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Sarcasm's so simple
Letters– for poor health outcomes (26 July, p 5) is sadly misconceived. The IMF has to rescue failing economies. As they are failing, of course health intervention reduces. If the rescue is successful and economic growth is obtained, then greater health provision becomes possible again. There is an inevitable time lag. If the economy failed then health intervention would disappear. Tamworth, Staffordshire, UK
Reason, to be cheerful From Ernest Ager How incongruous that every contributor to your reason special (26 July, p 41) uses a reasoned argument to attack reason. Of course, this is because reason is the only legitimate tool we have to persuade others to our point of view, and they all know it. Illegitimate tools include propaganda, PR or the invocation of an “authority” – be it a god, church leader or head of state. Reason tells us when to use reason, and when not. Emotional or instinctive responses may well be best in some circumstances (looking at a painting or hitting a tennis ball), but the only way we can know when we should use reason is first to apply it: that is, analyse actions and their results. Exmouth, Devon, UK From Tony Williams The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is certainly correct that reasoning can’t provide the answers to all of the questions we might ask, including the most basic one of all: why does life, the universe and all that exist (26 July, p 44)? It does not follow, however, that the answers to such questions can be found in the mythologies and superstitions of primitive cultures which form the basis of the major religions. I am content to regard such questions as fundamentally unanswerable and get on with a secular life, as rationally as the flawed nature of humanity allows. Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, UK From David Fremlin “Absolute convictions… which prescribe unconditional opposition to experiments on non-consenting subjects… are not simply generated by instrumental reason”, writes the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is quite right. Nor are absolute convictions opposing homosexuality in bishops, or those permitting the deliberate infection of monkeys with HIV. However, reason can 18 | NewScientist | 16 August 2008
give us useful guidance in these as in other matters. Colchester, Essex, UK From Chrissy Philp There is nothing wrong with reasoning. In ancient Rome, a “rational” was an accountant. Rationality and reason are bedfellows. Unfortunately, as with accounting, the answers supplied by the rational reasoning process depends on the quantity and quality of information available. Humans cannot possibly rely on always having all the information they need to produce perfect results from their cogitations, though many scientists have a habit of believing that they do. These don’t seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that reaching accurate answers to big questions that can’t be subjected to detailed physical analysis until every fact is accounted for are doomed from the start. Others might have access to information that is unattainable when using scientific methodology. They might not, of course, but it has to be held in mind as a possibility. It doesn’t bother me that intuitive-feeling types sometimes get their answers wrong, but that science should have practitioners who can’t handle this simple fact is worrying. It’s not reasoning that is at fault – it’s the “reasoner”. Bath, Somerset, UK
Health and economy From Philip Hall Your editorial and report blaming the International Monetary Fund
Nuke in a tin From Paul Lowe We already have small-scale nuclear reactors powering nuclear submarines and warships. Can someone please explain why these cannot be adapted for civilian terrestrial use – in place of the new “reactor-in-a-box” designs that Phil McKenna describes (2 August, p 34)? Canterbury, Kent, UK The editor writes: ● The first electricity-generating reactor in the US was in fact based on a submarine reactor design, plonked on land at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. One reason most submarine reactor designs are not suitable for countering nuclear proliferation is that they are fuelled with weapons-grade uranium.
Sarcasm’s so simple From Bernd-Juergen Fischer Maybe Mary Helen ImmordinoYang would get clearer results in her studies of people with half a brain (12 July, p 44) if she drew a clearer distinction between phenomena purely to do with intonation or “prosody”, like contrastive accent, which is wholly syntactical, and emotive intonations, which are highly dependent on context. In her examples of “nonlinguistic intonation that conveys emotion” – such as contrasting responses to the utterance “I’m going to Timbuktu” of “YOU’RE
going?” and “You’re GOING?” – she seems to expect the speaker’s intentions to be conveyed without any reference to the communicative situation. Stress on the grammatical subject “you” simply means that the speaker had expected some other subject. Stress on the verb “going” simply means that the speaker had expected some other action – that’s all. Sarcasm doesn’t work without a lot of assumptions on both sides about the speaker and the addressee. If you say “that’s really a splendid job you’ve done here”, the addressee must have considerable knowledge of you in order to understand the utterance as sarcasm; and you must make a lot of assumptions about the addressee’s knowledge of you, if you don’t want your sarcasm to be taken literally and backfire: “Yeah, haven’t I?” Berlin, Germany
Ding dengue From Paul Jacoby Debora MacKenzie reports that for a few weeks after contracting one variety of dengue fever you have a kind of immunity that destroys other serotypes, protecting you against the potentially lethal effects of overstimulating your immune system with, say, dengue serotype B, when you already have antibodies against serotype A (19 July, p 15). Has anyone considered deliberate infection with dengue serotype B during this window? Edwardsville, Illinois, US
