Understanding the ninth wonder of the brain
You describe eight wonders of the human brain (22 June, p 34). There is a ninth, without which the other eight would be trivial: our absolute dependency on the signs and symbols of language.
Our internalisation of the world around us, substituting symbols for reality using rules adopted by each culture, has become so taken for granted that we may not realise it is impossible for us to think without language.
So dependent are humans on this to get through the day, from waking to sleeping, that linguists and ethnologists have long argued that animals lacking language skills can’t truly conceptualise as we do. Much work is needed for us to understand how we seamlessly link the language areas in our brain with our intent areas.
If I want to have a drink with breakfast (and that choice is itself language-dependent), how do my brain’s action centres access my language centre to decide whether it will be coffee or tea? Defining this pathway in great detail is the holy grail for understanding the mechanism of our mind.
Safety dies in the crossfire of privacy and security
Donna Lu is right to raise concerns about privacy in the security industry (29 June, p 14). She went to the IFSEC security conference in London: such exhibitions are where the new and shiny reign. A colleague of mine also attended IFSEC and carried out a straw poll of vendors on the internal security of their internet-connected devices. He found only one product for which basic security practices, such as the ability to update when inevitable software flaws create vulnerabilities, appeared to have been accounted for.
I took part in a panel discussion where the audience descended into group therapy, as it became apparent that only the converted had stayed on. I was shocked by one self-confessed entrepreneur whose attitude was that security is for someone else to worry about in the “next generation”. For him, the opportunity is to sell the product now, however flawed it is. Perhaps we should learn from the languages in which “safety” and “security” are the same word.
Camouflage may deceive more than one enemy
A recent article mentions that the US Navy may wish to convince enemy forces that, for example, a Honda Civic car is a tank, or vice versa (29 June, p 9). To me, this sounds like an ideal excuse for any player with malign intent to blow up absolutely anything they want. They can then declare: “Our AI assured us the target was a military installation, though it was later established to have been a basket of kittens.”
Sunshine exports are limited by water supply
James Mitchell Crow suggests that Australia can stay competitive only if the country becomes a hydrogen producer and exporter (8 June, p 20). But production of hydrogen by electrolysis requires large quantities of electricity and fresh water. Australia’s sunshine and wide open spaces do have the potential to produce electricity from solar and wind power, but the availability of fresh water is another matter.
The regions of Australia best suited to solar and wind power generation are desert. The rest of the continent is susceptible to prolonged droughts. Even when there is no drought, water is in short supply. I live in Perth, where annual rainfall has declined over the past 50 years and the catchment dams are usually well below capacity, even at the end of winter. The city’s water supply and, indeed, its survival depend on a dwindling groundwater resource and desalination. Exporting hydrogen is, in effect, exporting water 鈥� something the nation can ill afford to do.
There are more creatures that make milk-like stuff
I was interested to read your report on spiders that produce nutritious milk-like fluids, which said “milk secretion is exclusive to mammals” (8 December 2018, p 20). I work on pseudoscorpions, which, like spiders, are arachnids. They don’t lay eggs but possess sophisticated reproductive strategies that involve embryos and larvae being attached to the mother’s genital aperture in a brood sac. She feeds them with nutritive fluid, that is to say, “milk”.
This is necessary because the yolk of pseudoscorpion eggs has a deficiency that needs to be made up. This is accomplished by the ovary, which cycles through four phrases: resting, preparatory, secretory and renovation. In the secretory phase, it produces a nutritive fluid containing proteins and phospholipids, which is extruded into the brood sac and ingested by the developing embryos and larvae.
In the first of its two moults, an embryo develops a pumping organ, which enables it to absorb nutritive fluid and later forms the mouth region. This is analogous to the mammalian teat, but instead of being on the mother, each embryo has its own.
Have your inconvenience now and avoid it later
Chelsea Whyte mentions that many people resented the disruption that the Extinction Rebellion protests created because they “felt the inconvenience didn’t justify the cause” (22 June, p 20). I think this sums up the global attitude to action on climate change.
