisis too many people feel their situation still hasn't improved.
Many people see reports of rising GDP or falling unemployment but feel the system isn't working for them personally. A few at the top have captured most of the growth in GDP; for many, personal wealth has not grown.
A large part of many people's income goes on accommodation, made more costly by a property price boom that was fostered by low interest rates after the crash. This leaves people feeling poorer.
Telling such people that the economy is “recovering” may lead to resentment and a feeling they are missing out. This is likely to stoke more populism, when they ask: “Who is getting the rewards of growth? I'm not.” Economic redistribution as well as economic recovery is essential.
First class post 鈥� 29 September 2018
People, asked about eternal life, looked at Keith Richards and said ‘nope’?
Tracy Jones to wonder why only one in five of us favour immortality (22 September, p 8)
We are not cleverer than directionless evolution (1)
You ask what kind of force is evolution (Leader, 1 September). Evolution isn't a force. It is a description of the process by which species change over time in response to their environments. And it makes no sense to see it as either malevolent or beneficial, although you may like or dislike the results of the process it describes. Using the term force can reinforce the fallacy, called teleology, that evolutionary change is directed to some objective beyond a species simply changing to fit its environment.
We are not cleverer than directionless evolution (2)
You announce your report on ways to outwit evolution (1 September, p 28) by saying on your cover: “Nature used to decide how life turned out. Now we do”. But we are products of nature's evolution and everything we do is part of the evolutionary process.
If our attempts to be smart eventually cause our extinction, that will just be one more of many previous dead ends in evolution. We are part of nature. We are not smarter than it. Everything we do, including modifying genes, is just as much a part of evolution as fish flopping about on some ancient shore.
We are not cleverer than directionless evolution (3)
Michael Le Page quotes Stephen Palumbi describing triple drug therapy for HIV as “one of the first truly evolutionary treatment strategies”. Much the same strategy was used 60 years ago in the early days of antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis.
Streptomycin, the first anti-TB antibiotic, became available in the UK in 1948. When the country's Medical Research Council tried using it to treat pulmonary TB it failed because, after 140 days, 85 per cent of cases had developed drug resistance. In 1954, , when a professor of respiratory medicine in Edinburgh, used a combination of three drugs for three months followed by 15 months on two of them. It worked and this has been the basic principle of tuberculosis treatment since.
But Palumbi's conclusion that we will never completely solve the problem is correct: TB continues to develop antibiotic resistance, pushed by poor prescribing, poor compliance by some patients and supply and quality problems with antibiotics.
Green vehicles can still be a cause of air pollution
You list the emissions of electric cars as “none” (8 September, p 20). I am in full, enthusiastic support of the research and development of non-fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, but must point out that although battery electric vehicles have no emissions at point of use, unless they are all charged from renewable power sources, their source of electricity is likely to be the result of fossil fuel burning.
The editor writes:
• We used “emissions” in the sense of “what comes out of the car”. As you say, the carbon impact of charging it is important too – as is that of building it.
Electric meters that are unsmart are a headache
Colin Cook observes that smart meters may make for noisier neighbours, with people running washing machines at night when electricity prices drop, for example (Letters, 1 September). In a similar vein, I use off-peak electricity to recharge my electric car on an “Economy7” tariff, which offers cheaper power for seven hours each night. The old meter that goes with this is even more stupid than most. Its clock is synchronised to the mains supply. In our rural area, this is erratic, and the clock loses time. So our cheap rate electricity comes on a little later after every power cut.
Neanderthal, Denisovan and <i>Sapiens</i>, all people
I am always amused to read articles on our human ancestry, and findings relating to how Homo sapiens “interbred” with other “species” such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. You report, for example, that a prehistoric teenager was the offspring of these two species interbreeding (25 August, p 7). I long ago came to the conclusion from reading reports such as this that H. sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans are variants on the same hominin species and that our current relatively narrow H. sapiens gene pool represents lost genetic diversity.
It seems likely that when the groups met, they probably just saw each other as people, with different appearances and cultures, not as separate species.
The tale of James Croll and ice ages is tangled (1)
It was good to see James Croll recognised as the first scientist to link ice ages with orbital fluctuations of Earth (25 August, p 34). The loss of support for his ideas in the late 19th century may, however, have had less to do with Victorian sniffiness about his working-class background than with his work apparently being contradicted by subsequent dating of ice ages.
He assumed that the key driver of ice ages was the amount of sunlight reaching the northern hemisphere in winter, and that “we may safely conclude that it is considerably more than 100,000 years since the glacial epoch”. It later emerged that much of the past 100,000 years was taken up with the last ice age.
We now know that summer, not winter, temperatures are the key to glacier survival. Had Croll calculated on this basis, he would have been spot on.
The tale of James Croll and ice ages is tangled (2)
Fred Pearce says that Croll's ideas were only revived by Milutin Milankovic in the 1930s. However, , Royal Astronomer of Ireland and a notable populariser of astronomy, gave talks on ice ages in 1886 acknowledging Croll's work. In 1890, he published . My copy was originally presented as an English prize in a girls' school, so the book must have had a wide circulation.
On the knotty issue of bow ties and neckwear
On the knotty issue of bow ties and neckwear
What is the world coming to? Eric Clow notes gastroenterologists, obstetricians and gynaecologists tending to wear bow ties rather than “knotted ties” (Letters, 25 August). A bow tie is knotted.
A clerk in my former law firm took to bow ties after he leaned over our first shredding machine to see how it worked, and those standing nearby were laughing too much to find the off switch.
The editor writes:
• Our apologies to Clow for an inexact clarification. We did assume clip-on bow ties, thinking that knotted ones would be graspable by distressed patients.
By its bouncing shall you know this battery's state
Gabriel Carlyle says a charged alkaline battery may weigh a tiny bit more than a discharged one (Letters, 1 September). But hearing aid batteries work by reaction with air or moisture, and gain mass as they discharge.
I have measured a discharged battery as weighing 95 milligrams more than a new one. When dropped on a hard surface, a new battery lands with a clunk and a discharged one will bounce. I have no idea why, but it is useful when you get confused as to which is which when changing them.
Opinions vary on whether we know it all
Dave Neale suggests that we read 快猫短视频 because we don't think we know everything (Letters, 1 September). Some of us only read the magazine looking for opportunities to send in corrections for publication.