How to stop whiling away the hours
Amelia Tait’s article on the struggle to get motivated rang a bell with me (29 May, p 41). When I retired just over 11 years ago, I fully intended to fill my retirement with a whole series of projects. However, first of all I thought I would just relax a little, until several months in I found I had got absolutely nothing done 鈥� it seems that all I had done was slob about, watching too much TV, spending too much time doing “nothing much” on the computer.
So I sat down, wrote a list of what I wanted to achieve and forced myself to put together a schedule every week that included as many of those things as possible.
I also started keeping a diary, so I have to force myself to acknowledge on a daily basis whether or not I have managed to achieve my goals for the day 鈥� that is a kind of motivation in itself.
Good to see nitrogen on the agenda at last
I was glad to read that the United Nations, and hopefully national governments, are starting to take the damage commercial farming does to the environment with nitrogen fertilisers seriously (15 May, p 41).
I’m not sanguine about anything being done in the UK in the near future, however, as the agrochemical and farming lobbies have a lot of power.
It is worth pointing out that many of the poor soils you mention exist mainly because of commercial nitrogen-based fertilisers. Their introduction allowed the exploitation of land using vast, often deep-ploughed, monoculture crop fields without trees, hedgerows or wildlife. All these components destroy soils and result in a vicious circle of requiring more and more agrochemicals.
The burning issue: Japan's promotion of hydrogen
There is a paradox behind Japan’s use of the Olympics to promote a hydrogen economy (29 May, p 18). Japan is short of space to build solar and wind farms. However, the country intends to build a solar power station to generate the electricity it will use to produce green hydrogen, even though a fair bit of the precious electricity generated will be wasted in this process.
It is only going to be reasonable to produce large quantities of hydrogen as a fuel when there is a big enough renewable energy source that the electricity it generates can be used inefficiently without any real consequences.
The burning issue: Japan's promotion of hydrogen
Fuelling the Olympic flame in Japan with hydrogen has a drawback: hydrogen burns with a very pale blue flame that can be quite invisible in daylight.
An obvious remedy would be adding quantities of butane, say, to bring back a cheerful yellow flame, but that would defeat the point of using hydrogen. Perhaps a small spray of sodium and calcium salts could be used as a colourant, or strontium, copper or barium to produce more exuberant colours.
Another nail in the coffin of free will
A number of people quoted in the article on the hypothesis of quantum superdeterminism criticise it by saying it would make free will untenable (15 May, p 36).
Setting aside that this criticism confuses the desirable with the real, free will doesn’t need determinism (quantum or otherwise) to make it untenable. All it needs is logic.
Every event must be caused by one or more preceding events, be spontaneous or result from both. The two categories 鈥� caused and spontaneous 鈥� are disjoint, complemental and together universal; there can be no other sort of event instigator.
Thought is a parallel and sequential collection of events. If they are all caused, then there is no free will. If some are spontaneous, then there is still no free will: a spontaneous event is, by definition, not willed.
Losing the platypus would be a disaster
I read with interest and fascination the article on the platypus and the echidna, both of which I have seen in Tasmania, where my brother lives (8 May, p 41). What an extraordinary world we live in. However, I was taken aback when the article stated “it would be a shame if we lost them”.
It wouldn’t be a “shame”, it would be a disaster, just as it is a disaster to have already lost so much of the flora and fauna of this planet through our own rapacious greed and stupidity.
Time to ban tourism in space on climate grounds
You report that rocket companies are planning to send tourists into space and wonder when the democratisation of space flight will happen (29 May, p 16).
Huge amounts of energy are required to send anything into space and it seems likely that much or all of this energy is provided directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. I am appalled that vast quantities of greenhouse gases would be generated simply for the amusement of a very small number of people.
Rather than democratising space tourism, we should be banning space flights that don’t have a serious scientific purpose and indeed carefully considering the impact on the climate of all activity in space.
There are ways to make childbirth easier
Yes, human birth is difficult compared with that of other primates, as you report, due to differences in pelvic evolution (15 May, p 12).
However, many difficulties in childbirth today are caused by immobilising the mother and making her fetus work against gravity. If we allowed the mother and her fetus greater freedom of movement, there would be less need to resort to caesarean section, which of course bypasses the pelvis altogether.
A seasoned traveller's tip for minimising jet lag
You report that a passenger’s expectation of jet lag is the strongest predictor of how severe it turns out to be (15 May, p 16). As a business traveller, many of my trips follow the same route, with similar departure and arrival times. My expectations are informed only by previous experience.
I can recommend my method of minimising jet lag, namely 24 hours of deliberate sleep deprivation the day before a trip.