Out of the corner of my eye I spied a monstrous thing (1)
Fear of snakes really is hardwired, as your look at our fascination with monsters highlights. At a social meeting, I had an involuntary startle reaction, thinking I had seen a python out of the corner of my eye 鈥� a friend was wearing brown trainers with a pale buff “eye stripe” either side. The feeling was strong and kept recurring that evening and on subsequent occasions, even though I knew what it was. I have no actual snake-related concerns and have had no bad experiences. I have never seen a python in the wild, but this was unshakeable (14 September, p 23).
Out of the corner of my eye I spied a monstrous thing (2)
I and many others have argued that goblins, elves, pixies etc. are folk memories of other Homo or hominin species, which we know coexisted with our species.
Now, I am going to take this one stage further in relation to “monsters”. The mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous apparently wiped out 100 per cent of dinosaurs. I suggest that a few, scarce, surviving dinosaurs were around long enough after this to create the myth of dragons, found throughout Eurasia from Scandinavia to China. Of course, fire-breathing creatures are biologically impossible. However, on a cold morning, a warm-blooded reptile would have steam on its breath like a mammal, so it is easy to see how the legend could have arisen.
This new take on reality reminds me of something
Thanks for the intriguing article, “Reality’s comeback”, which discussed Robert Spekkens’s approach to reconciling the quantum and macroscopic worlds. His perspective seems to align closely with the principles of process physics, which posits a real world emerging from systems of interacting processes rather than the physical interactions of elementary particles (7 September, p 32).
This is rooted in the process philosophy of Alfred Whitehead, which has found widespread application in the social and biological sciences.
Plastics came from oil, they may go back to oil
Considering what a hotchpotch of substances are released from crude oil when it is “cooked” in a refinery, would it not be possible to use the vaporised plastic bottles and bags you describe as a refinery side-feed? Then, you could repurpose those molecules any way you wanted while using an existing process. Unless, that is, there is some problem with the chemistry of the plastics that would preclude this approach (7 September, p 17).
Could crowdfunding save threatened observatory?
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s column made me think that if ever there were a project worth saving with a crowdfunding campaign, it would be the Chandra X-ray Observatory. There are millions of scientists, science students and astronomy aficionados around the world who would, I believe, contribute to this worthy cause to save it from the threat of cancellation. Surely NASA could find some protocol that allows it to accept a private donation(24 August, p 20)?
Trolley problem has a rather selfless solution
There was a mention of the classic trolley problem in your look at a new book on morality. This left me wondering whether 鈥� rather than choose to push an innocent bystander into the path of the imaginary, out-of-control tram to save five people 鈥� you could, were you a paragon of virtue, instead throw yourself into the path of this runaway vehicle to use your own body as the trolley brake and save the five lives. But who among us would be so selfless(31 August, p 28)?
One day a strange signal came from a distant star
John Hedger’s letter on feeding coffee pulp to animals and the necessity of getting out in the field to find out why they weren’t thriving made me chuckle (Letters, 14 September).
In a similar vein, as a duty engineer many years ago, I was called into the control room of a large multinational telescope. The visiting scientists were getting some strange results from their spectrum of a star. They were excitedly talking about this and coming up with fantastic theories and solutions as to what might be happening inside the star or indeed whether they could trust the data. The spectrum did look weird. I went into the dome and found that someone had forgotten to turn the fluorescent lights out!
Astrology is bunk, but just maybe it did have a heyday
I have to agree that astrology can only be regarded as nonsense. How can the behaviour of any particular one-twelfth of the world’s population be governed by the position of the stars at birth(24 August, p 10)?
However, please consider the following: it is a fact that a mother’s behaviour, living conditions, diet and so on can influence the development of the fetus during pregnancy. If we go back to when living conditions were seasonally dependent, then it is clear that a child conceived in, say, October in the northern hemisphere 鈥� where astrology developed 鈥� would gestate during a time of cooler weather, a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, inhalation of smoke from open fires and so on, whereas a child conceived in, say, April would gestate during months with an abundance of healthy food.
This could lead to the children appearing to have characteristics depending on their date of birth and, hence, the position of the stars. There could be subtle variations spread over the year.
So, perhaps star signs weren’t altogether nonsense at the time.
Try the zero-calorie gingerbread man diet
Tom Gauld’s delightful cartoon featuring gingerbread men raises an interesting possibility. If what one gingerbread man says is true, namely that you can “run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me…”, then the only conclusion is that gingerbread men are able to travel at the speed of light. From this, you can conclude that they must have no mass. So on this basis, they appear to be the perfect treat for those on a diet (7 September, p 47).