- Email: [email protected]
Risk rank
See newscientist.com for letters on: ● Electric caveats ● Meat and methane ● Risk rank ● Non-existence theorem ● For the record
failure to link agricultural production to the best nutritional outcomes (30 August, p 18). The Sárpo potato cultivar that he lauds has been trialled by the UK Potato Council, but such blight-
particularly for seed crops. This will be achieved by evidence from field trials and official cultivar lists, not anecdotes or hearsay. Sheffield, UK
Myths and morality
resistant varieties are not necessarily the potato of choice for processors or consumers. In other words, if you grow them, they may not be wanted. In the UK we breed crop varieties for high outputs and customer requirements. There are also requirements for potato cultivars to be disease-resistant and suited to processing, preservation and consumption. Linking these processes together is critical to global food security, and current plant-breeding methods may require more precise biotechnological approaches to obtain a fit-forpurpose, nutritious cultivar. These pressures may realistically result in a genetically modified potato crop. We must also ensure that poor biosecurity and phytosanitary practices do not continue to threaten global food security,
From John Campion Mary Midgley’s review of Gary Greenberg’s book The Noble Lie (13 September, p 46) addresses the important moral issue of the extent to which individuals are accountable for their actions, given that they may suffer from an addiction or mental illness, or environmental privations. Members of my own family have suffered from such afflictions: experience suggests it is dangerous to be forced into making a simple choice between vice and disease. Alcoholism, for example, has aspects of both a disease and a vice. Effective treatment, as with many such afflictions, entails helping people get control over their lives. Defining alcoholism as a disease is unhelpful because it implies that treatment is applied to a passive recipient. It steers us away from understanding alcoholism’s true nature and this must always be our aim, as scientists, therapists or sufferers. Linch, Hampshire, UK
“you can expect a reasonably comfortable end” (6 September, p 22), many cancer sufferers here spend months in agony when permitted maximum doses of palliative drugs become ineffective. In Australia, unlike the UK, such distress is exacerbated by a legal prohibition on the clinical use of heroin. Apart from the misplaced fear of addiction that means even terminally ill patients may not get morphine in poor countries, there is the additional and also unjustified fear that a sufficient increase in dosage of a painkiller may hasten the end of a patient’s life. Only a religiously inspired sadist could raise such a fear, especially when a terminally ill patient is begging to die. Bluff Point, Western Australia
Beer goggles
From Dave Prichard Contrary to Rachel Nowak’s suggestion that in Australia
digit, and leading digits cannot be zero. If the total of four BEES and a SNAIL is greater than the total of eight FLEAS and an ANT; and if the total of 18 ANTS and a GNAT is greater than the total of 18 FLIES and a FLEA, find the value of BEETLES.
The Editor’s decision is final. Send entries to Enigma 1515, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to enigma@ newscientist.com (please include your postal address). The winner of Enigma 1509 is Ben Walker of Cambridge, UK.
£15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on 12 November.
Answer to 1509 A question of symmetry Four children were absent
Enigma Relative sizes No. 1515 Albert Hadded IN THE following statements, whole numbers are expressed in words written in bold capital letters, where different letters stand for different digits, the same letter consistently stands for the same www.newscientist.com
Transplant offer From Gerry Nolan You may be interested in an additional way for the problem of the supply of organs for transplant (13 September, p 11) to be alleviated. I have tested my idea at www.deadbodyforsale. com – and been rewarded with the predictable responses that this is “unethical” and “ghoulish”, with the establishment donor organisations telling the Melbourne Herald Sun “we wouldn’t support such a scheme”. Being an old bloke (67), I’m not expecting a rush of offers – but notwithstanding the obstacles to transplanting organs, whether they be donated or otherwise, such a market would create a larger pool of potentially available organs and that must be a step forward. Sydney, Australia
For the record
From Tim Hall You reported how individuals who have consumed alcohol find other people more attractive, and the author expressed surprise that this also applies to people of
Pain grief
the same sex (16 August, p 12). It’s just proof of the adage: “What’s the difference between a straight man and a gay man? Four pints.” Edinburgh, UK
● We said that a musical instrument called an epigonion was introduced to Greece in AD 180 (13 September, p 23) but the accompanying caption suggested the instrument was played in 440 BC. To clarify: AD 183 is the earliest documented date for the instrument’s existence; 440 BC is the date of the vase in the picture; and tradition has it that the epigonion was introduced to Greece by Epigonus, who lived around 600 BC. ● Flu researcher Wendy Barclay recently left the University of Reading and is now at Imperial College London (20 September, p 8). Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