Maybe people need to be reminded of the inconveniences that global warming will cause. Instead of stopping trains, perhaps future protests should cordon off low-lying coastal areas and hand out flippers and snorkels to those who want to enter?
Any complaints can be met with a polite reminder that this will soon become a permanent inconvenience.
What citizens' bodies can decide on carbon taxes? (1)
Paul Whiteley claims the reason for the anger of the gilets jaunes protesters in France was the “incompetent and arbitrary” imposition of fuel taxes by president Emmanuel Macron (Letters, 15 June). I, too, hate taxes, but they will support progress against climate change, which is hardly a “nebulous concept”. Fuel taxes have been shown to be a necessary and potentially egalitarian way to influence climate change.
Whiteley also wants “Citizen Councils”. That evokes the history of soviets (workers’ councils) in Stalin’s Russia and similar systems in Mao’s China. They are not to be confused with necessary consultative public involvement.
It is bizarre to claim that ordinary people, whoever they might be, are in the best position to judge what is morally acceptable to them. Until 2015, opinion polls showed that the UK public saw judicial murder by hanging as desirable, yet parliament abolished it in 1965 as it had no effect on murder rates.
What citizens' bodies can decide on carbon taxes? (2)
Calls to replace politicians selected by the people with informed benevolent dictatorship (as in the Citizen Councils that Whiteley says Extinction Rebellion wants) have been made before by those with simple solutions to complex problems. The Russian Revolution comes to mind.
The editor writes:
Extinction Rebellion in fact that would make proposals to the elected government.
The prospects for methane in our atmosphere (1)
Bryn Glover says that because humanity has only a couple of decades to get its act in order, we need to pay much more attention to the short-term effects of methane emissions (Letters, 15 June). We do have around 20 years to avoid reaching a tipping point that is followed by runaway climate change.
But that doesn’t mean the polar ice caps will melt in two decades’ time. It means that we will have put enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to ensure that this will happen within the next few centuries. Methane has a higher greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide in the short term, but it is converted to CO2 and water in the atmosphere, so its long-term effects are exactly the same.
The prospects for methane in our atmosphere (2)
Glover says tackling methane emissions should be a priority. Can a reader tell me if there is any possibility that methane released from melting permafrost could be harvested and used as an energy source? This would also unburden the atmosphere of a potent greenhouse gas.
Find a wad, give it back, hope for a reward
So people are more likely to return a wallet with about 拢70 in it than about 拢10 (29 June, p 17). I fear this is more easily explained by considerations other than altruism and moral probity.
When my brother returned a wallet he found containing 拢100, which was a fabulous sum to a small boy in 1970, he rather expected to be offered a small reward. None was forthcoming, but even today, I imagine people would hope to receive about 10 per cent… and 10 per cent of 拢10 is only 拢1. Hardly worth the bother.
The philosopher Socrates was no couch potato
Herman Pontzer writes that “even Socrates, not remembered as an athlete, bemoaned the lack of fitness among his students” (15 June, p 34). But Plato recorded in the Symposium that it was at the gymnasium that , saying: “he trained and wrestled with me”.
Being athletic, even if you were celebrated for philosophy rather than for winning laurel crowns at the Olympics, was important to Greeks of his era and class.
Drug tests are biased on age and complexity too
I agree with Caroline Criado-Perez that women are often not included in clinical trials and obviously have different reactions from men (15 June, p 23). Furthermore, most drugs are tested only on those under 70 who have just one medical condition.
Many drugs for diabetes and heart conditions, for example, are taken together, by people over 70 whose immune systems aren’t functioning as well and whose livers are generally less able to cope with drug elimination.
Has anybody looked into this?
Sorry, you have no choice but to read this
Hannah Critchlow’s book argues for the absence of free will (15 June, p 30). I presume that her genes, environment and circumstances made it inevitable that she would write a book.
It would also be inevitable that such a book would deny the existence of free will, that I would be doomed to write this letter to point that out and that you would be compelled to publish it.
For the record 鈥� 20 July 2019
鈥� The striatum is a collection of brain structures, including the basal ganglia, and the primary motor cortex is nearer the front than we showed it (29 June, p 38).