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Rebound rejoinder
Letters– Corn-fed goodness From Audrae Erickson, Corn Refiners Association You report the findings of a paper presented at the American Chemical Society meeting, in which researchers at Rutgers University claim that fizzy drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have raised levels of carbonyl compounds that have been blamed for causing diabetic complications (1 September, p 7). These findings appear to diverge from a considerable body of published research which finds that HFCS is both safe and no different from other common sweeteners, such as sugar and honey. Many parts of the world, including Australia, Mexico and Europe, have rising rates of obesity and diabetes despite having limited or no HFCS in their foods and beverages, which supports findings by the US Centers for Disease Control and the American Diabetes Association that the primary causes of diabetes are obesity, advancing age and heredity. The US Food and Drug Administration has long recognised that HFCS is safe. In 1983, the FDA listed HFCS as “Generally Recognized as Safe” for use in food, and reaffirmed that ruling in 1996 after a thorough review. Washington DC, US
contained in 100 grams of the quiche. It shows these amounts translated into percentages “of your guideline daily amount”. But might not shoppers confuse the phrase “guideline daily amount” with a “recommended daily amount”? That would result in them believing, in this example, that the recommended daily intake of salt is 6 grams – whereas 6 grams of salt is actually the daily maximum intake. By the same token, some shoppers may conclude that the recommended daily intake of sugar is 80 grams! As a 69-year-old with hypertension, I am appalled at how manufacturers load foodstuffs with salt, sugar and saturated fats. I am equally appalled at the abysmal failure of successive UK governments to compel food manufacturers to put the nation’s health before profit. Sandwich, Kent, UK
Science friction
Food stuffed From Michael Baron Your interview with Andrew Wadge, chief scientist of the UK Food Standards Agency, contrasts an example of the laudable “traffic lights” food labelling scheme proposed by the FSA with the labelling scheme adopted by Tesco supermarket in the case of its 400-gram cheese and bacon quiche (1 September, p 56). The Tesco example shown correctly quotes the number of calories and the weight in grams of sugar, fat, saturates and salt 26 | NewScientist | 15 September 2007
From Harry Harrison You write “Rebecca Goldstein has received numerous awards for fiction and scholarship” (25 August, p 46) Here is one more: the Blind Spot Award. In her entire article on science in fiction she never once mentions science fiction. Perhaps she feels that “literary fiction” is what she writes. I guess we science fiction writers just aren’t literary. Rottingdean, East Sussex, UK
Spooks from space From Luce Gilmore Before evaluating the havoc wrought on cosmology by the observational clout of spontaneously emerging “Boltzmann brains”, perhaps one ought to evaluate the quality of such brains (18 August, p 26). Human brains have been selected through Darwinian processes to observe the universe consistently and usefully – and so, presumably, have alien brains. Not so these quantum fluctuations. I wonder what proportion of Boltzmann brains will be blind, preoccupied, permanently asleep, hopelessly psychotic, or just plain stupid. Cambridge, UK From Charles Goodwin I don’t see why there is all the fuss about Boltzmann brains. So they overthrow the assumption that we are typical observers of the universe. But we already know that we aren’t typical observers because, to borrow from J. B. S. Haldane, the typical observer, on this planet at least, is a beetle. It is quite possible that most life in the cosmos lives in oceans beneath the surface of icy moons, or in clouds of cosmic dust, which would make us even less typical. But none of this stops us from speculating about the nature of the universe: we merely have to work within our constraints. Using our existence to “prove” that the universe must selfdestruct before any Boltzmann brains can appear or, if that doesn’t work, that “our” infinity of observers must outnumber “theirs”, is surely taking the anthropic principle to ridiculous, unnecessary lengths. Wellington, New Zealand From Matt Palmer Why should the laws of physics care about the relative abundances of different kinds of observers in the universe? The argument that the universe must somehow intervene in order to preserve the “typicalness” of
the human experience is the exact opposite of the Copernican principle that our position in the universe is not special. It presumes that our experience must somehow be privileged beyond all others in the universe. Clearly, I am missing something here, but I can only assume, based on careful observation of the article in question, that my confusion is typical of other readers. Doubtless the universe will somehow conspire to ensure that this remains the case. Richmond, Surrey, UK The editor writes: ● Regarding typicality, the assumption is not that we are privileged in some way, but rather the opposite. It is that what we see should be in some sense representative of the universe at large, by the laws of probability. If what we see were atypical, then this would be a threat not to any sense of superiority, but to our generalisations about the structure of the universe.