Nothing new in the air From John Macdonald You report that the UK defence company Qinetiq claims to be the first to have an aircraft hovering by pointing the nose up with an excess of propeller thrust over weight (26 July, p 23). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) able to do this have been widely deployed for about 20 years, as www.newscientist.com
Reason, to be cheerful From Ernest Ager How incongruous that every contributor to your reason special (26 July, p 41) uses a reasoned argument to attack reason. Of course, this is because reason is the only legitimate tool we have to persuade others to our point of view, and they all know it. Illegitimate tools include propaganda, PR or the invocation of an “authority” – be it a god, church leader or head of state. Reason tells us when to use reason, and when not. Emotional or instinctive responses may well be best in some circumstances (looking at a painting or hitting a tennis ball), but the only way we can know when we should use reason is first to apply it: that is, analyse actions and their results. Exmouth, Devon, UK From Tony Williams The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is certainly correct that reasoning can’t provide the answers to all of the questions we might ask, including the most basic one of all: why does life, the universe and all that exist (26 July, p 44)? It does not follow, however, that the answers to such questions can be found in the mythologies and superstitions of primitive cultures which form the basis of the major religions. I am content to regard such questions as fundamentally unanswerable and get on with a secular life, as rationally as the flawed nature of humanity allows. Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, UK From David Fremlin “Absolute convictions… which prescribe unconditional opposition to experiments on non-consenting subjects… are not simply generated by instrumental reason”, writes the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is quite right. Nor are absolute convictions opposing homosexuality in bishops, or those permitting the deliberate infection of monkeys with HIV. However, reason can 18 | NewScientist | 16 August 2008
give us useful guidance in these as in other matters. Colchester, Essex, UK From Chrissy Philp There is nothing wrong with reasoning. In ancient Rome, a “rational” was an accountant. Rationality and reason are bedfellows. Unfortunately, as with accounting, the answers supplied by the rational reasoning process depends on the quantity and quality of information available. Humans cannot possibly rely on always having all the information they need to produce perfect results from their cogitations, though many scientists have a habit of believing that they do. These don’t seem to be able to get their heads around the fact that reaching accurate answers to big questions that can’t be subjected to detailed physical analysis until every fact is accounted for are doomed from the start. Others might have access to information that is unattainable when using scientific methodology. They might not, of course, but it has to be held in mind as a possibility. It doesn’t bother me that intuitive-feeling types sometimes get their answers wrong, but that science should have practitioners who can’t handle this simple fact is worrying. It’s not reasoning that is at fault – it’s the “reasoner”. Bath, Somerset, UK
Health and economy From Philip Hall Your editorial and report blaming the International Monetary Fund
Nuke in a tin From Paul Lowe We already have small-scale nuclear reactors powering nuclear submarines and warships. Can someone please explain why these cannot be adapted for civilian terrestrial use – in place of the new “reactor-in-a-box” designs that Phil McKenna describes (2 August, p 34)? Canterbury, Kent, UK The editor writes: ● The first electricity-generating reactor in the US was in fact based on a submarine reactor design, plonked on land at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. One reason most submarine reactor designs are not suitable for countering nuclear proliferation is that they are fuelled with weapons-grade uranium.
Sarcasm’s so simple From Bernd-Juergen Fischer Maybe Mary Helen ImmordinoYang would get clearer results in her studies of people with half a brain (12 July, p 44) if she drew a clearer distinction between phenomena purely to do with intonation or “prosody”, like contrastive accent, which is wholly syntactical, and emotive intonations, which are highly dependent on context. In her examples of “nonlinguistic intonation that conveys emotion” – such as contrasting responses to the utterance “I’m going to Timbuktu” of “YOU’RE
going?” and “You’re GOING?” – she seems to expect the speaker’s intentions to be conveyed without any reference to the communicative situation. Stress on the grammatical subject “you” simply means that the speaker had expected some other subject. Stress on the verb “going” simply means that the speaker had expected some other action – that’s all. Sarcasm doesn’t work without a lot of assumptions on both sides about the speaker and the addressee. If you say “that’s really a splendid job you’ve done here”, the addressee must have considerable knowledge of you in order to understand the utterance as sarcasm; and you must make a lot of assumptions about the addressee’s knowledge of you, if you don’t want your sarcasm to be taken literally and backfire: “Yeah, haven’t I?” Berlin, Germany
Ding dengue From Paul Jacoby Debora MacKenzie reports that for a few weeks after contracting one variety of dengue fever you have a kind of immunity that destroys other serotypes, protecting you against the potentially lethal effects of overstimulating your immune system with, say, dengue serotype B, when you already have antibodies against serotype A (19 July, p 15). Has anyone considered deliberate infection with dengue serotype B during this window? Edwardsville, Illinois, US
Nothing new in the air From John Macdonald You report that the UK defence company Qinetiq claims to be the first to have an aircraft hovering by pointing the nose up with an excess of propeller thrust over weight (26 July, p 23). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) able to do this have been widely deployed for about 20 years, as www.newscientist.com