Ethical diamonds hold a lesson for food industry
Sophie Attwood’s observations made me nod in agreement. It is nonsensical to reject “artificial” foodstuffs while allowing synthetic materials to be pumped into our bodies for cosmetic ends and eating meat from animals stuffed with pharmaceuticals and industrially made cattle feed(30 August, p 19).
Touching on another of her insights, companies that now only sell lab-grown diamonds 鈥� advertising that this means they are far more ethical and environmentally benign than the “natural” ones that were often mined in horrendous conditions 鈥� are perhaps an example that the synthetic food industry might emulate. Consumers need to be disabused of rose-tinted notions about the wholesomeness of the farming industry.
Why we feel too old after three score and 10 years
Your look at ageing was another great article from Graham Lawton. Interesting and informative with a good dose of optimism(16 August, p 28).
There is an aspect of ageing that isn’t generally addressed. I have witnessed a number of my female relatives age, becoming “too old” by their own reckoning. I have also listened to many patients say the same during my work in hospitals. Now, at 69, I share their perspective. This is despite being in excellent health, physically fit, mentally alert and having a great quality of life. I am objectively one of the luckiest of the luckiest generation.
Put bluntly, one just becomes tired. Tired of the endless rounds of life. Tired of coping with the small, unavoidable niggles of getting older. Overwhelmingly, one becomes tired of impotently watching the suffering caused by the folly of humanity.
Some noise pollution flies under the radar
The realisation that different kinds of noises affect different people in different ways struck a chord with me. In my work with a small non-profit that advocated for small airports, it was common for a homeowner who lived close to such an airport to be extremely bothered by the sound of a small plane flying nearby, yet apparently oblivious to the sound of a neighbour’s lawnmower creating noise of far higher decibels. It seems that familiar noises (lawnmowers) don’t elicit the same response that a powered leaf blower might, even if the noise profiles are largely identical. Furthermore, the familiarity of a noise (especially one that might be occasionally created by the individual) also creates some sort of “noise insensitivity”(23 August, p 27).
If we want to talk to the animals, try a macaw
What a fascinating article about deciphering animal languages with AI. It is about time because, to date, a few dogs and chimpanzees seem to have learned far more of ours than we have of theirs(30 August, p 36).
I hope someone tries it with wild Brazilian macaws (which would be easy to set up). These birds mate for life and rear their single young for nine months. What takes so long to teach? And what is the medium of instruction?
I once witnessed a 10-minute conversation back and forth between two macaws perched far apart in a tall tree 鈥� mainly vocal, but through gesturing, too. One syllable in the conversation was much louder than all the rest, after which one of them flew to perch together with the other. I have wondered if what I saw was a marriage ceremony.
Perhaps dog domestication was just natural selection
Your feature describes ideas about the origin of dogs, that is, how wolves were domesticated. Why, I wonder, is there no speculation on Darwinian evolution: mutations and selection of the fittest? I like to relate an example of such domestication: a cousin of mine had a small mink farm of about 200 minks. One day, so he told me, one of the minks signalled to him that it was tame and that it was safe to let her out of the cage. So, he did, and the mink followed him in his footsteps wherever he went on the farm and in the house. This was 60 years ago. This summer I learned from another former mink farmer that this isn’t unique, but has occurred several times. I can only imagine it happening as the result of mutations followed by selection. Certainly, the fittest survived(9 August, p 34).
Let's not write off alien life in absence of water
“All life that we know of needs liquid water.” All life that we know of also exists on Earth. If we are searching for alien life, it is perhaps convenient to concentrate on water, but the possibility that life might exist without it shouldn’t be overlooked. Life might also exist at sizes too small or too large, or be too different for us to recognise and make contact with it(19 July, p 13).
Otroverts of the world will never be united
Rami Kaminski makes an interesting observation of a new personality type, the otrovert, yet creates a problem at the same time. I immediately recognised myself in his description and realised there is a group of other such people out there. But I also quickly realised that I can’t, by definition, join this group of otroverts because I myself am an otrovert, the key trait of which is shunning group membership(16 August, p 19).
So the cohort of otroverts will exist and have many members, none of whom can belong to it. It seems to be analogous to the Apathy Society that nobody can be bothered to join.
Sign me up for this experiment, please
I found the article exploring the variation in chocolate flavours depending on the microbes present during the fermentation process very interesting and thought-provoking(30 August, p 17). Mainly, how can I volunteer to be a chocolate taster for the recommended study extensions? Please? Pretty please? With chocolate sprinkles on top?
For the record
A question about petrol lawnmowers (Last Word, 23 August) was posed by Hugh聽Meteyard.