Rebound rejoinder From Tom Barker, Institute for Sustainable Water, Integrated Management and Ecosystem Research There was logic in Sadie Williams’s comment that energy conservation may not reduce carbon dioxide emissions (18 August, p 18). It is true that funds saved through saving energy will be put to new uses, but this is a problem only if the energy expended on those new uses is powered by fossil fuels. The key to reaping an environmental net benefit from energy conservation is to use renewables. Using wind, solar, hydro, tidal, wave and geothermal energy – combined with energy efficiency and conservation measures – will result in genuine green gains. Take a look at the report at ZeroCarbonBritain.com, for example. Liverpool, UK www.newscientist.com
contained in 100 grams of the quiche. It shows these amounts translated into percentages “of your guideline daily amount”. But might not shoppers confuse the phrase “guideline daily amount” with a “recommended daily amount”? That would result in them believing, in this example, that the recommended daily intake of salt is 6 grams – whereas 6 grams of salt is actually the daily maximum intake. By the same token, some shoppers may conclude that the recommended daily intake of sugar is 80 grams! As a 69-year-old with hypertension, I am appalled at how manufacturers load foodstuffs with salt, sugar and saturated fats. I am equally appalled at the abysmal failure of successive UK governments to compel food manufacturers to put the nation’s health before profit. Sandwich, Kent, UK
Science friction
Food stuffed From Michael Baron Your interview with Andrew Wadge, chief scientist of the UK Food Standards Agency, contrasts an example of the laudable “traffic lights” food labelling scheme proposed by the FSA with the labelling scheme adopted by Tesco supermarket in the case of its 400-gram cheese and bacon quiche (1 September, p 56). The Tesco example shown correctly quotes the number of calories and the weight in grams of sugar, fat, saturates and salt 26 | NewScientist | 15 September 2007
From Harry Harrison You write “Rebecca Goldstein has received numerous awards for fiction and scholarship” (25 August, p 46) Here is one more: the Blind Spot Award. In her entire article on science in fiction she never once mentions science fiction. Perhaps she feels that “literary fiction” is what she writes. I guess we science fiction writers just aren’t literary. Rottingdean, East Sussex, UK
Spooks from space From Luce Gilmore Before evaluating the havoc wrought on cosmology by the observational clout of spontaneously emerging “Boltzmann brains”, perhaps one ought to evaluate the quality of such brains (18 August, p 26). Human brains have been selected through Darwinian processes to observe the universe consistently and usefully – and so, presumably, have alien brains. Not so these quantum fluctuations. I wonder what proportion of Boltzmann brains will be blind, preoccupied, permanently asleep, hopelessly psychotic, or just plain stupid. Cambridge, UK From Charles Goodwin I don’t see why there is all the fuss about Boltzmann brains. So they overthrow the assumption that we are typical observers of the universe. But we already know that we aren’t typical observers because, to borrow from J. B. S. Haldane, the typical observer, on this planet at least, is a beetle. It is quite possible that most life in the cosmos lives in oceans beneath the surface of icy moons, or in clouds of cosmic dust, which would make us even less typical. But none of this stops us from speculating about the nature of the universe: we merely have to work within our constraints. Using our existence to “prove” that the universe must selfdestruct before any Boltzmann brains can appear or, if that doesn’t work, that “our” infinity of observers must outnumber “theirs”, is surely taking the anthropic principle to ridiculous, unnecessary lengths. Wellington, New Zealand From Matt Palmer Why should the laws of physics care about the relative abundances of different kinds of observers in the universe? The argument that the universe must somehow intervene in order to preserve the “typicalness” of
the human experience is the exact opposite of the Copernican principle that our position in the universe is not special. It presumes that our experience must somehow be privileged beyond all others in the universe. Clearly, I am missing something here, but I can only assume, based on careful observation of the article in question, that my confusion is typical of other readers. Doubtless the universe will somehow conspire to ensure that this remains the case. Richmond, Surrey, UK The editor writes: ● Regarding typicality, the assumption is not that we are privileged in some way, but rather the opposite. It is that what we see should be in some sense representative of the universe at large, by the laws of probability. If what we see were atypical, then this would be a threat not to any sense of superiority, but to our generalisations about the structure of the universe.
Rebound rejoinder From Tom Barker, Institute for Sustainable Water, Integrated Management and Ecosystem Research There was logic in Sadie Williams’s comment that energy conservation may not reduce carbon dioxide emissions (18 August, p 18). It is true that funds saved through saving energy will be put to new uses, but this is a problem only if the energy expended on those new uses is powered by fossil fuels. The key to reaping an environmental net benefit from energy conservation is to use renewables. Using wind, solar, hydro, tidal, wave and geothermal energy – combined with energy efficiency and conservation measures – will result in genuine green gains. Take a look at the report at ZeroCarbonBritain.com, for example. Liverpool, UK www.newscientist.com