11 October 2008 | NewScientist | 21
failure to link agricultural production to the best nutritional outcomes (30 August, p 18). The Sárpo potato cultivar that he lauds has been trialled by the UK Potato Council, but such blight-
particularly for seed crops. This will be achieved by evidence from field trials and official cultivar lists, not anecdotes or hearsay. Sheffield, UK
Myths and morality
resistant varieties are not necessarily the potato of choice for processors or consumers. In other words, if you grow them, they may not be wanted. In the UK we breed crop varieties for high outputs and customer requirements. There are also requirements for potato cultivars to be disease-resistant and suited to processing, preservation and consumption. Linking these processes together is critical to global food security, and current plant-breeding methods may require more precise biotechnological approaches to obtain a fit-forpurpose, nutritious cultivar. These pressures may realistically result in a genetically modified potato crop. We must also ensure that poor biosecurity and phytosanitary practices do not continue to threaten global food security,
From John Campion Mary Midgley’s review of Gary Greenberg’s book The Noble Lie (13 September, p 46) addresses the important moral issue of the extent to which individuals are accountable for their actions, given that they may suffer from an addiction or mental illness, or environmental privations. Members of my own family have suffered from such afflictions: experience suggests it is dangerous to be forced into making a simple choice between vice and disease. Alcoholism, for example, has aspects of both a disease and a vice. Effective treatment, as with many such afflictions, entails helping people get control over their lives. Defining alcoholism as a disease is unhelpful because it implies that treatment is applied to a passive recipient. It steers us away from understanding alcoholism’s true nature and this must always be our aim, as scientists, therapists or sufferers. Linch, Hampshire, UK
“you can expect a reasonably comfortable end” (6 September, p 22), many cancer sufferers here spend months in agony when permitted maximum doses of palliative drugs become ineffective. In Australia, unlike the UK, such distress is exacerbated by a legal prohibition on the clinical use of heroin. Apart from the misplaced fear of addiction that means even terminally ill patients may not get morphine in poor countries, there is the additional and also unjustified fear that a sufficient increase in dosage of a painkiller may hasten the end of a patient’s life. Only a religiously inspired sadist could raise such a fear, especially when a terminally ill patient is begging to die. Bluff Point, Western Australia
Beer goggles
From Dave Prichard Contrary to Rachel Nowak’s suggestion that in Australia
digit, and leading digits cannot be zero. If the total of four BEES and a SNAIL is greater than the total of eight FLEAS and an ANT; and if the total of 18 ANTS and a GNAT is greater than the total of 18 FLIES and a FLEA, find the value of BEETLES.
The Editor’s decision is final. Send entries to Enigma 1515, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to enigma@ newscientist.com (please include your postal address). The winner of Enigma 1509 is Ben Walker of Cambridge, UK.
£15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on 12 November.
Answer to 1509 A question of symmetry Four children were absent
Enigma Relative sizes No. 1515 Albert Hadded IN THE following statements, whole numbers are expressed in words written in bold capital letters, where different letters stand for different digits, the same letter consistently stands for the same www.newscientist.com
Transplant offer From Gerry Nolan You may be interested in an additional way for the problem of the supply of organs for transplant (13 September, p 11) to be alleviated. I have tested my idea at www.deadbodyforsale. com – and been rewarded with the predictable responses that this is “unethical” and “ghoulish”, with the establishment donor organisations telling the Melbourne Herald Sun “we wouldn’t support such a scheme”. Being an old bloke (67), I’m not expecting a rush of offers – but notwithstanding the obstacles to transplanting organs, whether they be donated or otherwise, such a market would create a larger pool of potentially available organs and that must be a step forward. Sydney, Australia
For the record
From Tim Hall You reported how individuals who have consumed alcohol find other people more attractive, and the author expressed surprise that this also applies to people of
Pain grief
the same sex (16 August, p 12). It’s just proof of the adage: “What’s the difference between a straight man and a gay man? Four pints.” Edinburgh, UK
● We said that a musical instrument called an epigonion was introduced to Greece in AD 180 (13 September, p 23) but the accompanying caption suggested the instrument was played in 440 BC. To clarify: AD 183 is the earliest documented date for the instrument’s existence; 440 BC is the date of the vase in the picture; and tradition has it that the epigonion was introduced to Greece by Epigonus, who lived around 600 BC. ● Flu researcher Wendy Barclay recently left the University of Reading and is now at Imperial College London (20 September, p 8). Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
11 October 2008 | NewScientist | 21